rants
Warning! These pages are likely to contain language which may offend minors, elders, middle-agers, middle-Englanders, persons of a nervous disposition, persons of a normal disposition, members of the Conservative Party, happy people, smug couples in restaurants, anyone involved in the fashion industry, store detectives, Jonathan King, people who keep eating things on trains, the entire cast of Friends.......
Basically, I can't help spouting off about anything and everything that gets on my nerves, and yes I am bitter and twisted. Perhaps one day I'll settle down in a nice little mock-Tudor semi, having returned from my job at an insurance company to greet my happy housewife and perfectly formed children, and I'll put my Lighthouse Family CD on and everything will be twee, but until then.......
Why must we put up with these continual lies? Yet again an advert has appeared on British television - and this time it's Audi who are the culprits - which tries to convince us of the opposite of what they are actually advertising. Virtually every car ad these days seems to assume the colour silver as a prerequisite of the featured model. This is tosh! Silver is boring, bland, dull, for boring people in a boring world. As you've probably guessed from looking around this site, I like colours, they mean a lot to me. They brighten my day, and only the most vivid shades will do. Silver cars are fine when produced in equal quantities with any other colour, but these days they are thrown at us as if to imply we're being treated to vehicles made of jewels. And people actually believe it, they think that driving around in a city dominated by grey glass and concrete office blocks in silver cars is the way of the future. Well it might have been when Buck Rogers was on the TV but I think it's a frightening vision of things to come if we can't have a bit of fun and colour in our lives.
Right enough about silver, I've spouted off about that before, why does this advert really piss me off? Well it's the association with colour that really nags me - this car is seen driving around in a pool of water, which sprays to the sides and forms mirages of psychedelic colours in all directions, accompanied by the soundtrack of Jimi Hendrix. How dare they! Hendrix was a god, an inspired talented individual who created great colourful visions in his genial lyrics and performances; the Audi on the other hand is a heap of mass-produced metal with as much character as a cardboard box. The implication is that under the surface, this car is a vibrant symbol of hedonistic energy bursting behind a deceptive exterior. Well the advert certainly is deceptive, because what you're really seeing is an unremarkable piece of corporate tripe masked by the cheap sabotage of a music legend's persona.
If they are going to unleash this blatant misrepresentation upon millions of citizens, then I am going to unleash my own interpretation to you visitors in return, it's the least I can do. If they really want to convince us that their new car is the height of hippie chic, they should at least have the vision and guts to design something a little more characteristic and groundbreaking. In the annals of time, the Audi will be long forgotten amongst a glut of meaningless vehicles that made up the numbers; the Renault 4, on the contrary, will be a hero admired and adored for generations, remembered because it made a difference (a bit like Jimi Hendrix).
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