The article critiques Super Bowl commercials, suggesting they reveal a cultural retreat from innovation. Advertising reflects societal values and anxieties, presenting a worldview where new ideas are scarce. The author emphasizes that these ads do not merely sell products but encapsulate a broader commentary on society's acceptance of stagnation. References to freedom equated with consumerism, healthcare inadequacies addressed through consumption, and survivalist fantasies portray a culture increasingly comfortable with its decline, illustrating the troubling acceptance of a 'comfortable death' as a prominent theme in modern advertising.
The unified message I took away from the ads was that the time of new ideas is receding, and society along with it. The theme was the soft acceptance of a comfortable death.
If you can learn anything of value from a year's crop of Super Bowl commercials, it is not in the products being sold to you, but rather in how they are being sold.
The way that mirror reflects and distorts a vision of reality, a reality that can be confirmed or avoided by purchasing the correct product, tells you what the advertiser sees as vital about culture.
The form is not by nature capable of novelty, though the theory of its utility is that advertising can reflect back deep-seated or unexamined aspects of culture in such a way that they feel novel.
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