Gagh
Χριστόφορος
There's a shocker. I LOL'd hard.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/16/charlie-brooker-christmas-television-adverts
'Yep, it's that time of year again – and the Christmas adverts are already on the telly," remarks a man at the start of this year's B&Q Christmas advert, proving that the grand tradition of moaning about premature Yuletide ads has itself been absorbed by the Matrix and turned into a stick to beat us with. Let's hope this kind of jokey fourth-wall-breaking doesn't become a trend, or before long we'll all be moaning about the number of early Christmas ads that moan about the number of early Christmas ads, and then our moans about their moans will in turn form the basis of the next wave of ads, and so on and so on ad nauseam, until they're producing intricately constructed navel-gazing meta-commercials that are actually more self-aware than we are: fully sentient beings with thoughts and feelings of their own. And they'll rise up and strangle us in our beds. While humming Stop the Cavalry by Jona Lewie.
Postmodernist intro aside, the B&Q ad is a fairly standard offering in which members of staff clutter the shop floor reciting lines about great savings and gawkily radiating a sense of forced bonhomie, as though the government's ordered them to look cheerful in case the enemy's watching. There is one startling departure from the regular formula: while most of B&Q's woodentops are presented in situ, stacking shelves or manning checkouts and presumably praying for death, one is depicted relaxing at home, sitting on his sofa in a Santa hat, wiggling his socks in front of a roaring fire. Worryingly, even though it's dark outside, he's still in uniform. Perhaps all new members of staff have the outfit sewn into their skin when they sign up, as a permanent reminder of kinship – in the same way that members of a shadowy militia might each get the same tattoo. We won't know unless they put a shower scene in their next commercial. Come on, B&Q. We're waiting.
Still, at least B&Q's effort features common-or-garden schmoes, not a stomach-churning galaxy of stars. Watching Marks and Spencer's Christmas ad is like sitting through Children in Need. Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry, Myleene Klass, Jennifer Saunders, Twiggy, James Nesbitt, Wallace and Gromit . . . it's so chummy and cosy and thoroughly delighted by its own existence, I keep hoping it'll suddenly cut to a shot of a deranged crystal meth user squatting on the cold stone floor of a disused garage, screaming about serpents while feverishly sawing their own hand off at the wrist.
Instead it jokily tries to undercut itself by including a cameo from Philip Glenister, standing in a pub to prove what a bumptiously down-to-earth Mr Bloke he is. His job is to stand at the bar claiming that the best thing about Christmas is the sexy girl from the Marks and Sparks ads running around in her knickers. Then it cuts to the sexy girl from the Marks and Sparks ads running around in her knickers, as though this is somehow as iconic a Christmas image as Rudolph's nose or the little baby Jesus. Listen here, M&S: few things in life are more pukesome and hollow than a self-mythologising advert – so next year do us all a favour and just shake a few sleighbells, flog us some pants, and then piss off back to your smug little shop and be quiet.
Like Marks and Spencer, Boots appears to have overestimated the popularity of its own Christmas ads. Unless I'm mistaken, the people of this nation are not brought together as one joyful whole by the "Here Come the Girls" campaign, so its self-celebratory tone seems somewhat misplaced. What started out a few years ago as a mildly amusing commercial in which an army of women prepared in unison for an office party has devolved into a nightmare vision of the future in which large groups of female office workers spontaneously organise themselves into a cackling mobile hen night at the first whiff of Christmas. This year they're causing mayhem in a restaurant. They're mad, they are!!!! One even tries to get off with the waiter!!!!
I usually quite like women, but this advert makes me want to kill about 900 of them with my bare hands. It ends with the tiresome ladettes marching down a high street triumphantly singing the Here Come the Girls song out loud, like an invading squadron tormenting the natives with its war cry. Next year they'll probably be armed. Fear this.
Of the supermarkets, Sainsbury's are running with a relatively innocuous bit of fluff in which Jamie Oliver tours Britain handing out free vol-au-vents to greedy members of the public, like a zookeeper throwing sprats to a load of barking seals. It's been given a documentary feel, although everywhere he goes looks suspiciously wintry, with snow and swirling white flakes, which is weird considering it was probably shot in August. Still, that's climate change for you.
But the winner of the worst Christmas advert trophy for the second year running is Morrisons. They've got several short offerings, including one where Nick Hancock appears to be preparing Christmas dinner in the afterlife – but the prize goes to their centrepiece ad: a bafflingly pedestrian 60-second fantasy in which straggle-haired midget Richard Hammond wheels an empty trolley through an over-dressed, snowblown Tunbridge Wells, yelping about food and steadily gathering a pied-piper-style following of locals (and Denise Van Outen) as he heads for an illuminated branch of Morrisons in the distance, like a wise man following a star – or, more accurately, like a slightly unkempt mouse following a shop. I keep hoping it'll suddenly pull out to reveal this is all just a slightly underwhelming dream he's experiencing, and that he's actually still in a coma following his 2006 rocket car mishap. And judging by the look in his eyes, so is he.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/nov/16/charlie-brooker-christmas-television-adverts
