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.
DON'T DO DRUGS KIDS
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leah_Betts
[2] http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/files2/stats/drug-related-deaths/2012/drugs-related-deaths-2012.pdf
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