2005-05-05 - 8:52 a.m.
BeanTown
I have a thing for those little jellybean people in the Zoloft ads. Call me crazy, I think they're cute. Every time we see one of the ads on TV, we say "Ooohhhh, poor little jellybean! It's depressed because it has no genitalia!". Then we root for it to squash the little bird it's bouncing beside, though it never does. Yes, we're sick. Society may not approve, but we're happy, and we didn't need Zoloft to get us there. I've been slowly collecting the print ads with a vague idea in my head of making a huge collage of jellybean people. Not for any particular reason, just because I thought that if you amassed a large enough number of them, it would be really, really, disturbing. Yup. Maybe I'll give some of them scary hollow eyes - zombie beans. So, I've been collecting the ads. Not reading them, mind you. At least, not until recently. But here is what the one in front of me right now starts off with: "Zoloft has helped millions with depression. This is Denise's story. (Denise P. Age 39. Trenton, NJ.)" Okay so far, right? A touching testimonial to the power of prescription medication to make your life everything you always wanted it to be (except for the criminal lack of a $20,000,000 bank account in a pill). Then, in the first panel, there's a little blurb at the bottom of the picture: "Story not based on actual person." Story not based on ACTUAL person. STORY NOT BASED ON *ACTUAL* PERSON. See, now that's way more disturbing than even a wallpapered room of those little jellybean things, even if all of them had hollow, vacant eyes. (Though now that I think of it...) The makers of Zoloft want you to try their product based on a testimonial by a FICTIONAL person. I can only guess that everyone who was actually *on* Zoloft was too depressed to send back the postage-paid comment card (hey, I get one with my Ortho-Tri-Cyclen, why shouldn't people get one with their Zoloft?), so they had to make something up. All I can really tell from the ad is that Denise P. Jellybean is larger in the last panel than she is in the first (I'm assuming it's a "she", based purely on the name, since we have the aforementioned "lack of genitalia" issue, plus, if Denise is a guy, she's got more problems than a mild case of depression). What this ad is really telling me is that fictional blobs of protoplasm gain weight when they take Zoloft. Just to make you *really* care about their fictional spokesbean, the ad has another blurb at the bottom (but above all the "Zoloft may fuck you up" statements): "Denise took comfort in the fact that ZOLOFT has helped so many people for so many years. ZOLOFT is safe and effective[*]. It has treated more people with more types of depression and anxiety than any brand of its kind. So she asked her doctor about ZOLOFT." Fictional jellything asks her doctor (who is *clearly* self-prescribing rather freely) to give her antidepressants. I'll let y'all just think about that for a moment. Plus the fact that she looked it up on the computer, despite the fact that D.P.Bean *clearly* has no hands! *Bean got no hands! No wonder she's depressed! She's not giving up singing because she's depressed, she can't turn the page! (Actually, the Doc ain't got no hands, either, but *is* wearing a charmingly retro "Doctor Quincy, M.D." headpiece. Presumably the receptionist puts it on him at the beginning of the day.) My brain hurts just reading this ad and its candy jar of contradictions, so I'll just end with the [*] I put in above: (Zoloft is safe and effective...[*]...except if you are under 18 - then you might get suicidal thoughts, worsening of depression, or unusual changes in behaviour - or if you are taking certain medications, bad things might happen, *or* if you don't particularly care for having dry mouth, insomnia, sexual side effects[1], diarrhea, nausea, and sleepiness, this may not be the medication for you - try uppers instead. ([1]...not a problem for fictional jellybeans with no genitalia, which is probably why they picked Denise P. Jellybean as their example in the first place.) I think I'll put together a picture of two jellybeans humping. *They* may not get any pleasure out of it, but it'll sure as hell make *me* laugh. "ZOLOFT comes in 25mg, 50mg, and 100mg tablets." Small jellybeans may wish to adjust the dosage somewhat.
Dorsal - Ventral
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all words copyright Laura Mellin 2000-2005
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