Key Terms: Seriality, Psychoanalysis, Commericals.

Abstract

Television and media scholars have recently emphasized the link between the television advertisement and the short film. Yet, little attention has been paid to serial commercials and their unique formal properties. As Peter Barry argues, the principal logic of serial writing and publication is the maxim, “Make them laugh, make them cry—make them wait.” Alongside the affective domain of laughter and tears, Barry astutely identifies the role of punctuated delays, or gaps, for audience investment in serial narratives. In line with recent conversations in the field of seriality studies, this talk considers the formal operation of what Ryan Engley has coined the “serial gap”—the psychic investment generated by punctuated delays in narrative closure—in television advertising. I consider two serial advertising campaigns, the 1990-1997 US Taster’s Choice Instant Coffee serial advertising campaign (known in Britain as “Gold Blend”) and the 2018 South Korean “Long Long Man” Sakeru gummy series. Using the works of serial media theorists such as Frank Kelleter, Jason Mittell, and Ryan Engley, I argue that the Taster’s Choice and Sakeru gummy commercials strategically use the serial’s gapped and delayed form (i.e., cliffhangers) to generate audience desire for “instant” commodities (e.g., instant coffee or candy). In analyzing commercials that span temporal and geographic distances, we can trace a logic of interruptive closure in serial commercials, adding to film scholarship’s interests in cinematography, narrative, mise-en-scene, and sound design. Focusing on how the serial gap functions in television commercials provides researchers with new avenues to theorize the rise of seriality in contemporary media and to analyze its formal capacity to elevate and arouse audience desires for commodities.