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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....
This section is essentially where I get to spout off whatever random thoughts pass through my mind, much of which takes a bitter and twisted slant. Perhaps, one day, I'll settle down in a nice mock-Tudor semi, return from work at an insurance company to greet my happy housewife and perfectly formed children, and I'll put a Lighthouse Family album on and everything will be twee, but until then....
Renault Clio R.S. - "Traffic Lights"
It's time for another embittered backstab at the company I live my motoring life by, the prompt this time being a bothering combination of traditional TV and modern mixed media advertising that I was unable to ignore. It would seem that Renault have been developing a theme in their recent ads by employing the same unfortunate actors, rather like they did with the classic Nicole and Papa episodes of many years ago, but this time around I haven't been paying much attention, so perhaps with that prior insight embedded in my brain I would now find myself charmed by the latest instalment in this contemporary saga. Although I doubt it.
I was first alerted to the French version of this ad whilst sitting at home in France in April 2011 watching the telly. The clip begins with the somewhat-scruffy-but-only-to-a-level-still-acceptable-for-middle-agers-and-women lead male character approaching some traffic lights in his Clio and pulling up alongside another driver, whilst getting orgasmically excited singing the lyrics from the track 'Zombie' by The Cranberries. The mature driver of the other car looks across disdainfully and the young prattish guy refrains from extending his subsequent panting noises.
Cut to young Clio man later pulling up in the driveway of a middle class home where his female partner comes out to greet him, followed straight away by her parents in a manner which suggests they'd been curtain twitching to be aware of his arrival. The girl's father turns out to be, surprise surprise, none other than the same staid man driving the adjacent car earlier on. He comes to enthusiastically greet his daughter's new bit of rough before the realisation sinks in as he begins speaking:
"Tom .... au moins .... vous avez une très belle .... voiture"
"Et vous, vous avez une très belle .... fille"
(hilarity ensues)
Alternative, culturally honed versions exist according to what base level of intelligence Renault's marketeers perceive different nations' audiences to represent, and hence how blatant and spoon-fed the 'joke' needs to be in order to be appreciated. A version in English, presumably for the North American market considering the accents, extends the in-car excitable actions of the rogue son-in-law-to-be - now renamed Tim, mysteriously - to his direct taunting of the respectable father-in-law-to-be over the subsequent lyrics 'in your head, in your head', after which the translated dialog back at the family home is more protracted:
"Well, Tim .... at least you have a nice car"
"And you sir, at least you have a nice .... daughter"
Cue extended curious raised eyebrows from the father to allow this particular assumed ultra-thickie crowd to digest the potential awkwardness of the situation. At no point does American dad ask why the car has a French number plate.
In the Turkish version, Tom has become not Tim but Jim, and I dare say that elsewhere on Planet Earth he exists in any number of other three-letter-ending-in-M guises. According to popular Korean boys' names, he is probably known there as Bum.
It seems Renault may have chosen to tread the precarious yet popular and often proven path of making adverts that are so terrible, their negative viral quality on the Internet assures them a place in the offices and bedrooms of bored web surfers the world over. Think the Halifax 'ISA ISA Baby' commercials of 2010 - the bank I have until now been too intimidated to admit in public is the one I am sorry enough to still do business with in the UK. Indeed, Renault missed a trick when they stopped short of hiring Rebecca Black and chums arriving in a convertible Clio driven by a thirteen-year-old on the way to a night out at a private club. They could nonetheless have allowed Tom-Tim-Jim's partner's parents to dither at the offer of a ride whilst pronouncing 'Which seats can we taaaaaaake?' since I don't think that modified phrase has yet been trademarked.
Yes, Mesdames et Messieurs Renault, you have marvelled us with your revolutionary and genial automobile designs over the previous several decades, but if this is the kind of publicity you now wish to pump down our throats then you have lost me, and I respectfully ask you to undergo procedures at the local taxidermist.
Unlike most other advertising content on the net, this particular commercial is currently immune to zapping efforts with Firefox's AdBlock add-on, and aside from its general sensory irritation it causes the CPU on my ageing laptop to exert itself in an ill-advised fashion like an eldery male visitor to an Amsterdam brothel, and the fan to spin into overdrive, just like all other Adobe Flash content around the Internet, i.e. everything on the web that is annoying and shit.
However, whilst this Internet version is intrusive, it was the experience of watching it on television that first turned me off, for one good reason. During recent months I have had the misfortune of sharing a flat with one of the most unlikeable, miserable, retarded, vindictive, odious, cretinous and all-round nasty little gitfaces ever to set foot in France. This thing has done everything possible to ruin my life, from spiking my food to peeing in the sink, leaving everything in a disgusting mess and possessing a stench so strong that it permeates through the wall from his den of despair into my own bedroom, all of which he refuses to accept or be responsible about when I have raised these matters. This 21-year-old jumped-up Californian loser has decided instead to behave like a fourteen-year-old throwing a tantrum in front of his parents, and whilst I whistle around the flat trying to keep everything in check like the fairy godmother, I am unable to even take action due to the very particular situation regarding the contracts, the other nonsensical Maoist flatmate and the deranged landlady with whom I enjoy tense relations.
I realised all too late that I could have continued my book-writing hobby upon first settling in France, what with all the misadventures I have experienced along the way, though that Englishman-in-France genre has been done to death already. Had I done so, a chapter alone wouldn't be enough to explain this co-resident snivelling box of shit, and I'd have needed to start a whole new second volume. Suffice to say that at times I can envisage no greater satisfaction than if I were to watch this moron having his head drilled vigorously until its components are scattered across the floor like a Georges Seurat-inspired brawn mosaic.
And so it was that as I sat in front of the television at a safe distance from the foul odour emanating from this peasant one morning, following his late drunken return from a long night out, boots up on the sofa and can of super-strength lager in his hand, this latest Renault commercial made its second appearance of the day. On the first playing prior to the pleb's arrival, I had already cringed at the advert's lameness, but as he sat there during the repeat broadcast, something disturbing occurred. The young Clio driver delivered his closing 'très belle fille' line, and what did my flatmate do next....?
HE LAUGHED! Gitboy smirked and raised a titter. He thought that was dead funny. So now we know the level of personality and wit that Renault have appealed to here. If ever I had reason to distance myself from this brand....
Alas, one English-language version on YouTube has not only drawn over 300,000 hits from poor unsuspecting souls, but has to date garnered over 500 'likes' and only 9 'dislikes', so perhaps I really am on my own in this new world of easily-charmed cyber-telly gazers. If I were to abandon my writings here and instead sum up my feelings in the style of a typical YouTube commentary, it would have to read: OMG EPIC FAIL!
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