“Buy Me That! A Kid’s Survival Guide to TV Advertising” 1989
This HBO special was meant to expose kids to the evil underbelly, the depravity and dishonesty of the advertising industry tasked with tricking them on a constant basis. And as a kid, I remember it having that effect, superficially. A kid would most likely come away from this show feeling a little bit cheated and a little bit pissed that the things he or she was made to crave had been manipulated to appear far cooler than they actually were. We all knew this to be true, we knew our remote control cars wouldn’t drive or jump for shit, but to hear adults admit as much was validating and cathartic.
But I believe an unintended effect of this show, for many kids, was to introduce to us the romantic notion of the power of cinema (and even the power of marketing) to create an experience vastly superior to the one promised by a simple object.
Looking back on it now, I think this may have been a huge impetus for me grabbing the video camera and learning to do my own tricks and special effects. HBO was just subversive enough to pull away the curtain on this thing that kids were absolutely not supposed to have seen. It felt very accidental to me at the time, like someone at the network had put in the wrong tape. But I’m so glad they did.
