Me O'Clock

String theory describes the physical universe, its particles and forces, as composed of vibrating filaments of energy. Jello’s “Me O’Clock” TV commercial for its Mousse Temptations is a vibrating filament of promotional energy without a particle of lucidity but with a troubling force in its address to and reflection of current cultural values.

The ad features a smartly dressed middle-aged woman languorously reclining on the gigantic hands of a clock, beginning to spoon up some Mousse Temptations. In the background Charissa Nielsen sings—or, rather, engages in a melodious kind of babble, a prelanguage whose only distinguishable words are “It’s My Time.” We’re told that Mousse Temptations is “rich and airy,” a seeming paradox considering that the main ingredient of this enticing confection is water, followed by xylitol, an artificial sweetener. “Airy” for sure; “rich,” well, only by the most ardent linguistic leveraging. Indeed, this mugging of language quickly becomes a felonious assault, for we are then told that Mousse Temptations is the reward for “washing the bills and paying the dishes.” Me O’Clock has arrived and, to reinforce that timeless state of self-gratifying ontological enchantment, the numbers on the clock slip from their position and are kicked by the woman into oblivion. The ad closes with the woman licking the spoon in a manner so erotically charged that it would surely send Freudianism to number one with a bullet on the psychology charts.

We are always at one remove from the food we consume. We really don’t eat food; we eat the idea of food, an idea that ads like Me O’Clock encourage us to adopt as the appropriate interpretation. And what interpretation does Me O’Clock frame for us? Simply this: the only flow experience, the only thoroughgoing focus of motivation, that counts is the experience of and immersive focus on the self. Consider the grammatical gyration of “washing the bills and paying the dishes,” the consummation of which heralds the advent of Me O’Clock, my time. Undoubtedly, this violation of cross-referencing rules it meant to humorously suggest the virtue of delayed gratification. But what does it really suggest? I’d venture this: that such mundane but necessary tasks as paying bills and washing dishes are so tedious and trivial, so impertinent and incidental, that they do not even merit linguistic sanction. They are the unsayable, beyond the pale of grammatical warrant. They are not an accomplishment; they are the absence of accomplishment, and, thus removed, only the business self-gratification remains.

Consider also that Jello has given us Mousse temptations, and that this temptation comes surplused in three flavors: Caramel Crème, Dark Chocolate Decadence, and Chocolate Indulgence. Note the Frenchified spelling of cream, complete with diacritical mark, a grave. Consider the words “temptation,” “decadence,” and “indulgence.” What Jello offers is not food; it offers the exotic, the transgressive, and the forbidden. It offers epicurean poetry to replace the stoic prose of the adult world of responsibility, eroticism to replace wearying and insipid task orientation. It offers abandonment, and with that abandonment a license to never again have to turn one’s gaze from the self-reflecting pool. It offers a redefinition of personal growth that is actually regression, of wholeness that is actually immaturity, and of subjective well-being that is actually a compacted circle of self-absorption. It encourages, finally, the unmediated state of infantilization, a return to early childhood where the expectation is that every desire is on the cusp of immediate fulfillment. Where are the virtues that living in an adult world requires--duty, perseverance, fortitude, commitment, self-command? No time for them when it is always Me O’Clock.