Commercials
Of course, advertising is the most obvious and direct form of establishing the viewer's discontent. Commercials must convince us as the consumer that until we have what they offer, we don't have anything at all. One ad frankly proclaims that, "Life is good....in the right car". Unfortunately for me, I can't remember what brand of car is the "right one", but then again, I don't even have a car. I guess I'm forever constrained to a life that just isn't good. As I watch these commercials from my apartment in Pullman, I'm further told that the only place to be is the mountains of Busch Beer. Now don't I feel bad, but again, I don't even know where the Busch Mountains are. All the commercial reveals is that Busch Beer is somehow a formula for beautiful happy people.

Cindy Crawford promotes to the female market that Revlon's new line of lipstick wont' "kiss off", but ultimately, if everyone looked like her, no one would care if lipstick kissed off or not. Girls are reminded that they have the wrong make-up and guys are reminded that they have the wrong girlfriend. Finally, General Nutrition Centers topped all their advertising contemporaries by telling the world to "Get Big, Get Noticed, Get a Life". If muscle mass and social exposure truly are the basis of human worth, then there's a world of people out there who have no reason to go on living. As more and more products flood the market, it is only natural that advertisers become more aggressive in promoting their product's merit on the one hand, and the consumer's desperate condition on the other.

Sitcoms
Thanks to cable TV and the miracle of syndication, classic sitcoms are on all day long, providing almost everyone with some exposure to the realm of virtual reality. Though the show's premises seem familiar and possible, real life never resolves itself as neatly as it does on television, and real life conversations rarely are as eloquent or humorous. My afternoon of television began with a familiar favorite, "The Brady Bunch". It's doubtful that anyone actually had parents as perfect, parents who managed to work through every minor scuffle, providing valuable life lessons along the way. Though the household was essentially made up of two broken families, the problems typically surrounding these situations never arose.

Despite the fact that today's sitcoms have shifted away from the "perfect family", they still offer a warped view of reality. Irreverence for authority and sarcasm abound while everything is turned into a punch line. "Saved by the Bell" features a high school whose handful of popular students constantly undermine their good-natured but gullible principal while somehow managing to remain in good standing and excel at every school function. "The Dukes of Hazzard", one of my all time favorite shows, followed on the heels of "Saved by the Bell" and continued to have fun at the expense of the local authority. In each episode the Dukes must take the law into their own hands so as to thwart the underhanded schemes of Hazzard's Boss Hogg, and each episode they get the job done while Boss manages to stay in office. A constantly recycled token plot allows plenty of accommodation for fist fights and car chases, and though there are some fabulous wrecks, no one ever gets hurt. To top it all off, the Dukes who don't even have jobs consistently give their weekly reward money to the Hazzard county orphanage. It must be nice to, as the narrator says, live for only three things: "Girls, cars, and peaceful Hazzard mornings".

"Caroline in the City", "Seinfeld", "Coach", and "The Simpsons" rounded out my day's sitcoms. All three are comedies, some funnier than others but alike in their perfectly formulated and timed dialogue. People just aren't that funny in real situations, but fortunately, these shows provide the humor we miss in our everyday lives. Letterman and Conan filled in my late night gaps, and though not sitcoms, they act in much the same way, famous people running through highly controlled dialogue with a studio audience there to assure the proper response to every joke. I wouldn't mind that actually, my own studio audience to ensure that there is never any awkward silence following one of my idiot remarks. Of course, to be fair, how could we ever expect less from a television series. If they don't hook the viewer and give them what they want, a fabulous version of reality, then they won't survive.