ABSTRACT
As part of this process, the viewer is assumed to be generally familiar with television’s modes and genres. Ideally, the viewer will recognize the actor and be able to identify the specific role he plays elsewhere on television. Yet in the absence of this specific knowledge, it is enough to know that there are many places within television where someone could play a doctor and to recognize this particular spokesman as a likely “doctor type.” This premise in turn assumes that viewers are also familiar with the practice of using actors in commercials as a basis of celebrity association and appeal. Within this context of intertextual relations, as one moment in television refers to others, the commercial itself may also assume a certain kind of currency and itself become a reference point. This is in fact the case with this particular ad, because the line, “I’m not a doctor…,” came to be widely recognized and circulated in other contexts, usually parodic. For example, even five years after the commercial was regularly aired on television, references to that ad campaign were still heard. In a 1991 episode of the situation comedy Seinfeld, the main character (played by comedian Jerry Seinfeld) commented in voice-over on another character, a holistic healer: “He’s not a doctor, but he plays one on TV.”
