Today I was heating up my Cinnamon Crunch Bagel and found myself singing the lyrics “Feeling like cinnamon toast, feeling like Cinnamon Toast Crunch,” a jingle for cereal from some 20-odd years ago.
I found myself resenting this intrusion upon my consciousness by a meaningless set of phrases about breakfast cereal. I don’t want to think about cereal. I don’t, in fact, feel like Cinnamon Toast Crunch. This cause me to wonder if, rather than being an annoying but harmless part of life, commercial jingles actually constitute a kind of brainwashing–just like backwards masking wasn’t in the 80s.
Perhaps jingles are designed to highjack the thought processes of the target away from the target’s control, even after only one or two hearings, and focus the target upon hitherto unwanted and unconsidered commercial products. Perhaps this is taking away from our nations intellectual and economic productivity–every time we try to think about work, we find ourselves instead thinking about breakfast foods, carpet cleaners, jiffy oil change operations, cat food, and the like.
Perhaps jingles have an even darker side: maybe if we heard enough jingles, our minds would become not our own at all, but the property of the American advertising industry.
Think about it! While you still can…
“one call gets it done”…”no bones, McRib”…”you just said the magic word, and look what you did”…”Meow, meow, meow, meow, Meow, meow, meow, meow, Meow, meow, meow, meow, MEOW, meow, meow, meow”…
Aaaaaaaa!