You’re Soaking in It (2017)

(On TV, November 2020) There’s something deeply ironic and maybe even surreal in watching a documentary about the state-of-the-art in advertising on TV, and it being interrupted by low-end commercials. The cheap come-ons look almost laughable compared to the insidious techniques described in You’re Soaking in It. Making copious references to Mad Men and the early era of mass advertising, this is a documentary that sums up a lot of scattered thinking about the modern approach to selling things. As the world has moved away from monolithic audiences and gathering spaces, so has advertising—in one of the best sequences of the documentary, we’re told how advertising on the web now targets you and only you, running auctions to determine which advertisement will earn a spot in the commercial spot of the page you’re requesting. “Mad men have been replaced by math men,” says the film. But advertising can take even more diffuse forms as well, and one of the film’s most uncomfortable moments comes when it chats with a YouTuber who seems oblivious to the way her “authentic” channel has been coopted like a cheap billboard. I don’t think there’s anything in You’re Soaking in It that isn’t already well known or well discussed—if you’ve been paying attention. But there’s considerable value in it being brought together in a coherent whole, and a consideration of the various side issues that come with it. (I wish that writer-director Scott Harper would have highlighted that one of the weaknesses of all-pervasive advertisement infrastructure is that it is unusually weak to being blocked—but we do get discussion of the infrastructure and discussion of the blocking, so that’s not bad.) There is even a sobering climax to the film in which the advertisers themselves ponder if what they’re doing is really working: despite an incredibly sophisticated arms race between individuals and those trying to chip away at that individuality by convincing them to take specific actions, such as buying products or voting for an individual, individuals are becoming more sophisticated as well, and able to resist yesterday’s come-on even as tomorrow’s pitches are being developed. Documentaries such as You’re Soaking in It are a welcome addition to that awareness and capacity to resist.