I’ve been meaning to have a go at the follow-ups to the
ludicrous Lloyds bank adverts – yet another of those where they show people
turning from attractive children to attractive ‘older people’ via being
attractive adults. And rescuing teddies
and stuff. Lloyds is the one (I think) where a big horse gallops through the maternity ward and whatnot. At one point the horse gallops past a couple
in the street. A (presumably) gay man is clearly
proposing marriage to another (presumably) gay man. He’s decided to do this in the street while a
horse runs past. As you do when you're pretending to be gay in an advert. He’s gone for the whole 'ring in a box down on one knee' thing. In
the street. Any homophobics are presumably too busy looking at the horse to cause any aggro. Or he can’t think of a better place to do this than in the middle of the street.
Something tells me that this couple were originally going to
be a heterosexual couple. Bet your life
someone at the advertising agency simple squeaked with delight at the whole
instant inclusive right-on ness of making them a gay couple. Then they squeaked even louder and treated
themselves to a game of ping-pong instead of lunch when it occurred that they could make one of them black. Should
have also put one of them in a wheelchair but they clearly never thought of
adding that particular egg to the advert pudding.
But then! Then
someone suggested that they go for that whole the fuckwitted British Public
love a character thing. They spend
hundreds of pounds on insurance to get a meerkat toy, they really really love
that opera singing insurance bloke and they’d sell their own grandmothers for
one of those Brian toys. Then they
‘like’ the Facebook page and Tweet their friends and talk to their mates about
how they’ve taken these lovable characters to their hearts because they’ve clearly
got nothing else going on in their lives…
So now there’s a follow up advert – the gay couple again, just
them on a poster. There’s a picture of
them hugging and it says ‘he said yes’!
Dancing in the streets! We’d all
been wondering if the made up (presumably) gay character played by an actor who asked the
other made up (presumably) gay character played by an actor to marry him in the
middle of the street as a horse galloped past had said yes or ‘don’t do the
whole hetero cliché thing on me and watch out for the homophobic thief just
behind you’.
So…if you’d like to believe that the fictional characters in
the advert are real in some way and that there was a proposal and ‘he said yes’, go
on, knock yourself out. If you’re lucky
there’ll be a Facebook page about them which you can ‘like’. You can Tweet your friends about them and
possibly follow their progress. Choose
the wedding venue and what they’ll wear and the kind of sex you’d like them to
have.
Actually, I think there can’t be more than half a dozen
simpletons who care and actually this is just the advertising industry milking
another doltish (or coltish in this case – boom boom!) company into thinking
that even though they screwed up the economy and everyone hates them that if
they make up a gay couple one of whom is black then everyone will just love
them. Unless we haven’t got every penny
of our money back.