Celebrities are great aren't they? Well, no, obviously. But they look good. And ad agencies seem to agree. It's not an uncommon sight to see celebrities heartily endorsing a product and/or event. Whole books have been written as to why this works, so I won't go into the nitty gritty. Basically, it's called brand recognition. We see people we recognise, in this case celebrities, which are a brand to a degree. We see them talking about or using a product. Hence, the product MUST be good, that yoghurt must taste good, what's her name from X Factor eats it, and she's pretty.
And PIF's being essentially a form of advertising, albeit a darker, more sinister brand, they can utilise this technique at times too. There was Jon Pertwee in the 70's bellowing the word "SPLINK!" at us, as he was often prone to do when the Brigadier was getting on his wick. There was John Hurt in the 80's, ordering us all not to catch AIDS. And today's example, from the 90's. Like the SPLINK! example, it stars another former Doctor, the 9th (the ACTUAL 9th). Toothy grinny man himself Christopher Eccleston. A "proper" actor who stars in such proper films as GI Joe: the Something of Nonsense, and Thor 2: its Hammer Time. Its another Scottish cinema ad, but there's only one scary face this time.
Loud techno-hop (that's what its called) blares, this is for the KIDZ (or probably not, as the 15 certificate at the start displays). Christopher Eccleston is in the back of a car, shouting about Keanu Reeves and bus drivers (is this another attempt to look "hip"? Speed came out two years before this PIF). "How fast were you going back there? Hello? HELLO? I said how fast were you going?". He leans in and turns off the radio, which has been playing "Now That's What I Call Generic Dance Bollocks Used To Death On Everything Ever Vol 5". Which leads us to witness the two poor sods in the front, who are as you can imagine, quite dead. And I mean REALLY dead, heads cut open, blood everywhere, we're getting our 15 certificate somehow. "Bit of speed impresses the girls you see, cos he's a bit of a lady killer is are Dave". OK, that got quite a dark chuckle from myself. I don't care if its inter-cut with blank, blood soaked dead eyes, a good jokes a good joke. As you can imagine, Eccleston is taking the tragic death of two people rather well. Suppose you deal with tragedy in different ways. His mood seems to change slightly from jovial to sorrowful, as he pulls his Serious Face and sits back. "What a tragic waste...of a good moter". HA! Take THAT dead people! He pulls that cheeky toothy grin that reminds us that this guy can be fucking scary when he wants to be. Bet he was hired based on the strength of that look alone. We pan out as the techno-whatever blares back, guess the awkward silence was getting to him, that and being surrounded by two mangled bodies (although personally I'd say listening to techno is worse). We get our slogan, which like all good slogans, is a good old fashioned punch in the balls.
Drink like an idiot, Die like an idiot.
And for good measure, we get the words DIE superimposed over the slogan in classic film lettering, cos we're in a cinema? Still, bloody good slogan that, on a level with the "Shame on You" business. Also corresponds with the extremely black humour of Eccleston's character. Whoever he is.
Seriously, who's he meant to be? The drivers mate? Some nutter who just got in the car? Death? I think of him as the latter, as a kind of spectre of death, corrupted by the circumstances of the drivers death, he becomes jaded and mocking. Maybe we're all visited by Christopher Eccleston when we die. Imagine that, his toothy grin standing over your deathbed. Brr...
Or maybe he's Jesus, in a kind of strange semi sequel to The Second Coming. Someone get Russell "Mr T" Davies on the phone.
So many things to love in this naughty little schoolboy of a PIF. Its just so mean. If it were a person, it would be Alex from A Clockwork Orange. There's a thought, if this had been made in the 70's. they could have got Malcolm Mcdowell to do it.
Even the slogans mean, flat out insulting you, the viewer, and the poor dead sod. Why do PIF slogans sometimes speak to us as if we're children?
Because all too often, when they speak to us like adults, we don't listen.
Like the title? Took me four whole seconds to come up with that.
What we're looking at today isn't, in the strictest sense of the word, a PIF (although I'l still probably end up referring to it as such), as its not produced by the government. It's produced by the charities International Fun for Animal Welfare, and the League Against Cruel Sports, produced for viewing in cinemas. And it deals with something which now seems like a distant memory, fox hunting.
The great English tradition of hunting a small defenceless animal through the woods until it's literally ripped apart for the pleasure of cunts, was banned in 2004, so I guess in the long run, today's film did serve its purpose. And how did it achieve that?
Through sheer, visceral terror of course. How else?
There's not really much one can do justice to by describing this film in words. You just have to let it unfold really. But for the squeamish...
You'l notice the 18 certificate in the corner. That's a good sign usually. There's a certain thrill in watching PIF's in the cinema. You know there gonna pull out all the stops, unrestrained by the rules of boring old telly. Watching images of death and horror on a massive screen in a big black room also carries a discomfort. There used to be a rule, maybe it's still in place I'm not sure, that meant all charity ads, no matter how dark they were, were automatically relegated an 18 certificate. Put it this way, you wouldn't wanna show this ad before Finding Nemo (or The Fox and The Hound for that matter, that would just be unfortunate).
Now onto the damn thing. It's a POV shot of something small, furry and very scared running around woodland. He hides in trees, nearly gets run over, as the distant sound of barking and horns blare ever closer. The idea is a sort of "how would you feel if it was YOU being hunted". I'm also positive they mix in some human sounds in there as well as fox sounds, but I'm probably wrong.
The chase culminates in the fox, sorry, YOU, being dragged out of a hutch and ripped to pieces while the whole world around you seems to echo and fade into nothingness. We get a little arthouse now. We hear claps from the tormentors who just killed you for no good reason whatsoever other then it provides some cheap thrill. If people did that to a human, it would be called sadistic.
There are several quick, less then a second, cuts to photographs, presumably showing something nasty, before we finally end on a nice lingering photo of a wreaked fox carcass. Sorry, YOUR wreaked carcass. Its...distressing. Don't get me wrong, I'm no vegetarian, but I don;t want to see animals essentially being mentally and physically tortured before being murdered in the most violent, cruel fashion imaginable. You wouldn't wish that on your worst enemy. Why wish it on a defenceless small furry thing who causes you no harm?
My comments about fox hunting might sound a little dated, considering its no longer technically legal, but the fact is, it still happens in some corners of the countryside. See, it wasn't made illegal 100%. Limits were simply imposed on the trawls so that foxes aren't hunted and killed so savagely as this ad depicts. Doesn't stop some people though. And it's these people who this ad is probably aimed at. Not that they'd give two fucking shits probably, they'd more then likely love that last shot, might get them a little hard. After all, its a great British tradition....
I'm surprised it hasn't been fully legalised actually, ever since Cameron and his silver spoon army of dicks illegally took power. They've certainly tried in the past. No these days, the upper classes and the people in power hunt in a different manner. A psychological manner, designed to tear apart and destroy everything we hold dear, from the NHS, to the BBC, to our basic public services, and eventually, us.
So in a way, fox hunting never ended. Except now, we're the fox. This PIF wasn't just a piece of horror designed to make a viewpoint, it was a warning. We're still hunted and torn apart, for no apprant reason. By cunts. What do you think they'd do if they had nothing to hunt? What would they do with themselves?
I apologise for the rather angry political tone this entry has taken. But take that as a sign of how powerful and effective this ad really is. It wants you to be angry. It's not exactly a call to revolution, but it wants you thinking. Imagining how it would feel, to be small and powerless. Hunted all your life, simply for the crime of being small and powerless.
Carrying on from our theme of scaring them straight, here's an ad that...well, if this PIF were a person, it would be a cunt. Plain and simple. I use harsh language to illustrate how totally evil today's PIF is. Is there a lot of violence? Nope, not really. Are there any flattened children? Not a sausage. Not even any scary drug faces? Not today sistah. Today's helping is from Fire Kills.
Fire Kills launched in 2001, and have produced some of the most memorable and frightening campaigns to grace our screens, as well as indirectly saving thousands of lives. As good an organisation as they so obviously are however, they still thought this would be a good idea.
WARNING: I'm just gonna tell you now, because I hate them: the following video is a "screamer". A video designed to make you jump right out of your skin by flashing a loud face and a VERY loud scream unexpectedly. So if your gonna put yourself through that, volume controls at the ready. If your too much of a pussy, then you can read the spoiler riffic description below.
Its actually quite hard what to make of the first few seconds. A man, asleep or dead, its never made quite clear, is lying in an extremely dark, depressing living room with a cigarette in his hand. Ominous, whispering voices mumble something about cigarettes. I still can;t work out who these voices belong to. Fireman? Smoky Mcdeads friends? Its shot almost like a home video, quite jittery and shaky. Is it firemen surveying after the terrible fact? Has the house already burned down? The rooms so bloody dark you can't tell! I lived in a house like this once. There were no ominous voices, but plenty of scorpions. More scorpions then one would ever require actually. Unusual for a house in the North of England that there would be a rather large scorpion population. Them buggers don't have give you a rash!
So we linger on this cigarette, as you can see in the thumbnail, for an uncomfortable amount of time. Your already tensing yourself for...something. An awakening from Sleepy Mccoma? ("He's not quite dead"). A caption? A scorpion attack? I used to think you could make out a skull in the ash of the cigarette. But watching it back now, I'm not so sure. Although that could be to do with the resolution of the clip, I don't know. Shame, because if there isn't a skull, that would have been a neat idea. While we're thinking about subliminal skulls (good name for a band), the ash falls off the fag which the-
ARRRRRRRRRGHHHHH!!!!
A fiery skull leaps out of nowhere and SCREECHS at you! As your changing your trousers, a caption reminds us that fires started by cigarettes kill someone every four days. What they don't tell you is that demon fire skulls kill someone every four seconds. And this PIF kills someone every time they watch it. Luckily, the amount of scorpion venom in my body prevents me from dying from fright, as I have virtually no heart beat to speak of. A doctor told me that. A good one.
So yeah...what is there to say really? Its another empty attempt to "scare", like the drug faces one from last time, with both using very cheap techniques indeed. Whereas the drug PIF assumed that showing some scary faces would be enough to stop you doing acid (hell, if your on Acid, your seeing way worse then that every day anyway), this one uses possibly the laziest technique of getting a reaction ever.
Jump scares have become more prevalent lately. Every single horror film released recently seems to rely on nothing but jump scares [1], modern video games that utilise horror and fear seemed to have picked up on this trope too. It's nothing but a cheap trick, the equivalent of going up behind someone and grabbing there shoulders shouting "BOO!"
And in terms of this PIF, what's the point? Sticking a flaming skull and screaming right in our faces doesn't really teach us about being careful with cigarettes, it just makes us jump and probably change the channel out of fear. Why would you actively try and drive your audience away from reading the message your trying to teach us? And besides, if the average viewer comes across the ad a second time, there probably going to just change channel immediately anyway. Its a self defeating prophecy. (Not that many people probably had a chance to do all that. I don't remember seeing this ad on television at all. Maybe it was relegated to post 9PM watershed, or maybe Fire Kills realised there mistake, and quietly withdrew it).
There are so much more effective ways you can scare someone, and still make a valid point. Here's Fire Kill's first PIF as a comparison of what there capable of.
It manages to be utterly depressing and visceral without relying on throwing skulls at us. Why is so much scarier then the jumpy cigarette one? Because it feels REAL. The events your seeing look like they could feasibly happen. That's the secret to scaring them straight, putting the audience in a world almost exactly like our own, and then breaking it down and destroying it ruthlessly. Every parent will be terrified by the sounds of those kids crying for there dad. Everyone will feel sick at the sound of that poor woman banging at the door. You know how powerful this ad was? It was banished to 9PM watershed land, and then quietly withdrawn after a staggering amount of complaints. Surely proof that this PIF REALLY shook people.
Because it could happen next week. Or tomorrow. Or tonight. To your children. Or your parents, or neighbours.
Or you.
No one however is ever going to be sitting there with a fag, and have a demon scream in there face. (unless your on Acid, probably bought off Scary Face man).
So, is that the key to a successful scary PIF then? Realism? I'd make a case for that, yes. Not all the time of course, but if PIF's are designed as a warning, then they should feel cold, and harsh. They should feel like there happening on your street, in your garden, in YOUR house even. To quote one Youtube user:
" PIFs are not adverts, they are not selling things, they are commanding people to do - or not do - certain activities. They're not meant to be stylish, they're meant to be blunt instruments" - Applemask. Go view his channel right now, Huge collection of PIF's/adverts and unlike me, actual funny and insightful descriptions to go with it.
One Final note, if your saw the aforementioned video we've been discussing and your still shaken, this should sort you out.
Whenever discussion of PIF's rears its rather strange shaped and deformed head, people often tend to talk about which is the "scariest". Fear has been used as a powerful tool by the government ever since the inception of the PIF. Everyone of a certain age or generation can remember The Spirit Of Dark And Lonely Water, or John Hurts voice intoning the dangers of this new thing called "AIDS" while a stonecutter carves something extremely large out of a rock, presumably YOUR grave. We'l cover those in the future probably. Like I said, I wanted to start off this little project by covering the ones that don't really get covered. The ones no one talks about (probably because no bugger has seen them, but I digress). So, today we'l be talking about a PIF that is explicitly designed to "scare" its audience. The DOE "Shame" film from the last post could be viewed as scary, but it was designed more to shock and sadden then anything else. This one is intended to fuck you up. Ironic, considering its an anti drug PIF. So much to talk about, but before I get ahead of myself, lets watch the bloody thing. From the merry land of Scotland comes...this. As ever, a short Spoiler-riffic description is provided below.
Spoiler RIFFIC Description
There is little to no movement in this rather avant garde little ad. We see a polaroid of a "young man". He's smiling, he's happy, hurrah, he loves being alive. Who wouldn't, its great! The audio is that of the "clubbing" that young people do. No, this isn't a Greenpeace ad, the other kind of clubbing. The one where impossibly attractive people jump up and down to the sound of a computer crashing in slow motion. We can make out sniffing noises amist the noise and clatter. The boys face fades into black, and it comes back as Creepy Mcshityourself in the thumbnail up there. You are made to stare at this face for a good few seconds. Worth pointing out that this ad was made to be screened in cinemas. Now imagine sitting in a big dark room, and THAT staring back at you. Still, could be worse. You could be watching Taken 2. The voiceover begins to intone various symptoms of drug abuse, including spots, paranoia, depression etc. He doesn't seem to mention the main symptom being demonstrated here, which is that if you take drugs, you'l turn into some kind of demon monster, before melting. Shit, they never told us that in school. And that's what happens. His face morphs more and more until it literally melts and the ad ends.
The chap who uploaded this video (who has a huge collection of PIFs and ads btw,shameless plug over), describes this in the description as "truly one of the scariest PIF's ever". I'm...not so sure there.
I mean, like I said before, if your sat in a big black cinema and your greeted by Druggy McDemon, then it might give you a little jump, unsettle you for a few seconds. But watching this clip in isolation, away from its intended big screen context, its just some scary faces. There trying to get you off drugs by showing you scary faces. It's not exactly the Grim Reaper pulling kids into rivers is it?...
Lets take a side trip for a moment and mention the reason why this ad, and many other ads, happened. Brief history lesson, in the blitz of Orwellian paranoia that was Ronald Regan's "War on Drugs" nonsense, an organisation calling themselves Partnership For A Drug Free America hired some proper advertising people with sharp suits and short hair (probably), to produce a campaign to "un-sell" teenage drug abuse (as if to imply drug abuse was being sold on TV in the first place). The campaign was pretty successful, spawning the iconic "this is your brain on drugs" ad that Bill Hicks famously mocked.
"I have been on UFO's and seen alien worlds, but I've never once looked at an egg and thought "thats a fucking brain".
Why am I mentioning all this? Well the ads had one clear theme. they weren't afraid to scare, exaggerate, and sometimes outright lie, to get your kiddies off those devil drugs. In there eyes, I suppose the ends justified the means. Whether they were 100% true or not, the campaign had a far reaching effect. Not just on drug use, but also on anti drug campaigning. "Scare them straight" advertising wasn't anything new by any stretch, but the efforts of PDFA proved that not only were scare tactics easy, but they worked. And thus an era of paranoia and fear about drugs in the media began. The typical example that comes to my mind being the Leah Bett's debacle in the 90's[1], and the wave of speculation and fear that created (eventually culminating in the whole thing being ruthlessly parodied by Chris Morris on Brass Eye).
We also have to factor in where this nasty little ad came from. Scotland has famously had something of a problem with abuse, whether it be alcohol or drugs, for many years now. It's actually no wonder they went all out to scare you away from drugs. In 2012 alone, 581 people died due to drug abuse, 221 due to heroin alone[2]. A massive culture of drug use and abuse is not a reputation any country wants particularly. It's similar to what we discussed last time with Northern Ireland, where a country's history and past informs it's art and cultural output.
Which leads us to this. A PIF that relies on nothing but fear to get its message across. It doesn't even use any statistics or evidence to back all this up. I mean, we know that taking drugs can cause paranoia and depression, but I've seen a lot of people on drugs, but I have never seen anyone turn into an Orc. Maybe I needed to get better drugs, who knows.
It's actually quite childish in a way. Just stick a scary face on, it'l be fine. A face that has so obviously been touched up and made up to be "scary". It's almost like those "jump scare" videos that had a brief run of popularity on the Internet (more on those next time).
Maybe if they'd have used actual faces of people fucked on drugs, that might have been more effective. It would scare us straight, but at least do it in a honest, sincere way (a lot of the Meth Projects ad's rely on this, due to the fact that if your on Meth, it bloody looks like your on meth. In fact, its actually quite amazing that this ad dosen't mention meth). But instead they felt the need to go all David Lynch. Actually no, David Lynch would have provided a psychological and intelligent edge to the horror. I don't see any of that here, its just nasty. It could have been nasty and informative, and had a clear message. But nah, easier to just show a scary face and be done with it.
Still, it is a pretty scary face. Can't take that away from them.
As you can probably tell from the title, this is a blog that is going to look thoroughly at Public Information Films (or PIF's as we'l refer to them from this point for reasons of ease/laziness). If you've found yourself on a blog that talks about PIF's, then your probably aware of what they are and the purpose they serve. But for those newcomers joining us in class today...
Public Information Films are short commercial pieces often transmitted during commercial breaks that aim to inform, warn or scare the public on a specific issue. These range from safety (drink driving, crossing the road etc), to health (smoking, drug awareness etc) or sometimes more charitable causes (child abuse, foreign aid etc). This blog is not aiming to tell the "story" of PIF's, or to serve as a history or overview, there are better places for that. This will serve as an analysis and a deconstruction of specific items. I'm going to try and focus on the lesser known items, the ones that don't get talked about so much. Maybe one day they'l be a massive post of Lonely Water/Charley Says/Protect and Survive etc, but we're not talking about those today. We're talking about...this. (For those who don't like watching things moving on a screen, or if your in a rush, there's a spoiler riffic description just below.
SPOILER RIFFIC DESCRIPTION
Accompanied by the haunting and clichéd strains of Sweet Child Of Mine (made famous by Guns And Roses, covered by Everyone In The World Ever), a group of children so "cute" and well behaved they could only exist on television, prepare to go on some kind of trip while one particular child looks at a toy car in an ominous foreshadowing way like you did when you were a child. This is intercut with a "man" grabbing a slice of toast and getting in...the same car! Except it's not a toy. Its a proper car, with wheels and everything. I think this is going to end "well".
The children are now in a forest, pointing magnifying glasses at trees, presumably also singing "We like being alive, we like being alive" over and over. They look at the ground, poke at poor defenceless fish, dance around a tree, presumably in worship of some strange new God, and then sit on a mat. It's one of those school trips. Presumably Mrs Harbinger couldn't raise the money to go somewhere nice, like Alton Towers or North Korea, and instead settled for a forest that was probably about two minutes down the road. It's probably Michael Goves fault.
Suddenly, we're back with the well developed character on "man with shirt in car". Also suddenly, without anything resembling warning, the car flips off the road, and starts spinning...towards the kids! Who are also seemingly all completely smashed on Valium, as they seem to react with a...well, they don't react at all. They sit and watch with eerie passiveness while a car smashes on top of ALL OF THEM AT ONCE! You heard that right, an entire class of children DIE in front of your eyes. The toy car falls out of the dead hand of Creepy McForeshadow. As a voiceover intones how speeding killed the equivalent of a classroom of children, before we are met with the final kick in the balls, the caption SHAME ON YOU, over an empty classroom.
Shame on you. Yes, YOU! You are the man in shirt with a car (the real one, not the toy one). YOU killed all those kiddies. Flattened them like a dog in an avalanche. Shame on you. In all seriousness, its a bloody good slogan, on the same level as the Australian "If You Drink And Drive, Your A Bloody Idiot".
The best PIF's know that showing violence and death to shock is one thing, but nothing is more crippling then guilt. Put yourself in the position of someone who may have been responsible for killing a child in a speeding car. Knowing that what happened can't be undone. Knowing that the family and friends will probably never forgive you. Knowing that even if you don't manage to go to prison, you'l be known forever as the man who once killed a child for no reason whatsoever. There's no cure or remedy for that. By using such an uncompromising, unforgiving slogan, the ad is essentially pre empting all that. Saying "this is how you WILL feel if you drive just a bit too fast one day and take someone's life away".
Also worth pointing out is that this film comes from the DOE, The Department Of the Environment for Northern Ireland. I won't go into the, shall we say, difficult and troubled recent history of Northern Ireland, as I would be way out of my depth. Needless to say, Northern Ireland is a country which has had its fair share of despair and misery, and this outlook is reflected here. PIF's, being as they are essentially government messages, always reflect the climate and mood of the time. Although this PIF was produced and released this year, it carries the harshness and bleak, violent mood that has characterised much of Northern Ireland over the past. I didn't grow up there, but it did make me think. Would this ad be seen as that shocking in Northern Ireland, where normal programming was frequently interrupted by reports of death and destruction happening just down the road? Not that England isn't subject to violent imagery on television too, but often we are blanketed by the fact that the violence I often see on television is happening on the other side of the world, or the other side of the country. I have no idea what its like to be attacked on my own doorstep. But a lot of the audience for this PIF do.
All that said, while its not denying the above PIF is powerful and moving, it does have its flaws. It is perhaps cruel to begin with such a misleading tone. Would you watch the first half of that ad and think it would end with...that? It looks like we're about to get a nice cuddly voiceover telling us how much we all love Clover, all over this land. Or maybe a car advert, as the vehicle is featured quite prominently, save for any logo's or hint of branding of course. It is no exaggeration to say that the ending comes completely out of nowhere, without warning or hesitation. I'm sure that was the intention. Get people relaxed and soothed and then BOOM! DEATH! SHAME! And not only does the ending come out of nowhere, but it is EXTREMELY violent, without even showing a hint of blood. Its the equivalent of sticking on The Lion King for your little nephew, and then splicing in the last 20 minutes of Cannibal Holocaust. Its certainly effective, but...why the need to ambush people?
On the other hand, while the ending is shocking and upsetting, why don't the teachers or kids well...react? As I mentioned above, the kids just stare like there watching a particularly embarrassing birthday clown. Yes, you could argue that there in shock perhaps. But even then, they'd look scared or confused. These kids just don't look like...anything. Was that the directors point? I know it's meant to be a sort of metaphorical representation of the figure presented at the end, but surely that leaves us emphasising less with the children, knowing there little more then statistics.
Actually...maybe thats the point. Hmm....
Also, what's with the teachers? Sure, we hear one scream. One very short, staccato scream. Now, I've never seen a load of kids ran over (what a sentence!), but I imagine the nearby reaction would be hysterical! Women going into absolute screaming fits. Having nervous breakdowns. Not knowing what to do or say, just breaking down into pure despair and misery. Instead we get dead, dead silence. Again, maybe that was the point. The silence emphasising the void of misery we've found ourselves in. But imagine how much of a punch in the gut the sounds of screaming would have added. Maybe you could compromise. Show them screaming and crying silently. Now that would be fucking powerful. Not only have you killed a load of innocent kids, you've effectively killed the hopes and dreams of there parents, family's, teachers and friends. Shame on you indeed.
My other beef is a deeply personal one. But its possibly the most contentious point. Worse then the violence. Worse then the horror. Can we please...ban soft acoustic versions of songs sung by six year olds? Seriously, this is on EVERY advert now. Some twee voice with a poorly tuned guitar singing "Dont You Want Me" or "Tainted Love" or something like that. It's got marketing written all over it. Please kill this fad now. Run a car over it. VERY fast.
All joking aside, it's nice to see that the "scare them straight" mentality of the PIF is still very much alive, and just as powerful as ever. More on that next time....
P.S for the record, this is the best Sweet Child Of Mine cover.
