It must be apparent by now that I watch very little TV, and
I try never to watch TV commercials. But tonight I watched a half hour comedy
programme and there was a commercial break in the middle of it. I couldn’t be
bothered to switch channels, so I prepared to be educated.
There’s a shot of some indeterminate, strangely coloured object.
It could be mechanically recovered meat, although it looks too plastic even for
that. But then a pair of hands place it on a piece of bread, and then they
squirt ketchup on it, and then they put another piece of bread on top of that and
press it down so the ketchup runs out the sides, and then there’s a fat guy
sitting on a sofa who puts the resulting object in his mouth, and it seems we’re
supposed to believe that he’s actually going to chew this thing and swallow it.
At this point I suspect I’m watching a public information
film, the message of which is ‘look how disgusting we in the west have become;
isn’t it about time we changed our ways?’
But, no. It’s an advert for Tesco, and we’re supposed to
believe that this thing really is food,
and they really do expect us to emulate the fat guy on the sofa. And I ask
myself yet again: ‘How the hell did we come to this?’
The next ad up is for KFC. ‘SoGood’ runs the catchphrase, at which point farce descends even
further into tragedy.
5 comments:
KFC is evil. And what is Tesco? We have Spam in the US. I wonder if its the same thing. And yes, its been around for years longer than internet spam. Its like a fake ham in a little can. I think its made from what is usually thrown away bits of pork, beef and chicken, and other artificial stuff that makes it taste like ham.
Oh, i looked it up and its a grocery store... haha. I thought you were referring to what the guy is eating.
As far as I know, we still have Spam. I think it became a staple in Britain during the war when 'proper' meat was tightly rationed. I suppose it was imported from the US because it was easy to transport on the convoys. It was still around when I was a kid, but I think it fell out of favour a bit after the Monty Python Spam sketch which lampooned 'Spam with everything.'
What got me about Tesco's advert, though, was the whole image - this stuff that looked even more artificial than Spam being smothered in ketchup on a doorstep sandwich, and the overweight couch potato shoving it into his oversized mouth... To me it was hideous enough to be a joke, but apparently it wasn't. It was meant to be attractive enough to persuade people to shop at Tesco! What I find hard to understand is that this is now an 'acceptable' image of 'food.'.
As for KFC...
That does sound like a disgusting commercial. I've seen so many commercials that at first i thought had to be jokes and then realized they weren't.
And it's all your fault! Bloody Americans! We Brits used to be so restrained and proper, you know, until those damn GIs moved in with their chewing gum, chocolate and nylon stockings.
And I can say 'Bloody Americans' to you because I really want to give you a hug and feed you lettuce and tomato sandwiches - on wholemeal bread!
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