What is this pants for cats?

YOU GOTTA GIVE

when i was a younger and more impressionable guy, i ended up seeing this kinda off-beat flick called Roger Dodger. it's a talking dramedy about this unhappy, but extremely clever advertising guy with a reputation, among his estranged family, for being a ladies man. his nebbish, high school nephew comes to visit him unannounced--ostensibly to visit schools in the city (nyc)--but really to get guidance on talking to women. the movie is more or less what follows as the Roger character's life spirals out from his own unhappiness as he confronts himself. he strives to always be honest with his nephew about himself, so he can't hide.

this is all well before Mad Men (Don Draper is a similar character, though i think Mad Men is more cynical and one dimensional), and it's a movie, so the story is accelerated. and it doesn't end with the broken jerk being rich and successful by hiding himself. instead, we watch this cynical, but witty man has turned his emotional intelligence into manipulating people (personally and professionally), but steadily comes to examine his empty life and heuristic as he is confronted with the innocent, good-natured nephew and begins to reconcile his unexplored traumas that drove him to this path.

it's an ultimately uplifting story with resolution, and it is pretty funny along the way if you can overlook the text of a jilted "ladies man" to see the subtext of a lost soul realizing he's mostly been fooling himself.

anyway, i bring it up, because the themes have a ton of overlap here. but, specifically, one of the earliest scenes in the movie is when his nephew surprises him at work, and his nephew asks him what his job (in advertising) is like and he just lays it out so cleanly and honestly. and luckily, the scene i am thinking of has been uploaded to youtube lmao. Starting with, "I sit here and think of ways to make people feel bad."

The meat of which is as follows:

Roger: You can't sell a product without first making people feel bad.

Nick: Why not?

Roger: Because it's a substitution game. You have to remind them that they're missing something from their lives. Everyone's missing something, right?

Nick: I guess.

Roger: Trust me. And when they're feeling sufficiently incomplete, you convince them your product is the only thing that can fill the void. So instead of taking steps to deal with their lives, instead of working to root out the real reason for their misery, they go out and buy a stupid looking pair of cargo pants.

i was in my very early 20s when i heard that and it has stuck with me now for what is most of my life. that, ultimately, every advertisement message is doing this. we can recognize the overt ones (like these bozo boot camps) or the ones that aren't targeting our weaknesses more easily.

if we operate from the notion that all advertising is doing this to us it invites us to consider what weakness or insecurity or perceived shortcoming is explicit or implicit in the pitch. and maybe gives us a lens or tool we can share to help those less certain of themselves. like a little thought experiment for when we see an ad and it resonates with us to the point that it doesn't feel like an insult anymore, consider what it is telling us about how we see ourselves.

with this tool we can see the body image issues capital formations have been offloading on to men and boys have been present for a very long time. what changes is the tactics of making us feel bad, because the methods have to change as we become desensitized to them as we age and they have to target the younger demographics that might have a few extra dollars in their pocket once they become an "adult".

(this shit is from the 1940s)

and that's not even getting into the implication that what we should be doing when an insecurity is uncovered, is considering all the solutions that may come from mental/emotional growth.