T-mobile commercial - they show a priest and he says "what - you don't think we [meaning priests] text? We text." Then a couple of people later, there's a young designer who lifts up a mannequin's arm and leg and says "I don't want it to cost one of these and one of these [pause] An arm and a leg."
In both cases, the writing isn't exactly award-worthy, but what really hammer me over the head are the explanations. The writer obviously isn't sure if the audience will be able to make the small leap between the statement and its explanation. In the first case, there is almost a fear of not answering a question which is transparently rhetorical (or the absolute lack of faith by the writer in his/her audience) - obviously, within the world of the commercial, the only answer is that yes, priests do text. In the second case, there is an equally evident fear that the audience cannot jump between the images of an arm and a leg and the expression they stand for. This is not a case of the writer thinking that perhaps the audience won't know the expression, for the ultimate explanation still functions within its paradigm. Rather, the writer is manifesting a distrust for the viewer's grasp of basic analogical and semiotic modes of communication.
The only other argument you could make is that those explanations enhance the commercial from a creative or marketing perspective. It isn't even worth seriously addressing. They don't - and as implied above, it is an absolute failure of the use of expressions and rhetorical devices to have to constantly explain them. They exist to communicate through a shared basin of knowledge, to shorten the path to meaning and in doing so add an extra dimension of meaning in the process.
Sad.
Author: Lawrence W. Gallick