On Glass

A Lyric Essay on Commercialism, Love, and the American Childhood

1. “Some people would never have fallen in love if they had never heard of love,” aphorized French writer Francois de La Rochefoucauld. La Rochefoucauld’s implication is that love is neither some inexplicable force nor a conceivable passion of the heart. Rather, love may be an attractive idea that has been presented to and pursued by the mind through suggestion. But when do we first hear of love and why is it so appealing to us?

2. Madison Heartfield is a three-year-old living in Portland, Maine with her parents. Madison is different than most children. She is silently behind in her development. She is of normal height; she stands forty-one inches, barefoot on the kitchen floor. Next week she will stand forty-two inches with the addition of her sparkling Cinderella-inspired glass slippers. These slippers were purchased in the toy section in a distant Walmart. These slippers, more like miniature high-heals really, mark Madison’s departure from a brief phase in her life. They are the first materialization in her unrealized pursuit for love. But for now, she is forty-one inches tall, which makes her average. For now, she knows nothing of romantic love, which makes her different than most of the world.

3. Would we fall in love if we had never heard of anyone doing it before? Answering this question is nearly impossible. This is because one would have to imagine a life without ever knowing love. This means eliminating the notion of love as one has experienced it. And furthermore, erasing one’s exposure to its many expressions. Try now. Imagine a world without romantic comedies showing at local theatres. Imagine libraries less every novel that muses on love. Without these materials would the heart follow the same inevitable path towards romantic love? Would love exist as we know it? In Western societies these expressions are everywhere. They are unavoidable. And they enter our realm at surprisingly young age.

4. Madison lives in this world we find inconceivable. She lives in this world without love. She does not read novels and knows nothing of the intricate patterns of courtship written by William Shakespeare and Jane Austen. She has not been to the movies like her parents to see the routine breaking Meg Ryan’s heart. She is not especially attuned to noticing the advertisements on highway billboards and bus stops that display happy couples and red hearts. If she has seen them, they were quickly forgotten and replaced by thoughts more appropriate for the mind of a three-year-old: I am hungry; I am tired; I feel sick. And when these thoughts come into her young mind she has learned to voice them. Soon enough her qualms are soothed. A banana enters her hand, already peeled. Her father’s strong arms sweep her up and land her in a soft place well suited for sleep. Her mother strokes her hair and takes her temperature. Madison is well cared for.

5. This is not the world any adult in the Western world is accustomed to. We do not find peeled bananas in our hands so quickly after announcing we are hungry. We take note of the signs and expressions of love that surround us. So saturated are we in love propaganda that all an advertiser need do is present the image of two hands holding each other. The Western viewer understands this image as a representation of love and affection. The viewer often understands this before they understand the product being promoted. Beyond advertisements – we find love at the movie theatre, in literature, on television and in music. These advertisements not only offer us the products they are selling, but they are seemingly advertising love itself, in all its hand-holding glory.

6. Madison has not even witnessed this – this holding of hands. Her parents are often separated due to work schedules. She rarely sees them in the same room. She has somehow missed their every embrace. She knows them entirely separate from each other. She does, however, recognize they serve the same purpose – to supply bananas, to put to bed, to take her temperature. We, as adults and versed in concepts of love, are tempted to say that Madison loves her parents. This is entirely false. She sees them only as providers of care. She seeks their protection. Even when Madison falls to the ground and scrapes her knee. She looks up to find rescue. Her mother places a bandage over the wound and provides embrace. The embrace is merely comfort in a time of fear, reassurance that she is protected. As her mother strokes Madison’s back to comfort the crying child, her mother turns towards the family’s new television. Madison rests her head over her mother’s shoulder, facing the opposite direction. The television was purchased yesterday and her mother has just used the remote control for the first time. She has found a soap opera. Quickly, the program is interrupted by a commercial for a body lotion. The woman on the screen boasts of pregnancy scars or stretch-marks that have disappeared due to the hydrating nutrients of a skin-cell rejuvenating lotion.

7. Advertisers are right to play on the social phenomena of love to market their goods. At the root of advertising there lay a single goal: to relate to the buyer. It has been determined that the human mind functions in this manner: I relate to that person, therefore I want what they have. Madison’s mother places her hand on her own stomach. She looks down at the fresh and ever present stretch marks that grew as Madison did within her womb. She had not considered using lotion to be rid of these scars. The thought enters her mind and she makes note – perhaps she will pick up some lotion when she is at the store. The commercial appealed to her because she relates to the woman on the screen who expressed her dismay over the imperfections of her body. Madison’s mother related to the woman and thus wanted what the woman had – the supposed cure for stretch marks. Madison’s mother goes on with her day, thinking more routinely of her stretch marks before seeking out the lotion at a local market.

8. When an advertiser makes use of images relating to love, they suddenly appeal to a vast and varying market. The advertiser uses a repertoire of images that relate to love. The images have long since been established – be it the simplicity of the red Valentine’s heart or the cliché of candles surrounding a bathtub littered with rose petals. Making use of these images immediately draws forth the notion of love to the viewers mind. This is appealing to many. The audience is comprised of those who boast of currently being in love. With them sits those longing to experience love for the first time. And last in line are those who have been burnt by love’s bath-side candles and remain broken-hearted. Not all people are victim to the scars left by childbirth. But perhaps if the commercial Madison’s mother watched boasted the ability to heal the scars of love – sales would soar. Buyers would not only be those wishing to heal the scars left by a recent breakup, but also those anticipating a breakup. And standing somewhat sheepishly behind those customers would be the ones who have no scars to date, but are buying their lotion ‘just in case.’

9. Madison’s life without knowledge of love is coming quickly to an end near the afternoon. Her mother has grown increasingly tired. She has made lunch and just when Madison is typically ready for an afternoon nap, the young girl is bursting with energy. Despite her hesitation to introducing Madison to the world of television, Madison’s mother opens a box of video-cassettes. The collection of Disney videos was purchased at the same time as the television. Madison’s mother picks Aladdin at random. She puts the cassette into the VCR and reclines on the couch. Madison is sitting attentively before the television screen.

10. SEDUCE: pronunciation- /si-düs, -dyüs\, fuction: transitive verb, meaning: to persuade to disobedience or disloyalty, to lead astray usually by persuasion or false promises, to carry out the physical seduction of : entice to sexual intercourse (Webster)

11. Perhaps it is more accurate to refer to advertisements using the above term, seduce. Advertisements (such as the one viewed by Madison’s mother) are images, words, or media that lead the consumer astray. Is it not fair to say Madison’s mother had no intentions of ever buying a skin-cell rejuvenating lotion to be rid of her stretch marks? Her intention was to seek entertainment in the television set. In doing so she was inadvertently led to consider her scars and a way to remove them.

12. S.M. Greenfield proposed, in an article in Sociological Quarterly, that love exists today because of its need in modern capitalism to:

… motivate individuals – where there is no other means of motivating them – to occupy the positions husband-father and wife-mother and form nuclear families that are essential not only for reproduction and socialization but also to maintain the existing arrangements for distributing and consuming goods and serves and, in general, to keep the social system in proper working order and thus maintaining it as a going concern.

13. Most adults are confirmed and unconscious consumers of love sales. Madison’s parents are seduced into their commercial purchases. Were they even seduced into their marriage? Their courtship revealed a standardized format similar to their friends and most young couples. There were initial “butterflies” upon meeting each other. Both will confirm the other truly “stood apart from the crowd.” The couple attended county fairs and drive-in movie theatres. They had a Spring wedding. All their family and friends gathered to celebrate the couple’s truly unique and abounding love. Madison was born a year later. Madison’s parents unknowingly acted out a performance for each other. Similarly, they had inadvertently been studying for a long time. They had studied the love and courtship of the couples they watched on the screen of the drive-in theatre. The couple’s love, as abounding as they believed it was, was anything but unique. It was remarkably similar to every love they had seen throughout their lives, starting at their childhoods.

14. As the film begins, Madison’s attention is quickly waning. Although it initially seems alluring, the color and sound of it, she is unsure of its prospects. The story she is being told is not nearly as interesting as the ones her parents have made up for her, all involving animals and nature and instructions on how to use the potty. Instead, the film begins with an old and ugly merchant in the mystical city of Agrabah, who tells the story of a magical lamp and how it changed one young man's life. Madison becomes irritated with disinterest and stands. Then she quickly sits at the sound of music. “Arabian Nights” fills the room as Madison squirms along. Shortly after she is introduced to the character Aladdin who is an orphan. Madison turns and looks at her mother. “What’s an orphan?” she asks. “A baby without a mommy and daddy.” The idea is terrifying for Madison.

12. Children have no interest in love, at the very least romantic love. They quickly learn their parents are providers and protectors. They seek comfort in the soft embrace of their mothers’ breast as it reassures of them of that nurturing figure. They seek the warmth of the womb from which they sprung. It is perhaps the first thing they became familiar with. To imagine a world without their parents is perhaps to confront their greatest fear. It is to have lost all protection and care. Almost every child experiences that truly unsettling and icy fright; it seeps over them when they reach for a parents hand only to turn and see their parent is not there. To find a child in this state is to be of no help unless you are the parent. There is no way of reassuring the poor thing without being whom and what it longs for.

13. As the film progresses Madison sits attentively as her mother sleeps on the couch behind her. She is rapt in the film. She waits to see what Aladdin will wish for when he comes in contact with the magical lamp containing the Genie. The Genie can grant him three wishes. She is aghast to see that he does not wish for parents of any kind. Perhaps this is because the Genie forbids Aladdin to wish to bring back anyone from the dead? Yes, Aladdin’s parents must be dead. Again Madison is horrified at the thought. Instead Aladdin begins an endless journey to pursue the Princess Jasmine. Madison can understand this just slightly. Princess Jasmine is beautiful. She has long dark hair, like Madison herself. She lives in a castle and has a pet tiger. Madison imagines herself in the same position. Soon Madison is smiling as Aladdin and Jasmine soar through a starlit sky and sing “A Whole New World” while riding on a magic carpet.

14. Likewise, Madison herself has entered a whole new world. Behind her, where her mother sleeps on the couch, is the world without love we find so impossible to believe. Her unadulterated view of the world has forever been altered in the viewing of this animated film. Aladdin worked for Madison as the commercial worked on her mother. The film related to the three-year-old’s greatest singular fear: a life without her parents, the life of an orphan. In doing so it hooked the young mind and gained her attention. Her fear in relation to a life without her parents is calmed only by the reassurance that Jasmine is happy in the end. The Princess gets to ride on magical carpets and marries Aladdin because she loves him.

15. Madison’s father returns home as the film credits take the screen. Madison’s mother awakes at her cheers. She runs to her father and embraces him excitedly. She had never considered life without her parents. Suddenly the sight of her father comes as a great relief. Her father is happy to hold his child in this state. He is proud to have worked hard enough to earn the new television. He is proud in his fatherly decision to purchase the video cassettes that brought his daughter this joy and won him her embrace. Madison’s mother leaves to work the night shift. After her mother has left, Madison’s father selects a second film from the Disney collection. He pops Cinderella in the VCR and begins to prepare Madison’s dinner. Madison experiences the same stream of emotions and is shocked to find that Cinderella is also an orphan. Cinderella’s fate is perhaps worse when Madison learns of Cinderella’s evil stepmother. But still, there is Prince Charming and ‘happily ever after.’

16. In the week that follows Madison becomes obsessed with the characters from the Disney films. Her parents think little of the obsession. They even encourage it. Seeking the same embrace after he purchased the videos, Madison’s father seeks out toys that will elicit Madison’s joyful cries. On Friday before work he stops at Walmart and purchases a pair of glass slippers with Cinderella’s image on sole. They are clear and tinted lightly blue with specks of silver embedded in the plastic. Madison is thrilled as expected. She stands forty-two inches and totters across the kitchen floor. She does not ask why her slippers are plastic and not glass. She does not ask why Cinderella’s image is on the shoe and not her own. Instead she waltzes across the linoleum with her father. When he leaves for work she dances alone, holding her arms in the air, imagining Prince Charming between them.