February 5, 2007

Advertising



I watched a little bit of Superbowl XLI last night, until I saw this commercial. I found the ad so depressing that I turned it off. Though the robot is cute and the idea of a robot having dreams is intriguing, the message is very sad.

In a world without God, you have nothing to fall back on but the competence, wealth, fame, and security that can be accomplished in this life. But since most of us will live obscure lives of varying degrees of success and failure, to be less than rich, and to suffer the ultimate insecurity of disease, misfortune and death, well that's a very sad world indeed. Given this grim situation, we may as well jump of a bridge and kill ourselves.

The world says that we had better be "obsessed with quality," because the other option is meaninglessness and suicide. Put that together with the fact that the world is so broken, and our hearts are so prone to self-sabotage, well that's a very sad world to live in.

If only the robot could hear the good news that her value does not consist in success or failure on the assembly line.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I sometimes wonder what goes through advertisers' heads when they make an ad like that. They tried to hit home that quality is job one, but instead accidently reveal that quality of life of humans (or very human robots) is job zero. Might as well have shown a clip from the old silent film Metropolis to demonstrate how they feel about their employees.

Brother Charles said...

It's good to hear from you, Scott. You're point about Metropolis is well taken; the larger issue is that we don't have any good sense of how work fits into the whole of human dignity.

Anonymous said...
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Anonymous said...

Glory to Jesus Christ!
Here is some 'truth in advertising' i prefer..
4th video down/Franciscan Peace
http://apostolicatholic.blogspot.com/
Pax et Bonum,
E-J