Jesus of Nazareth or Madison Avenue: who's offering the real thing?

If you pit Jesus of Nazareth against the crew (and cash) from Madison Avenue, would the savior stand a chance? Each side has a story to tell, whether how to shave your legs or how to save your soul, but only one nabbed time during Seinfeld.

In all the ballyhoo about the end of Seinfeld, I heard that 15-second spots on the final episode sold for a record-breaking $1.5 million -- even more money than corporate sponsors have to cough up for what has until now been the Holy Grail of TV commercials: a Superbowl ad. Not too shabby for a show that's supposed to be all about nothing. Nor for the Madison Avenue ad execs producing these little quarter-minute pitches, especially considering that the first legal TV commercial, broadcast during a 1941 Phillies-Dodgers game, cost the Bulova watch company exactly $9. We've come a long way since those days in Ebbets Field, though maybe not all of it in the right direction.

Of course, advertisements aren't a new thing in America. In The History and Development of Advertising (Doubleday, 1929), Frank Presbrey reported that way back in 1704 the Boston News-Letter ran the first newspaper ad, informing its readers about a Long Island farm and mill that was up for sale -- and ever since newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media have paid their bills by hiring out space or airtime to sponsors and advertisers.

What is new, however, is the astounding growth of commercials over the past half century. Benjamin Barber notes in Jihad Vs. McWorld (Ballantine, 1996) that just a decade after the Bulova spot was broadcast, global advertising expenditures had climbed to more than $39 billion. By 1990 that number had mushroomed to an unbelievable $256 billion (about the size of the annual Cold War defense budget). In the U.S. alone, where about half of this money is spent, advertisers currently spend better than $500 a year on every man, woman, and child. Marketers are so interested in "branding" our children that advertising to youth has increased by more than tenfold over the past 15 years.

I shop, therefore I am

As a result of all this phenomenal spending -- and the Reagan administration's 1984 deregulation of TV ads -- commercials now seem to be everywhere. Not only will most of us see a million of these ubiquitous bite-sized epistles of consumerism before we reach our 21st birthdays, we now find that the 15-second spot has given birth to the even more objectionable 30- or 60-minute infomercial, which has itself mutated into something of a cable-channel virus.

Nor is TV land the commercial's only domicile. In the past few decades ads have also colonized the silver screen, the Internet, airports and planes -- even our public schools.

It's unlikely, of course, that this sort of exposure hasn't had any effect on us. Culture critic Neil Postman argues in Amusing Ourselves to Death (Viking, 1986) that the result of all this ad-watching is not just that we buy more stuff, but that we have begun to "accommodate ourselves to the philosophy of television commercials." In other words, after being bombarded with an endless variety of enchanting little morality plays in which all pain and suffering is instantly banished with the mere swipe of a charge card, we find ourselves getting more and more accustomed to the notion that we were born to shop.

Unhappy? Lonely? Upset? Just pick up this new product, and all your cares and woes will begin to fade away. Heck, just watch a couple of these upbeat commercials, and you can start to get a warm, cozy feeling right there on your couch.

No wonder, then, Postman refers to TV commercials as the parables of consumerism, for he believes the ultimate function of these ads is not to pitch a single brand or product, but to sell us a way of life.

Parables of consumerism

According to Postman, "such `parables' as `The Ring Around the Collar,' `The Lost Traveller's Checks,' and `The Phone Call from the Son Far Away' not only have irrefutable emotional power, but like biblical parables, are unambiguously didactic." And the central lesson they mean to teach us again and again and again is "how we should live our lives" -- which is mostly by shopping and watching television.

Barber makes the same point by arguing that the infotainment and telecommunications sectors of our economy are not ultimately concerned with selling us a particular line of shoes, cell phones, or beer, but with winning our very souls. Commercials, Barber and Postman argue, function like the parables of the New Testament because they are geared at winning us over as future disciples. They are about transforming us into full-time consumers, preferably of the sort who are never completely satisfied, who continue to be eternally enamored by all that is "new," and who are always ready to believe that we are just one purchase away from total bliss.

Just as listeners to Jesus' parables about the Mustard Seed and The Pearl of Great Price are not just hearing stories but being introduced and invited to respond to the reign of God, so too viewers watching the pseudo-parables of TV commercials are being actively sought as possible converts to consumerism.

Postman may have something when he makes a connection between parables and commercials. After all, both TV ads and biblical parables present us with short, enticing narratives with a definite hook and a decided emotional impact. Likewise, both often rely on a deft, ironic sense of humor to get their message across. (Squeezing a camel through the eye of a needle? Compare that with a dog opening your beer.) And each of them tend to hook us with pithy sayings that stick in our imagination. ("Love your enemy," or "Just do it.")

Indeed, whether we're talking about the parable of the Mustard Seed or TV land's tale of "The Ring Around the Collar," we're dealing with miniature tales aimed at sneaking past our defenses -- rational or moral -- and getting us to see ourselves and the world in a new light.

Still, in spite of these similarities, commercials are, in the end, not at all like the parables of Jesus. For each of these two literary devices attempt to win us over to a worldview that is not only different, but fundamentally opposed to the other. And each one makes strikingly different demands of us.

For the purpose of the commercial is to do two things: to entertain, and -- more importantly -- to put us in the mood to go shopping, which is not always an easy thing to do. After all, most of us living in the U.S. at the end of the 20th century already have all the basic necessities of life: food, clothing, shelter. So we may occasionally forget just how badly we "need" to go to the mall.

How do commercials sell us the gospel of consumption? According to Postman, they work as a sort of instant -- and addictive -- therapy. Seconds-long hits of euphoria that keep us coming back for more and more purchases. By offering just a taste of the bliss we're supposed to get from shopping, these flavorful little morsels of bait keep us stuck in the "spend" cycle.

We can, the ads imply, buy contentment, confidence, and grace along with all the merchandise we're dropping into our shopping bags. Even the funniest and savviest of commercials seem to answer our deepest personal and psychological needs with a self-deprecating, tongue-in-cheek sort of irony. And nobody's really kidding. After all, who spends $256 billion on a joke?

Tales of truth

The parables of Jesus, on the other hand, may seem quite entertaining at first but turn out to be about as amusing as a Trojan Horse. Indeed, if we actually pay attention to them, these tales prove to be quite disturbing, and it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone that Jesus' audiences-instead of rushing out to buy fresh copies of his sermons -- often responded to his parables by trying to shove him off a cliff or run him out of town.

Take, for example, the stories of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, or the Pharisee and the Tax Collector. In each of these parables we are initially introduced to the sort of pious, hard-working, honest folks we tend to admire and identify with -- only to discover that God's loyalties seem to be with dissolute sinners, drunkards, extortionists, and heathens. Not only are our ways not God's ways, it looks as if God's ways may be our enemy's ways. Hardly the sort of comforting message that puts us in the mood to drop an extra $20 in the collection basket.

If parables have a job, John Dominic Crossan argues in The Dark Interval (Poleridge, 1994), it's to force us to make room for a God who is not of our making, to tear down every pious preconception we have, and to leave us disturbed and vulnerable in the face of the living God. Like the overburdened camel trying to squeeze through the eye of a needle, parables are Jesus' way of reminding us that we need to get rid of lots of excess baggage before entering into God's kingdom. We need to strip ourselves of so many of our pious and often self-righteous certitudes, to clear out a space in our hearts, minds, and lives for the God who is not made in our image and likeness. We need to make room for the righteous judge who forgives the unforgivable and breaks bread with sinners, the king who rides an ass and wears a crown of thorns, and the almighty creator who dies on a cross.

If commercials tell us we don't have enough, that we need more stuff, then parables tell us we have too much, that we need to have a financial, emotional, and ideological garage sale to clear out the excess baggage we've been carrying around. Parables tell us that we are rich in all the wrong ways, that we are too full of ourselves, and that we need to pare down to the bone. We need to get rid of the things that get between us and God, whether it's our possessions, our sense of moral superiority, or even our complaints.

Parables tell us that we need to sell everything -- particularly the one thing we don't think we could part with -- and give it away. It's easy to see why a message like this doesn't sell at $1.5 million a pop. But how are we ever going to get $1.5 million through the eye of a needle?