EBICHA ZONE―Column

TV commercials bother me these days. For one thing, the computer graphics are just too developed; gaudy pictures flash one after another for 15 seconds on the screen. It's as bad as the Pokémon episode which caused seizures in some children viewing it a while ago. What is worse is the overly loud music playing with these extreme visual effects. It seems to me as if TV stations turn the volume up 10 or 20% for commercials. Does it sound like I have a persecution complex? At any rate I can solve this problem with the mute button on the remote control.

The real problem is what is advertised on TV. There are some ads that should not been seen by children, but in fact, they are shown without criticism even in the daytime. The worst are loan sharks’ ads. They talk as if it were a social virtue to buy things, borrowing money at a high interest. Oh, yeah, it sure is a virtue, anything to promote the economy. If we believe that, it follows that prostitution of school girls, extortion and robbery should not diminish.

Gambling, too, is shamelessly promoted on TV. As they show it, betting on a horse is ‘a fancy hobby’ you can enjoy with your boyfriend or girlfriend. As for bike racing and boat racing, they have been upgraded to ‘sports to watch.’

While the number of ads for tobacco has rapidly declined, liquor is being advertised on a much larger scale than before; fruit liqueurs for women, and imo-jochu (distilled spirits from sweet potatoes) and mugi-jochu (distilled from barley), which kindly give you no hangover the next morning, are now more popular than ever. Compared with these types of alcohol, beer is so light and fresh that we can take it for a soft drink. Taking all of this into account, it is no use telling high school kids not to drink alcohol.

We also see a joking kind of hypocrisy on TV commercials every day. A good example is the ad for the station wagon for a family with the slogan of ‘Happy memories are better than things,’ though it is true that a car is not the ultimate item everyone wants any longer.

Someday I wonder if they'll invent if a TV set with a screen saver that works just on commercials alone. Now, I would look forward to TV ads with that kind of new technology.