What HeGetsUs.Com Doesn’t Get

by

Special to United Methodist Insight

After three years abroad, imagine my surprise upon returning to the States to see an ongoing national television advertising campaign about Jesus, and one that isn’t immediately offensive.

I first caught the commercial while watching NFL football and clutching a beer. I wondered who was behind the ad — are these the Mormons, or some other Protestant denomination trying to get some good PR? Or is this an evangelical group attempting to distance itself from the Trump years?

I immediately went to HeGetsUs.com to see what it was all about. But there are no clear answers on the website. And so I went back to the game.

As far as I can tell, somebody wants to present a more “likable” Jesus than the one currently promulgated by celebrity pastors and politicians. If that is their goal, I suppose, in a very limited and strict sense, they have succeeded.

But “after further review” (as they say in the NFL), I realize that this ad campaign does more damage than good to any cause related to Jesus. Not because of anything related to the actual content of the ads. Not because of what the commercials actually say about Jesus. Again, compared to what I’ve seen before, this might be the most accurate Jesus-in-a-TV-ad ever, if that’s a thing.

From the perspective of media ecology, however, there is something deeply problematic about this series of commercials. Media ecology is a catch-all term for critical analysis which views media as environment, meaning that we live in a world saturated by various forms of communication. Media ecology recognizes that we are shaped by the media around us; our consciousness, our hopes, our fears, our concepts, all are significantly formed by the media which surround us, mostly in hidden and invisible ways. We no longer notice how media does this, which means that we have to bring it into consciousness to become aware of it.

What does this have to do with HeGetsUs.com? There are two significant problems with this campaign. The first problem has to do with the media form, the sixty-second (or thirty-second) television commercial. This form is a particular specialized type of communication, with rules, best practices, and preferred aesthetics. TV commercials are short, narrative-driven, and visually striking. And perhaps most importantly for this critique, commercials attempt to make the viewer desire a product. Every commercial presents something, some object of desire, to the viewer. Every commercial attempts to persuade the viewer to desire this object. And ultimately, every commercial wants the viewer to purchase the object.

This might not sound like a problem. After all, the HeGetsUs.com commercials obviously intend to make Jesus desirable to the viewer. Even though the ads never make an outright “sales pitch,” nor do they explain exactly what it is that Jesus can do for them, there is an implied question at the heart of the ads: “Don’t you want to know more about Jesus?” and an obvious action for the viewer to take — visit the website.

In that sense, the commercials work exactly like any other commercial. They create a desire and they make the promise that the desire can be fulfilled with their product. But there’s the rub — commercials offer products, commodities, stuff.

Thus, Jesus is commodified in a TV commercial. He becomes a product which a consumer can purchase. He becomes an object of desire which can be found, bought, consumed, and discarded.

This happens because this is the way TV commercials work. That is the form of the medium itself. That’s why it doesn’t matter what the content of the commercial is. It doesn’t matter what kind of Jesus is presented, it’s still Jesus-as-commodity.

And I can’t think of anything more uncommodifi-able than Jesus Christ. Honestly, the advertising campaigns that the United Methodist Church have run over the last couple of decades have been much more palatable because they understood that you can’t sell Jesus. Instead, they offered a real, tangible product — a church! They didn’t attempt to make Jesus a product, rather they tried to present the UMC as a place of open hearts, minds, and doors (and how did that work out?!).

The second problem with this campaign has to do with context. For some reason, I only seem to catch these commercials during football games. I know that’s not the only time and place these ads run, but it helps me make my point. Because is there any worse time to run an ad about Jesus than during that most American of pastimes than NFL football?

To go back to my first encounter with HeGetsUs.com, I am watching my Cowboys play the Eagles in the first divisional game between the two. It’s a critical match-up, though early in the season. I am already concerned about having our second-string quarterback start the game. As we fall behind, I am anxious, distraught; I clutch my beer and start yelling at the TV.

Then all of a sudden, there’s a commercial about Jesus. It’s jarring. I’m not ready for this. I’m not here for the deep thoughts or reflective meditation. I’m worried about the 3rd and 8 coming up. And so I’m prone to make a nasty comment about the commercial, like “But does Jesus get how big this game is? Can’t Jesus get us a big sack here?” I’m a UM pastor, so my comments are extremely tame compared to what most people out there in TV land are shouting about the same time. In other words, context matters!

I get irritated when Jesus is squeezed between a beer commercial and an advertisement for erectile dysfunction medicine. There is a felt incongruity which grinds at the core of my soul when that happens.

Truly, the answer here is not that the ads themselves need to be better, nor that they need to be shown at the appropriate time to a better-researched demographic. No, the solution is to stop making commercials about Jesus. It’s as simple as that.

Now … how ‘bout them Cowboys?!!

The Rev. Wes Magruder has served as a missionary assigned by the General Board of Global Ministries and is a clergy member of the North Texas Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church. To reproduce this content elsewhere, please contact the author via Facebook.