In this book, we have sought to reimagine the historical and aesthetic parameters of the television commercial, to be placed now within the broader context of Film Studies. The intertextual framework we suggest indicates an ongoing, dynamic interrelationship among narrative media, and whether thirty or sixty seconds in length, multiple examples of the historical and contemporary advertising commercial demonstrate that each is, in fact, a short-film narrative, informed by ideologies and technologies of the past and present cultural time. In TV By Design (2008), media critic Lynn Spigel cites Art Direction columnist Ralph Porter's comments made in 1962 concerning standard and experimental cinematic praxis, as evident in commercial productions made for television. Interestingly, Porter focuses on one example to illustrate his point that is especially germane to this study: “Jerry Schnitzer's TV commercial for Clairol Hair Color was a contemporary version of Eisenstein's techniques … essentially an analytical study of a woman's hairdo rendered with a montagetype photographic layout of a female head.” In this advertisement, entitled Silk & Silver, a controlling, male voiceover excitedly describes this transformative hair-dye product in glowing terms: “hairdressers love the magic of it … your family will love it.” Schnitzer's stylized black-and-white commercial targets a maturing female audience. The product transforms their hair from “mousy gray” into a “silky, gleaming, glimmering” silver. Cinematography focuses on heads and hair, with the commercial likening the same to bright, blinking lights.

A year earlier, Schnitzer directed an episode of the popular television show, Lassie, entitled Lassie and the Greyhound, which featured a family, a farm, a dog, and a guaranteed resolution for every heart-warming event, however dangerous or absurd. In this case, a dog “desires” a bejeweled collar owned by Lassie, and a poor bet is made that results in its loss: another tenuous postwar fantasy narrative for unencumbered consumption. While not stylistically identifiable as a Schnitzer film, this Lassie episode suggests that the relationship between network productions and television commercials merits critical analyses and additional research. The impact of TV commercials on the medium of television is another area of untilled promise.