Am I Right To Hate That Sainsbury’s Advert So Much?

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.

Should I Wear A Poppy?

Alright?

I was gonna do “should I wear a poppy” this week but every other fucker and her dog is gonna be doing that shit so Imma do something else instead.

Ah you know what fuck it I’m doing it. Mine’ll be better than them other suckers’ bullshit “articles” anyway.

Alright, so for years as an adult I used to wear a poppy. Felt like a grown up thing to do. Felt like I was supporting something noble. Felt like something a proper person would do. Then somebody I know was like “why you doing that shit, that shit is supporting a load of shady shit, you shouldn’t do that shit” (I’m paraphrasing). I can’t really remember what her argument was but it was convincing and I stopped wearing a poppy for a couple of years. Plus I didn’t really have an amazing handle on what the date was for a bit there.

I was too busy hanging out with my mate Peter.

Anyway, now it’s definitely poppy time and I can’t remember why I wasn’t wearing one, so I’m thinking maybe I should wear one. But I haven’t really thought about why I think that, and I’m pretty sure the reason not to was a good one, so I don’t really know. The recurring theme in this riveting saga is that I’ve never really thought about it for myself, just done what someone’s said I should do. But I’ve got this blog and that now innit and this is precisely what I’m supposed to be doing with it, not posting scathing yet accurate calumnies and groundbreaking works of modernist literature and searing confessionals and shit.

So should I wear one or not? Let’s figure something out.

Let’s figure something out.

Alright so as I see it the basic conflict on the poppy thing is this: supporters say that it is a symbol of remembrance and supports a good cause, critics say it has been co-opted to support militarism, jingoism and a bunch of other bad stuff (not really sure what at this point).

I’m gonna say two things off the bat.

Firstly, the loss of life in the First World War (which is what I would initially presume the poppy and the whole Nov 11 remembrance thing is in aid of) is appalling and deserves to be remembered – as a tribute to those who died and as a warning not to do no shit like that again. World War 1, from what I can make out, was a fucking liberty. The leaders of the richest countries in the world decided to butt heads and kill huge swathes of each others’ – and their own – populations for absolutely no reason worth a damn. What a pile of cunts. What absolute evil was enacted. What tragic folly. Let’s remember that, let’s point the finger at the people, the institutions and the ideas that drove that pointless slaughter. Let’s not forget the culpability of the British government in all of it either.

Second, anything that David Cameron is well into is something I am immediately suspicious of. So we’re starting with a point up on both sides.

Fuck you David.

With that stuff out there let’s examine the competing claims. What does the poppy symbolise and what does it support?

I’m gonna start with the easiest question – what does the poppy appeal materially support? In other words, where does the money go?

Hold on let me just google some shit…

Hold music….

Alright google says the poppies are sold by the British Legion, who use the money raised to support wounded and retired service people and bereaved families. Which is fair enough. It’s not a charity I would personally set up a standing order to but chucking a quid in a bucket is something I’d be happy to do. Can we push this to find fault? Maybe we could say that relying on charity to help people in that position absolves the government of something which is rightfully their responsibility. But the same could be said for most, if not all, charitable endeavours. As a general point I think taxation and social spending is better than charity. But in an imperfect world charity has its place. Alternatively we could say that charities like this are too jingoistic and pro-millitary. I don’t think the act of helping people who have been damaged by time in the army is either of those things though. They’re not (ostensibly) raising money for recruitment drives. So I think on this count I’m mildly pro-poppy. It’s a little bit of money to a fairly worthy cause.

Alright so what about the symbolism then? And what about the less tangible effects of that symbolism?

I thought going into this that the poppy symbolises the war dead in WW1 and maybe WW2. The poppy certainly first emerged in the immediate aftermath of WW1 as an attempt to raise funds for returned servicemen and their families, as well as the families of servicemen who did not return. According to the British Legion’s website though the poppy is worn to commemorate “the sacrifices of our Armed Forces and to show support to those still serving today and their loved ones”. On the one hand this is narrower than what I would have assumed – there is no mention there of the civilian casualties of war – and on the other it is far broader, since the commemoration is not limited to the World Wars.

I can’t criticise the poppy appeal for not being about what I thought it was about – I’m not a well informed dude. But the ostensible symbolism we are asked to display is less of an immediate draw that the symbolism I had imagined. “Wear this to commemorate the millions who died in the World Wars” – yes, absolutely. “Wear this to commemorate the sacrifices of our Armed Forces” – maybe, give me a sec to think about it. For one thing, that’s kind of a vague statement. Are we being asked to commemorate the soldiers who died killing brown people in the good old days of empire? Or those who died in the dirty war waged against British citizens in Northern Ireland? I think, if we take the statement at face value, that we are. This might be seen as overthinking this issue, but I wore the poppy for years without thinking about it at all and I’m sure I’m not alone in that. If you’re going to make a symbolic statement it’s worth actually being aware of what you’re saying. 

Let’s have a look at the second half of the ostensible symbolism “to show support to those still serving today and their loved ones”. Is that something I want to do? I think yes, probably. People in the armed forces do something really difficult and scary, and though I am fairly anti-war I think we do need a standing army*, thus people prepared to do this scary difficult thing. And people who are doing something scary and difficult on my behalf deserve my support in doing it. Their families too are clearly in a pretty horrible position, having someone they love off in danger for months at a time and possibly returning with physical and emotional scars, or never returning at all. They deserve support too.
*Actually I’m not sure if we need an army or not. It’s another thing I haven’t thought about properly, but for now I’m gonna err on the side of caution and say I reckon we do.

Taking the British Legion’s statement of what the poppy symobolises at face value then, I think I’m happy to support those still serving today and their loved ones, while I’m conflicted about commemorating the sacrifices of our Armed Forces. Some of those sacrifices I’m very happy to commemorate, some I am not. As a side note I’m starting to realise I’m not quite sure I know what ‘commemorate’ means. I think we should remember shady shit that our government and armed forces did in the past, I’m not sure that we should commemorate them. Should we commemorate the British concentration camps in South Africa? Seems like a no, although we should remember them (and perhaps commemorate the victims).

At this point I’m kind of on the fence. Looks like the poppy symbolises some shit I’m happy to visibly support, and some other shit I’m less happy to. On balance I think I probably wouldnt wear a poppy if it means what the British Legion says it does.

But critics of the poppy go a bit further still. The question we need to ask now is whether the poppy symbolises something other than what the British Legion thinks it does. We don’t always have total control over what the symbols we use mean, as the makers of Plopp chocolate are all too unaware.

Nutty.

To simplify this point a bit, I think some people claim that the poppy now symbolises “the army is good” or maybe “the army does good things”. This is a bit of a sticky one and I’m not sure I have appropriate context having grown up at the time I did. We certainly live in a culture where one of the greatest imaginable taboos is to badmouth the troops. We can criticise the politicians as much as we like, we can criticise wars, we can possibly criticise military leadership (though I imagine most, like me, consider ourselves so inexpert as to be incapable of doing so), but we cannot criticise the women and men who make up the armed forces themselves. I don’t personally have any criticism to level at those people, and as mentioned above I think we have good reason to be supportive of them, but the strength of this taboo is noticeable, and a little bit frightening. I think that, say, going online and calling British soldiers a bunch of murder-loving bastards would be a dick-move. But even tangentially poking at this issue in the spirit of inquiry I feel a bit concerned at the ramifications should I transgress the taboo. I’m not sure if the taboo is justified or not, my point is that it is strong.

Is this a new phenomenon? I’ve seen some stuff written online that suggests it is, though I’m sure that support-for-the-troops feeling spikes in times of active war (eg the 1910s, the 1940s and the 2000s). I think the connection some people are making is that people in power are harnessing this grass-roots emotional force in service of their political aims, that is turning support-the-troops into support-the-army and support-the-nation and support-us-your-leaders. I don’t know if this is true or not. To dispute it we could point to the British Legion’s statement and say “no, it means that”. But that’s not good enough, you can’t legislate for meaning. Stuff means what we take it to mean, not what somebody abstractly states that it means. It is certainly possible that the meaning has gone through the alleged change. There is a social pressure to be seen to be in alignment with the group on this issue that is a bit disconcerting and has echoes of nationalism and popular fervour, the same kind of nationalist fervour that was used to cajole young men in to signing up to die horrible deaths in the world wars.

I’m not sure I know what I think about this further argument. I’ve said that stuff means what we take it to mean. When I see a poppy I think about the First World War. My association may be based on a misunderstanding of the poppy appeal’s intended aims, but that is what those poppies mean to me. But meaning is not personal either. If the poppies mean something else to a significant number of people, if they symbolise blanket support of British military actions, if they actively inculcate such unthinking support among the populace then I don’t want to join in.

I dunno. I think on balance that I’ve talked myself out of wearing one, but I’m not sure I buy the argument that poppies have been co-opted to mean general jingoism and support of the army either. They don’t mean that to me, and I simply don’t know what they mean to others. I’ve heard that you can get white peace poppies. If I’d seen anyone selling those I’d probably get one but I’ve never seen em in the wild. Maybe you can get em online? Hold on let me do some quick googling…

Hold music….

Well, according to the Peace Pledge Union’s endearingly crappy website you can get em mail order, but due to an overwhelming demand they cannot guarantee delivery by Remembrance Day. Their facebook page says they’ve never sold so many and they’re totally snowed under and there’s now way they can get new orders in time for the 11^th. Which is good, I suppose? Man I knew this was a hot button issue. Ah well, we’ll get em next year Raf.

This Is The End Now

I’m curious what the poppy means to people. What does it mean to you?

I’m bummed I’m too late to get a white one too. Does anyone know anywhere you can get em?

Alright that’s it, next week maybe I’ll do the army thing.