I'm as much a fan of Frankfurt-School Marxism as any recent liberal-arts college graduate; but two months after starting a new career as a junior-level account executive -- a position that makes me a sublieutenant of consciousness, at best -- I'm still not completely persuaded by this view of ad pro as hegemon. (Then again, I wouldn't be, would I? If there is such a thing as "false consciousness," its giant brain must lie at the corner of 18th and Madison.) Some of my industry colleagues, however, are clearly delighted with the idea. "All advertising people should read Mr. Ewen's book," gloats an article in Advertising Age, "if only to discover how powerful, how elitist, how successful we really are."

It's not hard to understand why ad men get such a kick out of this portrait of themselves as evil geniuses, the bully boy enforcers of late commodity capitalism. For years, they've had to suffer through Hollywood's depiction of their business as a sinkhole of soulless conformity, a mausoleum for deadweight yes men slinging crunch-a-licious, Flavor-ific prose. Think of Darrin on "Bewitched": the sine qua non of the American salaryman, he spends his days dreaming of $5,000 bonuses and is given to such déclassé utterances as "Today the Bliss Pharmaceutical Company -- tomorrow the world!" Or the bibulous Joe Klain in "Days of Wine and Roses": A caricature of hangdog submissiveness, he swills martinis, rustles up hookers for clients and grimly braces himself for the loss of all his key accounts. "I spent a lot of time on that account," grovels a severely hungover Klain, upon hearing that his hard-drinking ways have just cost him his Covington Farms client. "Perhaps, Joe -- too much," ominously reproves his all-seeing boss.

After these dreary chronicles of organization-man abasement, what a relief to pick up a book like "Captains of Consciousness" and encounter ad men of diabolical vigor and potency, men who reinforce corporate hegemony, prop up the cash nexus and still find time to write couplets for Luxor soap. Can you imagine the meek-hearted Darrin marshaling the nerve to say "boo" to a goose, let alone cunningly weave the commodity system into the interstices of our lives? I didn't think so.

The only television show to truly incorporate the Marxist critique, which sees advertising as a synecdoche for all that is debauched and evil in American culture, is Aaron Spelling's "Melrose Place," with its searing portrait of wayward account executives who are more than willing to cheat, cook the books, turn tricks, even kill, all in pursuit of those top-drawer accounts. At the redoubtable Amanda Woodward Agency, which serves as the setting for these TV-M misdeeds, sex and perfidy are considered business as usual, and the account reps needn't dip into the slush fund to procure prostitutes for clients, as, happily, many are prostitutes themselves. To be sure, when the bottle-blond ad babes let fly with lines like "You thieving whore, these are my clients," it may not be the most articulate indictment of commodity capitalism of the Clinton era. All the same, the show does manage a critique of Madison Avenue mores that makes Herbert Marcuse look like a Rotarian toastmeister. Consider the following scene, the centerpiece of last season's cliffhanger finale, "Who's Afraid of Amanda Woodward?" As the scene opens, Amanda, who is played by Heather Locklear, is unveiling with her usual fanfare a new campaign for a long-standing client, Ted Kroger. "And now," says Amanda, "the pièce de résistance. Four 30-second spots during the '98 NFC Championship Game."

"Very nice presentation, Amanda," says Kroger. "Now, let's hear the damage."

"Fifteen million," Amanda says. "Not a penny more ... A good agency is your partner, Ted. You benefit; we benefit."

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