Notes based on a series of television adverts seen in the breaks of a football broadcast.
- Adverts defy attempts to conclude, to rationalise, to attempt to find patterns, to think, and to draw anything but the most obvious conclusions. They move too quickly to comprehend, they seem to function without a pattern. They reproduce in the mind as signals without form, half-remembered sounds. Will they reproduce here? You cannot learn anything from them - can you?
- For instance, could you retain any credibility by borrowing the language of adverts for a sincere purpose? It's a truism that advertising sucks up ideas from artists, especially when artists try to defy advertising, and that sometimes this process has gone the other way. Is there a way to go beyond this dualistic dynamic? Something not based on trying to follow the difficult value of authenticity.
- Adverts use the language of contemporary commercial cinema: the two become ever more indistinguishable, particularly in the region of sound (the situationist ideas of detournement and subverting advertising, and those of artists appropriating advertising, are usually visual in nature - what would this sound like?). That booming sound of the cinema, and the way it is cut into suddenly, suddenly there's the noise of a gas hob from close up, extremely loud. There are two adverts for cinema releases here, new Hollywood films with premises based entirely on well known products. Aspect ratios change from clip to clip, sometimes using a false widescreen effect that still signals cinema.
- There's a consistency of tone (also from the cinema?) on a spectrum from a jolly, false humour to pure sentimentality. At one end there's the weirdness of something that has all the construction of humour without being funny (particularly popular is animals carrying out various human activities). At the other there's a completely cynical use of diluted liberal values shorn of any context or idea of political change. Is it worth writing about this at all?
- What is competition? What is the market? Something vicious, underhand, bulls, profit, cutting costs down to the bone, something that is rendered invisible here, along with the actual visceral nature of production lines. Maybe there is no competition, and the odd cosiness of advertising reflects the monopoly.
- Avoiding the discourse of the manipulated audience - is advertising often simply ignored? Then again there's always the uncomfortable, alienating and disturbing moment of noticing yourself tearing up at an advert, despite knowing what is on the screen is complete nonsense.
- Recently noticed there are more and more videos online where people have noticed the way everyday moving images are constructed, then perfectly recreate their rhythms for the purpose of parody (adverts and the way BBC series are edited is a particular target). How does the online space compare with the television adverts?
- The overall impression of the world given by adverts is that of life averaged down, without the hint of any possibility of something else. The key image is that of a street that is recognisable but does not exist, a street of detached houses neither fancy nor run-down, beneath a forever blue sky.
- Recurring motifs: people turning into cartoon characters, symphonic music with booming drums, people flying into the air. The flying consumer is particularly prevalent. Why is this image of escape the most popular?
- More than any of these is the image of motion (the economy in motion). Marathon runners, chemicals being synthesised into new formulas, people stomping across entire cities, the camera tracking fast through restaurant kitchens, dishes pushed at speed toward the lens, foodstuffs tumbling through the air, brand new cars speeding in silence towards the interchangeable skylines of unnamed North American cities, and flames.