In Your Face Is Losing Face

IF YOU'RE OLD ENOUGH, YOU REMEMBER WHEN THE POST OFFICE accused Playboy magazine of being obscene.

(If you're contemporary enough, you wonder why Hugh Hefner doesn't hang up his bathrobe.)

Times change and mores change. The principal architect of 2005's “anything goes” non-culture is the Web. We're exposed to an increasingly shrill clamor for attention and response, and the bleed-over has reached into all media. Once-taboo subject matter now is mainstream, and children — exposed to our peccadilloes in a volume that itself would have reached saturation if our capacity for accepting the once unacceptable weren't expanding at an even greater velocity — not only discuss topics that even one generation ago would have been unmentionable in their presence; they lecture us, loudly and obscenely, on their right to be loud and obscene.

Who's to blame? For that matter, is “blame” the proper description of an era in which everybody is skeptical of every offer…resulting in wilder and wilder claims, to grab those whose desperation outweighs their skepticism?

We're all to blame. We compete on contemporary terms if we want to stay in business. That means dignity is obsolete. That means integrity is cloaked in claims that have to compete with those who don't share our concern for integrity. That means just by entering the arena we contribute a little more to accelerating skepticism.

Here's a mailing on whose full-color, custom-converted envelope is the message: “Male Adult Film Star's Doctor Asks: Who else wants to grow big and long like him (where it counts the most).”

On the reverse side of the envelope the unrelenting assault continues. Adjacent to a photo of a “hunk” with a girl sitting on his shoulders is: “Grant Michaels' doctor explains, how medical science's newly discovered wonder-formula, with Super-Testosterone Boosters, turned this average man into a nationally famous porn star — with a ‘love tool’ that is the envy of every man…and the super-stud fantasy every woman dreams of going to bed with!”

Explicit enough for you? Don't accuse me of being a bluenose. (And don't accuse me of putting commas where they don't belong. They're in the original.) In fact, a considerable percentage of my notoriety (which in kinder, gentler times would have been reputation) stems from my ongoing attacks on those who want to superimpose their own interpretation of morality on the rest of us.

Therein lines the paradox. By putting that pitch on the envelope, the sender is superimposing his, her or its interpretation of morality on the rest of us. As recently as a couple of years ago, such unwrapped provoking would have limited itself to e-mail or an esoteric Web site. But we're late in 2005, and the walls have crumbled a little more.

Obviously, whoever created this mailing was well aware of The Cardinal Rule of Envelopes: The purpose of the carrier envelope, other than keeping its contents from falling out onto the street, is to get itself opened. That Rule, though, can conflict with The Cardinal Rule of Primitive Psychology: When you embarrass somebody, he or she dislikes you. So why might this be embarrassing? Because…

Who sees the envelope? Everybody. Visualize a youngster, not yet steeled to an “Open, Sesame” approach to sexuality, arriving at sophistication before arriving at puberty. The contents of the mailing are graphic in both illustration and text (“flagpole” appears as an adjective — got to hand it to the copywriter). In keeping with the tone of these deals, nowhere does the price of turning limp lead into solid gold appear. Nowhere. Mice-type says, “Have your credit card or checkbook ready to take advantage of this introductory BONUS offer” — the bonus being two free videos, “valued at $79.95.”

Yeah, we've seen space ads worded, “Is that a hard drive in your pocket or are you really glad to see me?” But that was in a computer publication, and we know how computer geeks respond to that kind of stimulation. (The same way we do.) And here's an Eller outdoor sign touting a suntan parlor — and what's more visible to everybody than an outdoor sign? — showing a seductively-shaped pair of those blockers that keep your eyes from burning while tanning. On the sign: “Cheaper than a boob job.” A trusting child asks, “Daddy, what's a boob?” The father's logical reply: “Somebody who designed that billboard.”

So here we are, rocketing into an era in which nothing is held back — not low-end vocabulary, not obvious sexual and scatological references (has Ben Stiller made any movies that didn't include a scene in a men's urinal?), not in-your-face “It's time to bring all this into the open” hard sell for products and services once thought to be under-the-counter fodder.

Better get used to it, because it isn't going away. Me? I'm off to eBay. Somebody told me Hugh Hefner is auctioning off his bathrobe. I wonder if the price includes laundering.

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HERSCHELL GORDON LEWIS (www.herschellgordonlewis.com) is the principal of Lewis Enterprises in Fort Lauderdale, FL. He consults with and writes direct response copy for clients worldwide. His most recently published 28th book is the curmudgeonly titled “Asinine Advertising.” Among his other books are “On the Art of Writing Copy” (third edition), “Marketing Mayhem” and “Effective E-mail Marketing.”