Has television been trying to brainwash you by subtly conditioning you to engage in certain commercial activities? Or is it harmless advertising and marketing? From the creator of VHS Massacre, Tom Seymour’s documentary, Enter the Television, explores television’s subversive nature over the decades.
The documentary opens by claiming that advertising back then had its roots in World War I propaganda. Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, brought wartime propaganda tricks and handed them to American advertisers on a dirty silver platter. Seymour gives the example of watching our favorite television characters, like the Flintstones and the Beverly Hillbillies, extolling the virtues of smoking.
From there, Seymour delves into cultural appropriation, as advertisers borrow popular culture to sell their wares. He cites the use of hip hop to sell Doughboy’s crescent rolls and Fruity Pebbles. Actors talk about how they would come into the studio one day and just record lines for one company after another, like an assembly line. We then move to the fear tactics of McGruff the Crime Dog and Wilford Brimley’s barking for diabetes supplies.
Then the focus shifted from network television to public access and obscure cable channels, where Troma’s Lloyd Kaufman and USA Up All Night‘s Rhonda Shear were part of the popular syndication model of programming old television shows and B-movie titles. Jump to today, as television’s draw has slowly shifted to social media and platforms like TikTok.
Troma co-founder Lloyd Kaufman appears in an interview segment of Enter the Television.
“He cites the use of hip hop to sell Doughboy’s crescent rolls and Fruity Pebbles.”
My early career was in marketing and advertising. That’s the degree I got in college, and I used it effectively throughout my professional life. Tom Seymour’s Enter the Television should be textbook viewing for any marketing history class (if there are any). I like that it walks the promotional line between practical and conspiratorial. Yes, we’re trying to sell a product, and yes, we’re subliminally imprinting products into your brain with monotonous rap beats and catchphrases.
Documentarian Seymour keeps all this information, clips, and interviews running at a smooth, engaging pace. As someone who lived through the 80s and 90s, I’m seeing a boatload of television nostalgia sail by. Though I don’t fall on the conspiracy side, the film makes some valid points. Yes, we are being manipulated into buying stuff… often unnecessary stuff. Remember the 976 chatlines, yeah…unnecessary.
Take my advice: whether you land on the practical side or the paranoid side of the argument, Tom Seymour’s comprehensive doc, Enter the Television, gets down and dirty to the point that it’s hard to ignore. Either way, it’s a fun, nostalgia-packed watch that might leave you a little more suspicious of your TV, which is probably the point.
For screening information, visit the Enter the Television official website.
"…Remember the 976 chatlines, yeah…unnecessary."
