Ethicon

I walk around Morecambe a lot. It's sort of an occupational hazard of living in Morecambe... Anyway, I was passing the William Hill betting shop on Regent Road one day [the one opposite the cobblers with the amusingly damaged sign] when I saw their 'responsible gambling campaign' unfurled in incredibly ostentatious fashion. In the front window there were about five posters, all the same, trying to warn against gambling beyond one's limits.

Sounds like a benevolent company, right? Sounds like they're putting the customers' health and general lives ahead of profit, right? I'm not so sure... Even a cursory look at the 'flags' of this campaign reveal a disingenuousness that I find distasteful. I think it represents a level of deviousness akin to the politician who kisses a baby one minute, only to close down the country's neo-natal wards next week.

You're probably asking what I'm going on about by now. Take a good look at the image above, then read on.

I think the yellow and black colouring is eye-catching, which would be a good thing if the rest of the poster was adequate, because then it would be drawing attention to the issue of over-gambling itself. I think the colour scheme resembles motoring warnings, in particular the ones with black arrows on a yellow background that signal where the bend in the road is. The problem with this, in the context of posters being placed in a window, is that attention is drawn towards the shop itself. It could very easily encourage people to go inside the shop and gamble, whereas if the posters were on the inside, then the people who they're supposed to target would feel the benefit of them more.

Now for my pearls of typographical relativism. What's the biggest word in the line? 'Fun', right? That's strange... surely a conscientious campaign, one that more concerned with health over profits, would emphasise the 'STOP' part of the message more. Think I'm being picky? How's about the fact that 'Fun' is also in a stylised font reminiscent of the bright, billion-bulbed signage of Las Vegas? The way they've chosen to represent the word invokes the reckless hedonism and glamour of one of the world's most popular, exotic [however cheesy...] and aggressively over-advertised parts of the world for gambling. I mean, you can't even spell 'gambling' without 'bling'... In comparison, the other words are dull and do not draw the eye as much. Essentially, the message says 'FUN IS KING/QUEEN, and... something about stopping something or whatever'. If you have an addiction, it's contentious whether any well-designed poster would help, but it's certainly clear that a better one may help. The ones they've got now just seems intent on plastering on the veneer of respectability, whilst actually, on an insidious level, enouraging more gambling.

For the record, I think there are a great many good intentions behind the tightening of gambling regulations. The Senet Group has introduced a few restrictions on advertisements and the 'Bad Betty' TV 'verts, as well as the aforementioned campaign. However, the group, described as 'independent', was set up by William Hill, Paddy Power, Coral and Ladbrokes. They're hiding this fact, by the way, but I don't quite get how the police can be independent when set up by criminals. I'm not saying the criminals are running the police, but... Well, I'll leave that sentence hanging.

Imagine the scene when even a well-meaning organisation brings in a new plan to encourage responsible gaming, at the potential cost of profit... Is it unreasonable to suggest that all the well-seasoned marketeers would use there expertise to 'tweak' those suggestions, turn the message, via subtle means, into one of 'fun' gaming, giving the company in question as much profit as they can hypnotise out of the public? I think not.

This post became too much about a wider picture of gambling, whereas I had originally intended only to focus on the typographical relativism of the advert. But there you go. It spiralled out of control; if only there was someone out there who cared enough to stop it...

If you think you may have a problem with gambling, please visit Gamble Aware - http://www.gambleaware.co.uk/

Has Health and Safety Ruined Reality TV?

I’ve been watching this new series on Channel 4, The Island With Bear Grylls, involving x amount of blokes being dropped on y island and left to fend for themselves. They’re from a range of backgrounds, apart from female, and they deigned to include one typical hilariously fuddy-duddy old dude and one cool, upbeat black guy. Speaking of deigning, Bear Grylls appears from time to time, giving us such epiphanic tidbits as ‘when you’re starving you think about food’ et cetera… Anyhoo, you can read a more concise summary on the C4 site, i’m here for other things. Namely, health and safety things.

            In this first episode the guys had to look for shelter and water. The main focus over the forty-seven-and-a-bit minutes (billed as sixty-five) was the water. It’s the thing that’ll kill you quickest in the bodily-deprivation race, after all (apart from air, or Jack Daniel’s). They had a bit of fresh water with them, to lull you into a false sense of security, but guess what? IT STARTED RUNNING OUT AS THEY STARTED DRINKING IT! So naturally, the drama was high.

            Think about it though - how could a programme like this be commissioned in today’s ‘life-loving’ age if there was a genuine chance of death?

            Thankfully the Grylls voiceover told us exactly how many hours’ drinking water was left, helping to ramp up the tension. Other scare devices included a ‘piss-colour scale’, which ranged from tanning salon run-offs to Guinness, going down the spectrum of dehydratory terror. A little bit was made of the effect dehydration has on the brain, but mainly they were interested in the colour of the men’s urine and what would happen if they failed to get a fire to boil and purify their stagnant water. Of course, every attempt at starting a (controlled) fire was accompanied by two or three comments featuring the phrases ‘last chance’, ‘we need to’ and, my personal favourite, ‘fuckin’ ‘ell’.

            I was still not convinced of the impending doom, though. Could these fellas’ issue actually become black as the ace of spades, and could they keel over through lack of orally induced moisture (steady now)? On the point of getting a fire started, which was key to their safe water production, Mr Grylls himself said, “If they fail to get a fire lit today, they will have no choice, they will have to leave the island.” Hmm, that’s a bit of a let-down, they have to leave the island? Is that it? How about one of the men, surely since they’re in mortal peril they’ll have a better soundbite? Well, here’s the ‘green cap-man’, “Getting this fire going is just crucial, and if it doesn’t happen today, then I think we’re really going to start getting into trouble. I am concerned now, I am concerned, erm, I really think we need to pull our finger out.”

            Wow. Edge of the seat stuff.

            The problem is that dehydration is a real slow-motion crisis, devoid of much intensity when filming. The attempts to ramp up the pressure by repeating the threat didn’t work. There’s an attempt at tension, sure. The word ‘survival’, occasionally trotted out, suggests immediate mortal peril, but really there must be a standby team with bottles of water for dehydration scenarios… They’re not gonna let people die for our amusement on reality TV. I mean, this isn’t the seventies anymore, people actually scrutinize telly personalities now.

            Also on the ‘menu’ was a dude emerging from a frolic in the sea with a cut on his foot (apologies for the rhyme there). The drama came from the fact that he may have been attacked by a stonefish, heralded by Grylls as, “the most poisonous fish in the world.” But again, a lot is known about the stonefish (or synaceia verrucosa, don’t you know) and its pathology, so are we fooled? Since October 1^st 2013, there have been no reported deaths in all Australia. An antivenom exists and the health and safety team will know exactly where to get their hands on it, if they haven't got a stockpile already. So what.

Once the director had footage of ‘IT man’ hobbling back to camp, blooding dripping (slowly) from his foot, medics would’ve been on to assess him IF they thought he was maybe possibly in any danger. Of course, the footage (no pun intended) of the check-up would not make the final cut because it would interrupt the ‘narrative’ we are being sold. We forget (or not, in my case) that they’re filming basically the whole day, and all these hours (spanning more than a day) need to be cut down to a programme’s length. It’s highly selective, to say the least.

So can we really feel jeopardy anymore? I certainly can’t. Don’t get me wrong, there were times i felt quite involved with these makeshift heroes, and as dehydration threatened them, and tension rose around the sacred fire, i started to feel anxious about the acceleration of their peril. While there are so many cameras and so much evidence of ‘production’ (titles, voiceovers, superimposition etc), you know that you’re in ‘civilization’. There’s no actual danger. The jeopardy is just not there anymore, no matter how often the programme makers insist it is.

            *Sigh* then you’ve got the adverts. But i’m not going to go on about that. I get tons of comments from Blogtastic readers, “Martin, do another rant about the adverts!” But i won’t... Think of all the people that don’t want to hear about how the tension was demolished by frequent breaks. And i know people certainly won’t want to hear about how the extra fifteen minutes you could’ve had without adverts would’ve allowed you to focus on other visceral and emotional elements, rather than simply urine and other more facile tactics, that would’ve conveyed a sense of danger and human struggle much more deeply and efficiently. No one wants that. C4 doesn’t want it, clearly. They’re doing fine on their own.

            Good luck to ‘em. And good luck to you guys - you enjoy your telly.

            Peace and love x

What is This?

It's been common knowledge for a long time that TV is no longer the monarchy we once suspected.  When I talk about TV I talk about things that are being originally broadcast on that fucking luminescent block in your house. Not on your latptop or nothing, though it'll be available there later, no doubt. I'm talking about the 'experience' you have when you turn on your telly and flick through the channels...

What's on in the background for me right now is 'The Big Reunion' (ITV2), where bands who were too shit for the nineties have been resurrected for idiots who, in the modern world, are so entertainment-starved that they think nineties' zombies are better than anything produced nowadays. If 'zombies' actually meant 'people brought back to life from the dead' they may be right but... oh fuck it, as if you care. Put the pieces together, go on! Or find another blog... Go on...

But then, why waste time pulling apart this utterly predicatable foray into 'I'm not confident, but I'll try my best. Also, I'll try my best to seem like I like you, though I hate your guts because you're shit and I want to win' show? Any writer with more skill than I could reduce that to a much more bite-size criticism, but I'm poor. I had something I'd rather publish, but it involves a nasty character who shouldn't be named and anyway this is annoying me more at the minute...

Let's move on to the rest of the bollocks here:

At this time of night, I want someone. Just a little chat, really - a sustained conversation - or somethng like. But there's none of that anymore. I found it, maybe, when MSN messenger was about, but since then it's gone further downhill (apparently that was possible...). I turn on the telly and there is FUCK ALL to hold my attention. I could watch the news, which is as futile as voting, watch 'reality TV' which is as futile as trying to live happily, or I could even watch a film, which will not only be over half-way through but also punctuated by nob-heads in annoying adverts.

So there's basically nothing. Nothing to sustain me. But yet it's all you want to hear about. Nothing new is apparently worthy, so I should just talk about shit to do with shit that's already shit. That's what you want, yeah. Well, I'll indulge you this once, but next time you have to pay...

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NEW FROM GLADNEY INDUSTRIES!

Introducing: 'facebosom'. I'm, er, not really sure what it is to be honest. I'm being told it's like a new social network site, sort of similar to facetome and visagebook. I've never even heard of them...

I mean, don't we have a diagram to explain it or anything? Oh, I'm being told there is a picture, but we can't show it to you. It's not rude or anything, it's just that it's for the makers of facebosom.

Is this actually a real thing? It's not a joke is it? I'm being told it is real... It's a real joke based on the pretense of a real lie. Sounds real enough.

Anyway, the point is it's gonna shake things up in a real big way. You won't know what hit you! Up'll be down, down'll be right etc etc.

So, er, folks... That's that. That's what facebosom is.

Who knows?

The 'Travis Bickle'

If you ain't familiar with the 'wink and sink', it is a move popularized in WKD's televisual advertisement campaign. To complete a 'wink and sink' you need to be playing pool with someone. When you have a shot lined up and want to humiliate/banterize your opponent, you look them in the eye, take the shot and - providing you pot the intended ball and don't foul - you're awesome.

I just did the 'Travis Bickle'. It's where you're having a piss and you line up your shot before looking in a nearby mirror and doing shooting pistol movements at yourself with your free hand in said silver-nitrated pane. Obviously missing the bowl here would render the 'Travis Bickle' a fail, but I didn't fail, and it felt good.

The thing that didn't feel good was age/wisdom. Hardly any of my friends have watched Martin Scorsese's 1976 classic Taxi Driver, and probably not many of my readers have. I'm old, bitter and fed up that most of you probably watch and love 'Glee' more than you do decent stuff...

:-( Boohoo moan moan!

Peace out guys xxx

For the Love of Film!

Good gravy, adverts really piss me off. I mean, apart from being fed the same ones every single break (Heinz tomato ketchup and its excrutiating ditty, EDF Energy's 'Powering the 2012 Olymipcs' advert and Virgin Media's 'laptop use on the toilet' show being some of the most recent and annoying examples), the fact they keep interrupting the flow of what you're trying to watch. Adverts and televisions go hand in hand, they have done since the technology was invented, and as such things written for TV (like soap operas) do not suffer so much. In the few minutes between the first and second half of 'Spaced', for example, you don't think 'Oh bugger I've forgotten what they were on about! Who's he and what's he doing with those paint balls?' Films, however, are a completely different kettle of fish.

Films are written for the 'big' or 'silver' screen, a magical place where adverts and trailers are played before the main event and then there are two hours of complete, unadulterated celluloid awesomeness, aside from people throwing popcorn at you or spit roasting a pig on the back row. I mean, writers of these things have slaved away for frig knows how long crafting this cinematic experience for you with the idea that it will be shown to you as it is in their mind. But then it comes on TV. I wonder if Heywood Gould ever thought, 'What this dramatic scene, showing the characters' conflicting desires, needs is an advert. Yeah, preferably one that the audience has seen a ton of times, so they get really angry and pissed off. Then they won't be thinking about my work, yeah that'll be an improvement!'

I was watching Roger Donaldson's Cocktail (screenplay by Heywood Gould if you wondered where that name came from) t'other night for a few minutes. I say a few minutes because I'd missed the start, but really wanted to give it a go. I love Elisabeth Shue's work so why not give the film a go? I'll tell you why: just as I got into the swing of it, knew the characters a bit and really got interested in where the film was going IT WAS INTERRUPTED BY A BLOODY AD BREAK. I switched over immediately... There's enough competition for ratings out there making it hard to keep a viewer's interest without being put off by repetitive crap about products I really don't give a shit about at this moment in time.

It was like I was making love - dead romantic like - with rose petals, silky sheets and candles. I was completely lost in the act - transcendental joy - when Gordon Brown popped into the room screaming and hit me about the head with a cold, wet whale. It put me off a bit. I'd rather have a trolley load of nitro-glycerin forced up my bum and go for a trampoline sesh than watch these soul-destroying ads again, hence why I changed channel.

Seriously, respect the bloody film! Here's a list of suggestions (bearing in mind having no ad breaks at all wouldn't be financially viable and then there'd be no film whatsoever); have less ad breaks (obvious); have them at well-thought out points (for example, at the two points between the status quo and the confrontation and between the confrontation and resolution) so that the audience can reflect on an act, rather than just when there's a quiet bit; vary the adverts so they aren't like a hammer blow to the back of the head every time (although that should happen all the time). That's about it I think...

Bye bye!