Yoyoyoyoyo.
Yo.
You alright? How’s your mum? I’m fine ta, thanks for asking. Anyway.
This week I’m on about that Sainsbury’s advert. You know that Sainsbury’s advert? This Sainsbury’s advert:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NWF2JBb1bvM
For those who can’t be arsed to watch 3 and a half minutes of sentimental bullshit, it’s a short film about that time in the First World War where the dudes in opposing trenches got out to have a game of football. It does a great job of humanising both sides of the war, and it’s very beautiful and moving and I hate it I hate it I hate it so much, fuck them, fuck those horrible bastards, fuck them.
I actually thought I would write about this yesterday, having seen a few comments on it breaking out around Facebook and having a long debate with a friend. In all these cases the question being asked was whether this advert is exploitative in its use of the tragic horror of the trenches. Before watching the advert I wasn’t really sure what I thought but I was having fun poking at the debate to see what arguments stood up to a good poking. I just watched the advert and, I’m not sure if I’ve made this clear enough, I really didn’t like it. I think my beef with it is slightly different (though probably related) than other beeves I’ve seen expressed so let me try and wrap some words around my revulsion.
My beef is not so much with the setting, but with the brutal, naked attempt at emotional manipulation. This piece of film has been masterfully engineered to tug at our heartstrings, to make us want to weep, to confront the horror and the beauty of the human condition. Well fuck them, they don’t get to do that. Why? Because their attempts to do so are wholeheartedly cynical. This is not an artistic expression, this is a piece of film designed to make people shop at Sainsbury’s. And someone somewhere has decided that the best way to do that is to manipulate the emotions of the audience, make us feel horror, hope, the grief at a lost generation, the redemption inherent in the human capacity for love, make us really feel that shit so that we are in a heightened emotional state and then, ever so tastefully, flash the Sainsbury’s logo so that somewhere in our irrational minds we get the warm fuzzies next time we see that logo. Fuck you Sainsbury’s, I’m not having it.
This one’s a freebie, ASDA, it’s Christmas. Sort of.
That they are using a horrific tragedy to do this is particularly egregious, but to be honest I’ve had a similar reaction with other emotion-stoking adverts in the past. The ones that want to make you cry. The soldier who’s sending a heartwarming message home for Christmas. The couple who grow old together then one of them dies. The harried mum who gets made to feel special when she least expects it. Fuck you my mind growls at the screen. Fuck off with that shit. Most modern advertising involves an attempt to provoke an emotional reaction, as opposed to simply imparting factual information, but when the forced emotion passes a certain threshold my mind rebels and I can’t stand it.
I started trying to research specific examples but I’m not gonna sit through half a dozen of these fucking things just so I can find a good one to put here. Instead here’s a quote from John Kearon of Marketing Magazine: “If you feel nothing, you do nothing. If you feel lots, you buy more. And getting you to feel lots is now, more than ever, advertising’s core job”. Fuck off John Kearon, my emotions are not a plaything for you to contort for profit.
Am I Being Unreasonable?
What I’ve just written is an angry rant. In the spirit of honest enquiry I should back up and try to test my own claims to see how they hold up. I think the most contestable claim I’ve made is this: “This is not an artistic expression, this is a piece of film designed to make people shop at Sainsbury’s”. There are two responses to this – one specific to the case and one that is more fundamental.
We’ll take the specific response first. This is not just an advert for Sainsbury’s. It also displays the logo for the British Legion, and specifically advertises a chocolate bar, the profits from which will be going to the British Legion. Does this change anything? It would seem to change the second half of the statement. This is not just a piece of film designed to make people shop at Sainsbury’s, it is a piece of film designed to make people shop at Sainsbury’s and support the British Legion. Were the advert just for a charity I think I’d have less of a problem with it. Adverts for charities are typically the most emotionally compelling ads going. We are shown starving kids, told stories of real world horror and abuse, really brutal stuff. I hesitate to use the word ‘manipulative’ in this context but I’m not sure why. Would it be fair to say such adverts are also emotionally manipulative? I’m not sure, nor am I sure whether artistic works that provoke intense emotional reactions (Schindler’s List, say, or 12 Years A Slave) could be truthfully described as emotionally manipulative. Whatever word we use though, it is clear that charity adverts intentionally provoke strong emotional responses in their audience, but this is far more acceptable because they are doing so in order to directly benefit the subjects of the advert. One might argue that this advert, by also advertising the British Legion, directly benefits soldiers damaged by war and honours the memory of those who died in WW1 who are its subject. So, just as its kosher for Oxfam to use starving kids in their adverts to make us feel a certain way, so its kosher for Sainsbury’s/the British Legion to use brave but doomed young soldiers.
I’m not sure I buy that. Whatever else this advert is it is a piece of film designed to make people shop at Sainsbury’s. I would go so far as to say it is first and foremost a piece of film designed to make people shop at Sainsbury’s. Without that imperative the film would not exist. If Sainsbury’s actually just wanted to honour the fallen and spread a message of love and sharing they could have aired the fucking thing without their name attached. But they are a company who need a big emotional ad to get their brand top of mind as people gear up to drop hundreds of quid on luxury groceries over the Christmas period. That is the reason this film was made. Perhaps I am being overly cynical here but the involvement of the British Legion strikes me as a fig-leaf of respectability, granting Sainsbury’s a) the tacit endorsement of the quasi-official custodians of remembrance and b) an instant defence should their ad be called exploitative and inappropriate. I don’t think it gets them off the hook.
Now the fundamental response. Can’t the ad be both an artistic expression and an attempt to make people shop at Sainsbury’s? That is, can’t things be motivated by more than one intention? Furthermore, why is the intention so important in dictating how I respond to a piece of film? Let’s start with the middle question as it’s easiest. Plainly yes, people can have more than one guiding intention in creating things. I might write a song purely because I think it’s a thing I want to exist in the world, or I might think that but also hope it will get me on the radio, or make my mum happy, or make people laugh, or all of the above. Combining artistic and commercial intentions though is an uneasy mixture. Defining a commercial intent is easy – I do this in the hope that I will ultimately make money by doing so. Defining an artistic intention is much harder, but one way we might do it is to divorce it from other intentions – particularly commercial. If I make something because I want to make something beautiful then that’s art, one might say. As soon as I add the clause that I am also doing it to make money, maybe it becomes something else. That sounds a bit extreme to me, but to take an edge case on the other side, if I’m making 100 near-identical paintings in a hurry to hang in a chain of hotels it doesn’t seem like I’m making art, in the sense we’d normally use the word.
Pictured: Art
I don’t know what hard and fast rule I would use for determining whether a particular case is or is not an artistic expression. I would be tempted to say something about primary intention. That is, one can hope to make money from one’s art and still be an artist, but if your aim is first and foremost to make money then you’re a businessman, even if you bring a little artistry to your commercial work. Trying to dissect intentions is a tricky business though. We are often unreliable or unsure when it comes to figuring out what our own intentions are, let alone divining those of others. This notion of intentional primacy is also tricky. How are we meant to measure intentions and decide which one comes first? Trying to answer these questions would take more space and brain-power than I have at my disposal, but I note it as a significant gap in my position. Nevertheless, it seems to me that an advert is a paradigmatic example of a piece of media with primarily commercial intentions behind it. Thus, as far as I’m concerned even if it is also an artistic expression, it is primarily a commercial work.
Lastly then, why does the intention make such a difference to me? If the same piece of film was shown on telly in a different context, as a short with no branding or commercial connection, I would have no real problem with it. I might think it a bit saccharine, too schmaltzy for my taste, but it wouldn’t make me angry in the same way. And if it was just an advert for the British Legion I would if anything have even less issue with it. Charities get extra leeway for making strong plays at provoking emotional responses in my book. The exact same film would garner three quiet dissimilar responses to it, based on the context and the intentions I attribute to the filmmakers. Perhaps this shouldn’t be a surprise. Context and perceived intention are hugely important to our interpretation of every bit of meaning we encounter. That’s why some words are acceptable from some people or in some contexts, but not from or in others. If I know you and you tell me a heartbreaking story my heart will break. If I don’t know you and you tell the same heartbreaking story (in a film say, or a post on a forum), just to get it out there, just cos you feel that story needs telling, just cos you want to express the heartbreak or get some support and I come across that and it moves me, my heart will break a little and in some intangible way my inner me-ness will reach out towards yours in sympathy. If I don’t know you and you tell me that heartbreaking story just cos you think it’ll encourage me to give you money, you can fuck off with all the fucks there are to fuck off with.
This Is The End Now
I’m left wondering about the middle ground. I didn’t give a good answer to the challenge of what to say about blockbuster films, or other hybrid artistic/commercial works. What about bad films that attempt to provoke strong emotional responses but which do it really clumsily? We have a notion of works ‘earning’ their emotional blows. I’m not sure how I would unpack that concept, though I am confident that advertisements as a class of media do not earn these blows on principle. I think certain non-adverts which attempt unearned emotional manipulation can probably fuck off too.
As a side note, I’ve vacillated between “emotionally manipulative” and “attempting to provoke a strong emotional response” throughout this post. I don’t know what distinction I’m trying to make here, but whatever it is I think it’s entirely unprincipled and if I was being more proper I would go back and either justify the distinction or just use one or the other. Thinking about it I’m not sure that there is a good distinction here. I think “emotionally manipulative” just connotes more cynical intentions, hence why I’ve tended to use it for commercial adverts. But I don’t think you can say that charity adverts are not designed to be emotionally manipulative too, it just looks harsher when you put it that way.
Alright, join me next week when I almost certainly won’t write anything about the First World War. Like, 95% sure.
Raf Tries To Work Things Out 