Mad Men, Ambiguity and Transgression

The happy couple

I’ve been thinking a lot about a scene from the second season of Mad Men. It’s not a particularly dramatic, disturbing or funny scene; it doesn’t move the plot forward; yet it is unsettling in its own way. And it demonstrates why Mad Men is such thought provoking television.

It happens in episode 7 of the series. Don and Betty Draper are having a picnic, talking as the kids play. It’s an idyllic scene. Sunshine, pristine countryside and they’ve obviously enjoyed a good spread food-wise. Then, when it’s time to leave, they call the kids, simply shake all their rubbish from the picnic blanket onto the verdant grass and drive off in Don’s shiny new car.

The reason it sticks in the mind is primarily, I think, because there’s something massively transgressive about the Drapers’ wanton littering. It’s shocking to see someone on television doing this, more so than a brutal murder or infidelity.

That’s interesting in itself.

You’re also left pondering whether this is another wry observation on 60s mores (maybe people did give less of a shit about their environment then), whether there’s an ecological subtext (the first disposable nappies are introduced in this episode, as is Don’s new gas-guzzler) or whether it’s meant to make you feel that the Drapers are shits. Perhaps all three.

So, ultimately, it’s the ambiguity of this (literally) throwaway scene that makes you think.

TV Mania Continues

Still on the subject of tellies, I guess yesterday’s tale of screen-lust illustrates that, even while food and fuel prices are going through the roof, electronics still seem to be getting cheaper. I may starve to death, cold and shivering, but at least I’ll be able to buy the latest iPod or HDTV. Well, that’s the priorities in my life sorted out! Phew!

(Until high oil prices mean that the plastics and transportation involved mean that electronics become more expensive too, of course, but let's not venture there...)

The whole need to buy new stuff to replace old stuff that’s actually OK is definitely the latest manifestation of capitalism’s need to keep the economy continually expanding. My mum’s old telly lasted for 20 years, whereas I bought a new one after 3. Not because the old one broke down, but because the old one just wasn’t hot enough dammit!

Anyway, the old one is up on eBay now. I paid £700 for it – I reckon I’ll be lucky to get £200 back…

Demented Weekend of TV Psychosis: Blog Therapy Begins after Retail Therapy Goes Wrong

I’ve been forced to take a long hard look at behaviour I’m doomed to repeat over the Bank Holiday weekend. I’m no psychoanalyst, but I can tell that my consumer urges are particularly demented. Am I typical or is my shopping psychopathology commonplace? This is the question I repeatedly ask myself.

This long weekend’s madness started with GTA4. We have a perfectly serviceable 26 inch (funny how tellies have remained Imperial) HD TV, but I was having to get up close to it to see the game properly. This pops a little thought into my head: “Need a bigger telly”. Once it got in there, the usual pattern of behaviour begins. It starts with the online ‘research’ and idle searches on Amazon and Play.com. This goes on for a couple of weeks.

OK, fast forward to the wet miserable Bank Holiday; 3 kids running wild around the house. Nothing to do in Welwyn Garden City except look around the shops. I find myself nosing around the televisions in John Lewis, the Sony Centre and Argos. Set myself an imaginary budget. The desire begins to build. Is it going to be the Sony with its Bravia Engine or LG with 1080 ‘true’ HD input? Do I really understand what a 7000: 1 contrast ratio actually is? Should I spend more at John Lewis for the 5 year warranty? I circle dementedly like a squirrel trying to get at nuts in a bird feeder.

Frankie, my astute 7 year old son, summed up my state of mind when he said that once I’d got the new telly I’d keep buying bigger ones until I had to buy a bigger house to accommodate them. He knows me far too well!

Matters are brewing nicely by the time we all go out to a coffee bar for breakfast yesterday. My wife seems to have accepted that my urge is unstoppable and wisely sanctions the purchase. I opt for the Sony, but the Sony Centre hasn’t got the right model in stock (even though it’s the headline item in their display, with balloons all over it screaming ‘Bank Holiday deal!’) and then the salesman pisses me off by trying to push a more expensive model.

So it’s back to Argos, but Stan is getting fed up with being in his pushchair. Em suggests we head back to the house to release the irate toddler, but my consumer lust is so strong I get shirty with her for cramping my style. Can’t she see I must have a new TV to the demented exclusion of all other considerations?! Unforgivably, I have a subdued tantrum, but head back grumbling anyway, like a big sulky only-boy child…

…only to make another foray to Argos in the afternoon! Following additional online research, I buy the Sony, then Frankie, Mila and I cart it back to the house in a shopping trolley.

I hold the joyful unboxing ceremony in the living room, plug the shiny new TV in and switch it on. Nothing happens. I try plugging it into another socket. Dead. Jesus, after an entire weekend of growing obsessive mania, my chosen television doesn’t fucking work! Not only that, Argos is about to shut and I have to get Mila and Frankie back to my ex-wife in London.

I pack the TV up again in a frenzy and rush back to Argos in a panic. Anxiety is enhanced by the rain starting to pour down when I’m halfway there. I imagine an invalidated warranty due to water damage.

I make it safely to Argos, where a disinterested member of the sales staff limply goes through the returns process. They haven’t got any more Sonys in stock (but I must walk away with a TV NOW!), so I go for the LG (1080 input). Wheel it back, exhausted by anxiety and physical exertion. Thank god, this one works and the picture looks great!

Of course, now I’m getting cognitive dissonance over my choice. I now find that 1080 input doesn’t mean it’s ‘true HD’, so maybe I should have waited for the Sony with 9000: 1 contrast ratio?

That’s the trouble with psychosis – it’s never bloody over!

TV Chef Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall is on Channel 4 in a Ghoulish Chicken Cruelty Experiment and I Hate Him Even More Now

Against my better judgment, I watched Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall abusing chickens and patronising poor people in Hugh’s Chicken Run (Channel 4) this week.

As one could easily guess, Hugh thinks battery-farming chickens is a BAD THING and sets about persuading the hoi-polloi in Axminster, the town near his River Cottage ‘holding’, that they should give up their £2.50 supermarket chickens. Of course, it came across as the Lord of the Manor attempting to be matey with his serfs, but then that’s what we expect from Hugh. You’d think Channel 4 would steer him away from interacting with the public. His dalek-like Old Etonian speech patterns seem even more irritating when they’re directed at ordinary people.

But that’s not the concept on which the show has ghoulishly been focused.

The premise – or gimmick, if we’re honest Channel 4 – is that, because Hugh wasn’t allowed access to any intensive chicken farms, he builds his own to demonstrate just how awful and cruel it is.

Now, you may think this is a bit like Simon Wiesenthal creating his own Auschwitz on his allotment to show us just awful and cruel death camps were. Or Amnesty International torturing Big Brother contestants. Or animal rights activists donning the hunting pinks to pursue a fox. Surely if you’re against cruelty you don’t actively engage in it?

However, all morality and common sense (not to mention a few thousand chickens) are sacrificed on the altar of sensationalist ‘good television’. Now I notice that Jamie Oliver has imported a chicken abattoir into a TV studio for Friday’s crusading 9pm slot.

I have a suggestion for a sequel to this demented nonsense:

‘Hugh and Jamie’s Bargain Bucket’

The two TV chefs are locked naked in a cramped man-sized KFC bucket for a month with only chicken feed to eat and a grille underneath them to shit through. If they survive (obviously Channel 4 will hope that one eats the other, in order to show just how awful and cruel cannibalism is) the people of Axminster can then decide whether to have them executed in a replica of a US-style gas chamber (to show just how awful and cruel capital punishment is) or just stone them to death (to show just how awful and cruel biblical punishments for being a cunt were). Either way, that’s one series finale I’d definitely tune into…

Virgin Media Rant: Lots of Swearing

I'm sitting in the living room with rain lashing down outside and Stan asleep in his pushchair. Emily's away for her sister Lucy's Hen Night and I'm babysitting the boy. As I sit here, I'm looking at my Virgin Media set-top box with loathing (well, glancing at it in between typing, but why ruin the dramatic effect?)

Long-standing readers of my blog will know that I've been consistently pissed off with Virgin Media ever since it stopped being NTL. They've charged me twice for months, made reconnecting after moving house into a gruelling endurance test, repeatedly miscommunicated or simply failed to communicate at all.

The latest bit of corporate cuntery from Branson's operation is taking on-demand services away from me and trying to charge £5 for the honour. Most of the time the services didn't actually work anyway, so it's no great loss. What infuriates me is that I signed up to the TV package on the understanding that on-demand was part of the deal. There was FUCK ALL in the advertising that suggested that it would be taken away. It's so shitting duplicitous.

The worse thing is this: as a customer, THERE IS NOTHING I CAN DO ABOUT IT! Is a rant to a phoneline drone going to make a difference? Is writing a letter going change Virgin Media's ways? Are they bollocks going to. What's left? Go over to Sky? Will they really be better?

There's plenty of marketing theories about the consumer being king these days, but Let's face We are all powerless in the face of these capitalist behemoths.

Virgin Media Problems Vex as Uma Thurman Beguiles

Virgin Media is continuing to infuriate me (see my previous difficulties with the idiots here). They’ve continued to take money from my bank account for my previous contract – alongside the payment for the upgraded contract. So, in other words, I’m paying for my broadband connection twice.

So I just rang up to sort the situation out. Went through endless automated menus. Got fucking cut off before talking to anyone. Twice. It’s utterly maddening. If anything the customer service from the old NTL was better.

On top of that, you need a pin-code in order to access any of the much-advertised on-demand TV services. A pin-code that was never at any point supplied. I haven’t even tried to sort that one out…

Oh, Virgin Media you prettily-painted (the advertising) syphilitic whore (the reality)!

A warning to the unwary new potential customer – don’t be taken in by Uma Thurman and her beguiling promises. It’s all a pack of lies, I tell you.

Virgin Media Proves Good Copy Isn't Good Customer Service

Having discussed copywriters on Friday, I feel the need to talk about the art of copywriting today.

You may have noticed the launch of Virgin Media (the communications equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster, with an array of sub-standard corpses stitched together into a shambling, incoherent hulk) in the press and in those ads featuring Uma Thurman. From a professional standpoint, I was interested to read and listen to the ads as I’ve always admired Virgin’s tone of voice. It’s always admirably human, cheeky and clear.

I happened to be an NTL customer before it was subsumed by Virgin media, so received a lot more literature telling me how well looked after I’d be and how this was a fresh start and so on. Again, lovely copywriting – lots of chutzpah.

Then I moved house and needed to reconnect my broadband and upgraded to get cable telly too. Virgin Media sent a load of information in advance of the reconnection, including essential pin-codes and account numbers. The engineer came on Friday to install it all and arrived when they said he would. Then I came home to make everything work. There were instruction booklets dropped off and, again, the copy had admirable clarity. Goodness me, it looked like connecting my Mac to broadband would be remarkably simple.

Of course it wasn’t. The copy was nicely written, but it was ALL LIES. They’d missed out several crucial steps in the set-up. I had to ring their support line to get the address of a web page on which I needed to register my details to complete the connection process. It would have helped if this crucial piece of information had been available in the instructions. As it was, I spent 30 minutes on my mobile phone trying to get through to an autistic man in an Indian call centre (I hate to think how much that cost me).

All pin numbers and account numbers Virgin had sent me and told me that I’d need to set up broadband? None of them were used – the pin number I actually needed wasn’t in any of the literature – I had to get it off the man on the phone.

OK, so after 2 hours of brain-mangling the broadband was working. I sat down to relax in front of the telly. I then discovered that all the channels I thought I’d signed up for were locked. I rang the support line again. This time it was shut down for the night. Then I tried again this morning. I rang 8 times and was disconnected before I spoke to a human being.

Utterly, utterly infuriating. I’ve just gone from NT-Hell to Virgin Vexation. I have now sworn to buy a ground-to-air rocket launcher from any passing Iraqi insurgent and shoot Richard Branson out of the sky as he begins his next ridiculous round the world balloon trip. As the bearded buffoon spins to his flaming death, I’ll be waving all the great literature I’ve received from his company and reflecting on the power of good copy.