The Ethics of Commercials

I just landed an agent for commercials. Which is really, really exciting. I'm dedicated to the craft, and there's nothing I love more than Shakespeare and language and real, meaningful theatre that moves people and tries to shake up the world. But I love the idea of doing commercials too. Not because they would satisfy my creative urges, but because they're a good way for actors to make money and advance their careers. There are so few of those out there, folks. You have to give us what little there is.

But commercials can be problematic--and sometimes deciding to be in one is a moral tight rope. For instance, I remember my boyfriend telling me about all the awful things oil companies have done in third-world countries. He asked me if I ever would represent an oil company in a commercial. I have to say, my first answer was heck, yes. Because if my first big national commercial was for an oil company and I turned it down, my agent would never forgive me. Among other reasons.

Naturally, my boyfriend was really disappointed with this answer. The thing is, people who moralize about this are rarely in a position to act on it themselves--it's easy to judge others, but it's not their career. But they do have a point. And I do have boundaries. I wouldn't do a commercial for a cause I really didn't believe in, for example. Then again, i think about the things I do believe in: environmentalism being one of them. Workers' rights being another. If I insisted to my agent that I would only do commercials for companies that didn't pollute at all and didn't have any factories in third-world countries with less-than-ideal working conditions, what companies could I work for? Probably not many big companies that do big, career-changing national commercials.

There's another issue, too. I remember doing a commercial class where the instructor said, "a commercial actor's job is to do three things. The first is to convince the audience that something that might be questionable is okay." I forget what the other two were. But that sentence made me think. In a commercial, it's an actor's job to soothe the audience, to get past their fears about the product (which may be legitimate). To make them believe that they really can save money by switching to Geico or get attacked by hot girls in their underwear by wearing this body spray or whatever. Is it always true? No. But it's our job to make the audience believe, on some level, that it is.

Back in the Old West, when cowboys wanted to capture wild horses that roamed on the plains, they'd use what's called a "Judas horse." That's a tamed horse they'd train to lead wild horses into a corral. Is that what actors are in commercials? Judas horses, trained to lead people into corrals of the companies' making? It's an interesting thought. Not enough to make me give up on the idea of doing commercials myself. But enough to make me think it's a good thing to have a few boundaries--and a few causes and companies I'd want to avoid.