Can
somebody tell me what, in the name of all that isn’t shit and
wrong, the X Factor contestants are doing on the Marks and Spencer’s
Christmas advert? Or why John Lewis seem to think they’re all
clever and arty, and oh look we all thought that little boy was
greedy and soulless, when really he was thinking about what to get
mum and dad. While we’re at it, can anyone suggest to me why these
massive bloody companies bother at all? It can’t make that much
difference. Can it?! I certainly didn’t go and buy decadent
Christmas pudding and terrifically tender turkey just because Twiggy
told me to last year. Maybe those singing berks are selling me M&S
for reasons of metaphor, perhaps the bigwigs at Marks are reminding
us that after Christmas somethings break, get lost or aren’t
wanted. Keep the receipt, that sort of thing. Nice message I suppose
but surely it could have been done for much less money and without
making me want to eat the television in order to escape the cloying,
plastic, dishonest wank-fest on screen.
We all know that we have to buy a shed load of disposable giftage. Well, not have to exactly, but feel compelled to. We all know that there will be new products, the next big thing, the last slightly smaller thing. We know prices will go up, queues will form and otherwise seemingly calm and reasonable people will literally fight each other in the aisle for the last Fellate-Me Barbie (‘she really gags’) or Jigglyballs Elmo. It’s insanity people, genuine, terrifying, it’s all gone wrong insanity. If supermarkets and toy producers really want to shift their crap they should just broadcast short films showing how their item, and the desire for it, slightly degrades the customer. Seriously, each advert should depict a quaint cottage, it’s inhabitants merrily swapping gifts, bathed in the red-green glow of the fairy lights. Ma passes Pa little Johnnys gift, and Pa passes it to little, eager Johnny. He rips off the paper in fevered anticipation: to his delight it’s that violent, sexualised piece of shit all his friends won’t be getting due to poverty, so little Johnny can mock them. Close up on the family pet while Johnny smashes in its skull in with his new roller blades. Bits of bone and blood spell out ‘It’s that time of year’ in the snow.
That
would shift product.
It
seems that as long as you can make people die a little bit inside on
watching your rubbish peddling messages, and then suggest within that
message that that bit of them might be forgotten about if they buy
said rubbish, they will. The skull smashing is probably unnecessary,
but kids love a bit of violence, don’t they? Besides, children need
to be hopelessly desensitised to puppys heads being smashed to pulp
so that they can play the video games of the future without being
damaged. In fact I’m going to go ahead and suggest that on the
birth of each of your children they should be shown, live in the
hospital room, a lion mauling – I dunno – Kermit the frog to
death. Or something else that symbolises innocence, you choose. The
effect simply has to be disgusting and raw enough to prepare them for
the sickening Yuletide arse fest.
All
this is an extension of the rage produced by people telling me
Christmas has officially started because a fizzy, tooth rotting
beverage has rolled out its annual schmaltzy bullshit. Yeah, that’s
right. The good people at Coke don’t give a shit about Christmas,
or you. They’re not even actually good. They just know that if they
fire a festive themed commercial into your eyes a million times in
the next six weeks, sales go up. That advert – along with countless
others – is the product of a room full of bastards, all sitting
there laughing at how easily led the ‘little man’ is. I imagine
the conversation to go like this:
“We’ve
got snow, sleigh bells in the soundtrack, oddly detached grinning and
a lot of red and green and stuff. What are we missing here?”
“We
need more Zing, more Pop, more Pizaz”
“Of
course! Why don’t we just eat Christmas, sick out all the good,
pure, modest bits, remove our stomachs, allow the Devil himself to
eat them, and get him to shit into a hat. Then we’ll just broadcast
that”
“Ninety
seconds of the Devils shit in a hat….. It’s good, but can we get
a known and loved song utterly ruined by some croaky, whiny,
incredibly boring girl, and play that over the top?”
“Yes
we can. Gentleman – and I use that term loosely – we have just
made the best Christmas advert ever. And when I say ever, I mean
eva.”
Then
they all laugh a slimy, putrid, world ruining laugh, and fold in on
themselves like origami made entirely out of prick, then disappear in
a dot of light. That’s how I imagine it anyway. It might not be
exact but I reckon I’m pretty close. Incidentally, that’s also
the way they write Hollyoaks. I suspect I’ve made it quite obvious
that I am unhappy with the way we are being sold something that is
actually free, and how tired I am of being treated like a simpering
idiot. Piss off.
I
like Christmas, television and adverts. Television can be clever,
entertaining, engaging, even life changing and adverts can be not
awful bordering on brilliant on rare occasions. Christmas is all cold
and crisp and warm and fuzzy and heart and soul and that. But
apparently, should you combine the three, all you end up with is a
patronising, money grabbing, product centric, soul destroying, life
devaluing bunch of toss.
No
wonder we all spend most of the time drunk.
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