Television Man

Television Man - Talking Heads

The man on television, or rather, the actor portraying a Main Street barbershop owner, buries his head in his hands. His little enterprise is about to be eradicated by the superstore settling right next to his shop – in this case, a hair dresser dynasty promising its customers a six dollar haircut. The ratty looking billion dollar operator rubs his paws and polishes his whiskers in anticipation of all the virgin small town hairdos about to come his way. No insignificant business owner can compete with that!
You can see the horror toiling away at the poor barber’s face. How can he ever survive this stock market listed bottom price tsunami? Outdoor lights and running water alone cost him six dollars per customer. Luckily, our small American businessman is a cunning customer. He speeds off to Office Depot, an office supplies superstore. There, from the same mogul that saw to it that the town’s mom and pop stationery shop went bankrupt the year before, our barber buys a couple of markers and a banner, all at bottom price. He writes something on the banner, and nails it to the facade of his shop: ‘We fix six dollar haircuts.’
In the next shot, we see that the superstore next door has been shut down. The windows are boarded up. All employees are fired. Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts have pulled back their planned investments in the town. The small town barber grins a wide grin. Main Street beats Wall Street. Up yours, corporate America! And all thanks to the bottom prices at Office Depot. Thank you, corporate America!

America is a fidgeting equivocator. Or, to put it another way, America is a contradiction in terms. Or: America is paradox incarnate. It all depends who you are writing for. Fact is that, in the small town barber commercial for Office Depot, it takes the company about half a minute to come to terms with that contradiction. Office Depot (but other corporations, too, like Walmart, K-Mart, Staples, Target) advertises with large = cheap = better. Bottom prices for stationery save the little man. And little men are what make America great.
Only thing is, the Office Depot commercial simultaneously conveys to the viewer that large = cheap = bad. The demon tycoon hair dresser, stock-marketed embodiment of evil, ruins not only the small town barber, but also the little man’s hair. What was so great again about the no-competition bottom prices of super corporations? Oh, but then of course the small town barber dreams about one day ruling a stock market listed barber dynasty of his very own. What was so bad again about the no-competition bottom prices of super corporations? It’s tricky.

Television is a great place to get a front row view of exactly that American incongruity in all its naked glory. And, of all the figurative nudity on television, commercials flash it the most brazen. The forgotten zit on an otherwise touched up, fidgeting ass. Or, to put it another way, the frontal nudity, the money shot, the teabag. It all depends who you are writing for. Of course all that insightful nakedness does not apply to every commercial. Forget about the universal promotional activity of the Swiffer or l’Oréal kind.
Those commercials are the same all over the world, and the only paradox smiling you in the chest is Sarah Jessica Parker. First, the television star lets someone else be pregnant for her. Then, she takes every media opportunity to announce that her body has stayed all nice and natural – she might not be fooled into some unflattering pregnancy, but she won’t be tricked by any Botox wrapped promises either. Meanwhile, the l’Oréal commercial shows her airbrushed almost beyond recognition into something of a Sarah Jessica Marker. Anyway. If you are looking for a good round of hypocrisy, universal commercial messages made by multinationals will do, but that is not what the American paradox is about.

The clothes come off in commercials made by all-American mega companies, for the all-American people. They infallibly put their finger on that complex entity of corporations versus the individual; that battle between pursuing the gargantuan American Dream and protecting personal American values. Somehow, those colossal corporations effortlessly get away with mashing together these conflicting opposites.

Take car manufacturer General Motors. Hemorrhaging money for years, bad management, underpaid workers, overpaid non workers and skyrocketing bonuses for the suits in power. It had to go wrong. And it did. The economic crisis of the past year finally snuffed the all-American company. No to a buy-out, yes to bankruptcy and eventually the U.S. government stepped in and took over. The company’s second beginning started with ending the production of three out of their seven brands of cars, and god knows how many jobs. But still, there are a lot of General Motors cars lying on the shelves. By the end of 2009 General Motors presents their ‘bankruptcy commercial’ to the public. The end of the American Dream. Or is it? General Motors has the answer.

‘We’re not witnessing the end of the American Car. We’re witnessing the rebirth of the American Car,’ a reliable male voice assures the viewer. Onscreen, we see the company’s big city industry (a skyline, a General Motors factory, thousands of commuting workers stepping onto a train platform and crowding a metropolitan sidewalk, the car assembly line and a parking lot filled with brand new General Motors cars). The images are alternated with all that is American and good: an athlete running with a prosthetic leg; a hockey player bent double on the ice; an American football player throwing a decisive pass. Will the athlete make it to the finish line? Can the hockey player get up from the ice? Will the pass turn into a touchdown? I’m sucked in. Popcorn at hand, I’m riveted to the screen. It’s Rocky, in one minute two. Big question is: am I watching Rocky I (Stallone loses the fight, but wins the moral battle), or Rockies II trough VI (Stallone wins the fight; there is no moral battle)?

‘Reinvention is the only way we can fix this… And fix it, we will,’ the voice hums. It’s not Rocky after all. General Motors goes Yoda and Star Wars. Yoda? If anything, aren’t they more of a Darth Vader in this scenario? Or at least that one guy who’s just in it for the money? Meanwhile, onscreen: a community pulling up the wooden front facade of someone’s new home, together. A carefree family dog, its head and tongue sticking out of the carefree family car. A united soccer stadium filled with moms and pops. And then, in rapid flashes: the first landing on the moon, Mohammad Ali, a butterfly, American football players all toppled over each other on the field. ‘This is not about going out of business; this is about getting down to business,’ the voice divines.

What did we just watch? A bankrupt company blatantly putting itself on the same level as the biggest and financially most successful blockbusters in movie history. A dehumanized corporation that failed on every account, comparing itself to the brave individual – the unfortunate athlete, Rocky Balboa, Luke Skywalker. Normal guys, reaching for the stars; who lose sometimes, who fall on their faces before they get back up again. But who never stop fighting for what they believe in. The little man that makes America great. The American Dream. That’s General Motors, according to General Motors.

Office Depot says that big companies are the good guys. They help the little man get rid of the big companies. Because big companies are the bad guys. General Motors says big companies and the little man are one and the same. They are Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, the guy who is only in it for the money, the robots, that hairy guy and and the gold bikini all rolled into one. That’s the American paradox in a nutshell. The larger than life corporation that worships the little man as it wrings his little neck. The little man cursing the mega company that ruined his Main Street stores – every weekend, in the mega check-out line. The little man who’d rather go bankrupt than get rid of the superstores and pay more than bottom price for his commodities. Who shakes one fist at the dirty money of Wall Street, while the other tries to grab a share.

Question is: who in this story is trying to break the little man’s back? The government? Government control is one of the biggest fears in the heart of the American. No more taxes! But in his State of the Union of January 2010, Barack Obama pointed out how it is exactly the little man who has profited from government interventions in the past year.
Wall Street? But Wall Street provides the little man with cheap stationery, and cheap haircuts and bottom price clothes and groceries and insurances. Wall Street is what keeps the little man alive in a time when all financial bets are off.
It isn’t the government, or Walmart, or Wall Street that's closing down Main Street – Main Street is closing down Main Street. And television man has known it all along.

Postcards From Downtown

Postcards From Downtown - Dayna Kurtz

US post offices are the assholes of the world: all things indigestible go through here. US post offices are the assholes of the world, and constipated at that. There is always a line at the US post office, a large intestine sluggishly snaking from door to windows. It doesn’t matter if you come in early in the morning, or around lunch time, or just before closing time; there is always a line and somehow the line never gets any shorter. For every customer trickling down the line to be called up to one of the triple glass windows, two new customers pour in.

The US post office is a place where defeat and despair reign supreme. Despair starts with the mystical amount of forms you have to fill out – for national mail, international mail, customs forms, first class, priority and express mail forms, receipts, return statements – all with form titles that are designed to not let on their meaning: who can tell the difference between the PS Form 2976 (Customs Declaration CN 22 - Reference Only: Order from MDC using PSN 7530-01-000-9833 (9/2009)) and the PS Form 2976-A (Customs Declaration and Dispatch Note CP 72 - Reference Only: Order from MDC using PSN 7530-01-000-9834 (5/2009))?
I sure as hell can’t. And neither can the dismal looking local postcard senders scuttling to and fro around me. Everyone is trying to catch the eye of any employee, helplessly hoping to find some kind of salvation there. But to no avail.
I have learned to take one copy of every form on display in the racks spread out in the post office, and fill them all out while I stand in line. Every single one of them. Just in case. The employee behind the counter will sigh as they flip through them: ‘Don’t need that one, don’t need this one... I’ll take this one and this one... This’ll do, too, and could you sign this one for me please?’
The timid humiliation that goes with your paper overkill beats the old ‘Looks like you forgot to fill out your Domestic or International Claim’ or ‘I really need a Return Receipt for International Mail on this one’, before being sent back, unforbidding, to the racks without a clue as to what was just said, but still holding your mail. And with the prospect of having to get back in line. Defeated. Capitalist bureaucracy is a thing of beauty.

I have been standing in said line for about two minutes when a large man in a hooded hunter’s jacket and a blue shirt shuffles up behind me. I look back and nod in recognition – I am, indeed, the end of the line. Or the beginning! I think, optimistically. The man has undefined stains of something greasy all over his chest. Oddly enough, he’s wearing a pair of perfectly pressed dress pants, over a dull but clean pair of brown shoes, the laces untied. The guy is so big that he probably hasn’t seen his feet in a while, and I can imagine he gave up on trying to reach his shoes to tie the laces. Why not go for loafers? I wonder vaguely. Then again, I hate loafers. Besides, it’s January. Either way, the untied laces don’t seem to bother the man. For one, his feet look to enormously solid-look to even notice the lack of counterpressure, and besides, the rest of the man has other things to be concerned about. I can hear him humming something behind my back. His hum slowly gets louder, until I can make out what he is saying.

‘Is your pack-age safe to mail? Hee hee! Are you sure you have not packed any haz-ard-ous mat-ee-rials? Mer-cury, fuel, fire-works… Match-es, batteries, explos-iiiii-ves? Hee hee hee! Is your pack-age safe-to-mail?’ He almost sing-songs it, like he’s the announcer next to a shooting gallery in an amusement park. I look at him again. His eyes are magnified, shining soft and helpless through big rimmed, old fashioned glasses like the ones my dad used to wear in the late seventies. He sports a cultivated little beard – not in corresponding seventies style, as you might expect, but something professionals call a Vandyck. The mustache part of Post Office Guy’s Vandyck is completely grey; the goatee is grey with streaks of ginger. His jacket is big enough to protect the world.

As I look away, the man comes up with all kinds of materials that may be hazardous to pack. ‘Hair-spray, perfume, lighters, nail polish… Lip-stick, shoe laces…’ He can probably do this all day, and from the sounds of it, he plans to. I look around me. The other people in line are actively and grimly ignoring the man. They stare at a point right in front of them, clutching their envelopes and pressing their packages tight to their chest. The guy has begun to sway softly on his feet, like an old fashioned airplane propeller about to be swung into action. I can feel his fervor radiating, pulsing, pushing up on me from behind. He is talking louder and louder now – but he doesn’t do anything. He’s just a guy waiting in line at a US post office, like the rest of us.

My eyes wander to the red warning sign on one of the glass counter windows, informing visitors that anyone who attempts an armed robbery of this post office risks a sentence of up to 25 years in prison. The glass windows are bullet resistant. I know this because one of my friends who works at a bank told me. Bank windows and post office windows are bullet resistant.
The friend’s bank was robbed a little while ago. She was behind the counter when a hooded guy walked up and shoved a note under the slot. ‘Gimme 20 + 10’, it said. My friend had to read it twice. At first she thought the man must be a mute, so she looked him in the eyes and asked, ‘What is your bank account number? And can I see your card or ID?’ But the guy didn’t respond. Maybe he is deaf as well, my friend thought, ever ready to help. So she tried again, deliberately and carefully articulating the words this time. But then the guy opened his big coat ever so slightly to reveal a tiny gun. And just like that, she was in the middle of an armed bank robbery.

My friend then took one 20 dollar note and one 10 dollar note out of the register; she pushed it under the slot, towards the guy, folded her arms and waited. The guy was so taken aback that he took the money and ran out on the street, with 30 bucks in his pocket. Walked in a customer; ran out wanted for armed robbery, with nothing to show for it but 25 years in jail. All because he didn’t know how to spell out a proper money demand.

My friend shrugged it off: the teller's windows are bullet resistant. I looked it up. Bullet resistant is not quite bullet proof. A regular bullet from a regular pistol will not penetrate the glass – probably. No guarantees there – and nobody seems to consider the possibility of ricocheting bullets, bouncing off the windows and straight into the line, hitting unsuspecting customers standing behind the robber who were never even aimed at. Machine guns or sawed off shotguns are, of course, a different story altogether. They’re harder to hide under your hoodie, though. The double barrel makes for a more conspicuous stroll. The point is, the glass is bullet resistant; but the windows of these bank and post office counters only start from the waist up. The lower half of the counters is made of pressed chipboard that pretty much crumbles under the well aimed kick of a sturdy boot; I don’t think it can withstand a bullet, however ordinary the pistol that shoots it.

What are bank or post office employees instructed to do, in case of a shoot-from-the-hip type robbery? To duck for cover isn’t going to cut it: anything aimed below the glass, like a clumsy warning shot, is likely to penetrate the chipboard. Subsequently, to duck for cover on the floor behind the window is to risk getting shot in the head. Maybe all bank employees are trained to jump up as high as they can in the case of anyone shooting up the place. Procedure: (1) try to make it above glass level. (2) Jump real high, and hope for the best. Maybe the ideal bank employee is a paraplegic who at least won’t feel any shots shredding the bones of his legs behind the board as he reaches for the silent alarm button. Or better still, the ideal employee would be an amputee. No legs at all dangling in harm’s way. No expensive leap training required. All the training involves is the fastest way to screw their chairs up high, above average waist level, and stay put. And hope the robber is not toting a sawed-off shotgun, because then all bets are off.

As I am pondering below-the-waist bank security and the criminal disadvantages of illiteracy, the man behind me is swaying into a verbal frenzy. ‘Lip-stick, twee-eezers, bottled water, bottled soda, teddy bears, toy bunny rabbits… The government, Homeland Security, US Mail… All these paranoid idiots! What else will these idiots consider hazardous material?’ he shouts. ‘Lip-stick, soda water, mah-ga-ziiines… When will Mr. and Mrs. Joe Tax Payer say, We are done with this stupidity? When will they say, We have had enough of these paranoids poking and prodding around in our personal property and our personal privacy? When will they have had enough of the paranoid idiocy of these sub-Neanderthal clowns and jackasses? Hee hee! Is you pack-age safe to mail? Please make sure you do not try to send any haz-ar-dous material… Shoe laces, bunny rabbits, tweezers…’

I consider, Is this guy your average run of the mill all-bark-no-bite type of big city eccentric, or the more troublesome ‘I always giggle before I go postal’ type? Is he about to open his big coat ever so slightly to reveal a sawed off shotgun, then open fire on everyone inside the post office, starting with the post office employees? Should I yell, ‘Jump! For god’s sake, jump as high as you can!’, and hope the employees will follow my lead? But then I think, nah. If this were a man with a gun, he’d be shooting up the place by now. Instead, he’s chatting up the place.

Suddenly, one of the employees, a hefty lady, slides down from her chair behind the glass. She walks up from behind the counter area, into the public area and straight up to the line. Is she going to tell the man to shut up? I hope not. I don’t know what this guy will do if he is told to shut up already, but I am sure it won’t be pretty, gun or no gun. ‘Is there anyone in this line who just needs money orders or stamps? Anyone here, just for stamps or money orders? If you are here only to buy stamps or anybody who just needs a money order, please step out of the line and go to window 8. Window 8, only for stamps and money orders’, the lady says. The man immediately wriggles past me, and starts making his way to window 8. Other people follow in his wake, making sure he gets to the window first. They huddle up behind him. ‘No!’ commands the lady. What now? we all fret. ‘Sir, please make sure the line forms within the rope, and nowhere else.’ Somehow, a little rope has appeared, hammocked between two metal poles. At the beginning of the rope is a sign that says: This Line For Stamps And Money Orders Only. Everybody, including the guy, silently obliges. How could we have missed that sign before?
The employee behind the window asks the guy, who is still swaying on his feet, ‘What can I do for you sir?’
And just like that, the man stops swaying. ‘I will have twenty stamps and a money order for 30 dollars, please,’ he gurgles.
‘– Debit or credit?’ the employee asks.
‘Credit, please’, the man informs the employee, his mustache trembling.
‘– Anything else I can do for you?’
‘No, that is all, thank you. Thank you.’ And off he goes, all smiles, stamps in hand. Off, no doubt, to wrap up some hazardous materials to mail. Lipstick, teddy bears, tweezers… Suddenly I’m pretty sure I forgot to grab an essential form before I got in line. That means I will be stuck for at least another half hour in this US post office – did I mention it’s the asshole of the world?