The Crying Game – are the tears over Christmas adverts starting to dry up?
T’is the time for the faintly wearisome omission of aitches. It’s also very much the time for those of us not living alone in a big tree to join the annual kerfuffle over Christmas adverts.
It’s a phenomena that seems to have drifted unseen into the national psyche – no one being quite sure when the act of selling transcended advertising and strode, with no small sense of entitlement, into the realm of popular culture.
Right now, we find ourselves in the eye of the storm – trapped in an icy void while lonely old men and unintentionally malevolent cats swirl around us, clawing at our hearts and overdrafts.
Adverts, those artificial annoyances that we gleefully zoom through for 10.5 months of the year, are now routinely sought-out, shared and ferociously debated. Proffer your personal views on the John Lewis advert in particular and you could be greeted with anything from open sobbing to an eye-roll so vigorous you may well be brushing bits of retina off your lapels for days afterwards.
This year, it could be argued, has been the most openly factional in recent memory. In the halcyon days of ‘Monty The Penguin’ the rare expressions of dissent were swiftly suppressed, with loyalist mobs belly-sliding through the streets, battering these thought criminals into submission with a frozen pollock.
Nowadays, the criteria for becoming a national advertising treasure is a little more diverse. Dip your toe timidly into the molten pit of fury that is Twitter and you’ll soon discover people have, what we will politely call, ‘concerns’ about the new John Lewis ad. From sniggering about the prudence of gifting a strange old man a telescope and access to a young girl’s window, to a half-remembered concern about who this space phantom might really be. ‘Hang on,’ cried the wags ‘doesn’t Hitler live on the moon?’
Another thought that has developed across social (and actual) conversations is that John Lewis may well be trying a little too openly to twist our tear ducts. A brand that revolutionised the retail expression of Christmas with a delicate strum of our heartstrings has now, some might say, taken to thrashing them like a medieval lute.
For the first time, perhaps, the seams of the formula are poking through. What we had always recognised as an authentic expression of love through gifting suddenly seems, to some at least, a more calculated, almost Pavlovian, inducement to weep. That’s not in any way to say the cause behind the creative (Age UK) is any less poignant, just that this particular pony may well be struggling for supplementary tricks.
What doesn’t help John Lewis – but undoubtedly stimulates the broader conversation – are the brands that have deliberately rejected a model of ‘Tears Mean Tills’. One of the most charming, imaginative and genuinely funny spots of the season so far has been watching Jeff Goldblum coach underwhelmed gift recipients on the art of fake gratitude for Currys PC World.
It is, as ever, a matter of opinion and taste – you, dear reader, may actually never have forgiven Goldblum for exposing quite so much nipple in ‘Jurassic Park’. But, if there is such a thing as a meaningful response to Christmas TV adverts, it’s perhaps revealing that there seems to be more than the usual number of dry eyes in the house.