The Finite Ad’ Monkeys

Mental paralysis looms

An infinite number of monkeys, with an infinite number of typewriters & time sit in the frame of the cartoon. The monkeys comically produce the complete works of Shakespeare or is it Harry Potter? Whichever, the old maxim, that I only superficially understand anyhow, is stuck with blue-tack to the side of my monitor. I quickly realise that the blue tack is white. Does that make it white tack? I don’t know and of course there aren’t actually an infinite amount of monkeys or type writers.  I count about one hundred of each.

What’s my point?

I don’t have one. I’m bored.

Mental paralysis looms. Adverts. On every channel.

For years now channels have collaborated, perhaps in smoke-filled rooms, to coincide their advertising schedules. We cannot avoid them. Even if we use the time for a break the images and words seep through, floating about your home, toward your toilet. The advertisement tries to edge you off the seat, making room so it too can take a dump alongside you. Of course there isn’t room and so instead the ad’ takes a great big dump in your subconscious, screaming at you with a mix of slick and frenzy. The smell it leaves strangely communicates buy, buy, BUY ME.

I get back from my big poo and there are still bloody adverts playing. Hmm, no, perhaps not still, but instead a fresh-set. I’ve missed the ending of the programme I was watching. Damn bowel movements. Anyway, this advert is selling something called Berocca. The pack is orange and fizzes. I think they are vitamin supplements. I don’t know, and this isn’t product placement. My first overwhelming thought is that I hate this advert. It shows a suited gent, woman in sporting attire and two other citizens spontaneously burst into a dance routine upon treadmills; treadmills which have, inexplicably, been left in the middle of a pavement.

In and of itself that’s okay. I’ve nothing against people spontaneously bursting into dance on ill-placed gym equipment, but what I loathe is not knowing. Yes, it’s the not knowing that I can’t stand. I have no way of telling from this tedious visual display whether this is a naked affront on the OK Go original music video Here It Goes Again or whether the band from Chicago, Illinois have intentionally collaborated with the drug company of Berocca and sold their creative talent for some synergised nutrient fizz.

Whichever it is the idea of ad’ monkeys taking ideas from artists to sell pills, well it irks me. I don’t like original art being used to sell, sell and sell. Especially when the product has nothing to do with the song/singer/band. It reminds me of the incredible vocal talents of artists like Nina Simone and Elvis whose music has been whored out to sell Muller yoghurt and Nike football boots respectively. Eff off you ad’ monkeys who flagrantly use dead artists’ work to sell their consumer tat!

Of course there’s an important distinction here. At least OK Go are still alive and kicking on their own respective treadmills. They can enforce copyright or make a choice to sell their credibility, or not, and who am I to judge?  But Elvis and Nina, well it’s hard to imagine that being synonymous with yoghurt or soccer boots, as Elvis would have called them, is what either great talent had in mind when they sung their hearts out.

Leave the dead alone.

Another advert.

“Go compare… GO COMPARE.” Oh toss off. I don’t know, but I imagine a ridiculous amount of drivel has already been written about this growing series of adverts. I won’t bore you with too much more, but the particular one I’m now watching is the restaurant scene.

“Any other tips?” the man eating asks.

“Don’t hava la fish.”

A lobster then speaks. Now I hate to be a pedant (not true), but a lobster in my mind is a crustacean and not a fish, therefore rendering the tip redundant, and before anyone leaves a comment… I don’t care what the Entente Cordiale between Britain and France says about the status of a lobster as a fish. I don’t agree.

Next advert.

“The eight second demo… Internet Explorer 8… Browse with confidence”. I watch some middle-aged guy who wants to hide his Internet history. The premise; he needs to disguise the fact he’s been diamond ring shopping; hmm. Now it could just be me, but diamond ring shopping isn’t what I suspect most men and women will be hiding from their partners. Here is advice for men, and women alike, to help conceal their extra-marital-affairs, or specialised browsing habits. Genius? Possibly, but of course morally wrong…  ahem…  morally wrong.

Mercedes Benz.

A Voiceover: Josh Brolin (No Country for Old Men).

“Presence is a curious thing.
If you need to prove you’ve got it, you probably never had it in the first place.
It’s not about ostentatious adolescent display.
It should be something effortless.
Somebody once said, “The whisper is louder than the shout”.
Well Amen to that.”

Ostentatious displays?  I struggle with this advertisement and the lack of irony present within.  From the off there are moody atmospheric sound effects, mirrored reflections, and at one point Brolin stands in the pouring rain: why? Find shelter man. What is mature about standing in rain? The fact is the ad’ monkeys have hired a Hollywood actor to do a voice-over, a soft spoken almost poetic voice-over to sell a car that is racing through a night time desert-scape chased by two large dogs. No, nothing ostentatious in that then.

“Ostentatious: characterized by or given to pretentious or conspicuous show in an attempt to impress others: an ostentatious dresser.”

Anyway if the whisper is truly louder than the shout why bother with the dogs, stylised camera work and the actor at all? If you have faith in the sentiment, in the anti-adolescent maturity and quality of the Mercedes then just have it on a plinth and show the price tag. Ronseal stylee. No need for pretentions, full stop. It’s a car. It’s not a philosophy or way of life.

“You’re not the clothes you wear.”

The Merc’ is a stylish, sexy, box on wheels which most of us plebs and geeks watching at home cannot afford anyway. Go look moody and rugged somewhere else and whisper to a horse or large dog, not to me.

I feel an inner rage. Perhaps an adolescent and ostentatious anger within me.

I must document this fury. I must hone, harness and tame it – become mature. I’m soon fisting at my keyboard like a monkey though. In fact a little like one of the great apes (yes, an ape is not a monkey) in Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece 2001 Space Odyssey. I’m learning how to use tools for the first time to express my primal frustration. I punch away at the keyboard and I wonder how many ad’ monkeys it takes to create these adverts, how many typewriters and how much time they have?

I finally see a cow on a motor-cycle jumping over a fence whilst the sound track to The Great Escape plays. It’s slightly at conflict with my possibly pious attitude over combining music to sell product, but hey, I never said I’m consistent. I see the cow avoid the farmers with pitch forks and I think it’s not all bad. Some of those ad’ monkeys do create a sonnet.