For example, I’m noticing an increasing trend for things that offer “freshness”. Not cleanliness, mind. That seems to come in another bottle. No, this freshness, when applied to your bedsheets or jumper or socks, would seem to send everyone else into a state of juddering bliss, a cocktail of catnip and crack that hits one’s olfactory nerve and from there envelops the whole body in CGI florals.

Which is nice, but I’m still not sure what this freshness actually is. Is it a scent, a sort of Lynx for the laundry? In which case why don’t they tell us that, give us some kind of hint that if we use it, our fabrics will smell of lemons or honeysuckle or fresh bread or Guildford or the late Pope? In any case I’ll pass, because I want my laundry to smell of precisely nothing, thank you very much. The aromatic equivalent of a sleep mask or noise-cancelling headphones would do me just fine. But no, it’s this ineffable freshness that all these ecstatic thespians crave, like some article of faith that can only be communicated to true believers. And I, apparently, missed that memo. By Vectron.

Let’s be clear here. The Portraits didn’t write the song, ‘Together In Electric Dreams’; it was penned by Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder in 1984. Their claim is that they arranged and performed it in a particular way, and the people behind the commercial copied that. Now, I still maintain that you can’t copyright or plagiarise an arrangement, notwithstanding the imbecilic court ruling that the 2013 hit ‘Blurred Lines’ had copied Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got To Give It Up’, despite having no obvious connection in terms of melody, harmony, rhythm or lyrics. What happens instead is that as particular styles of music become popular, they bring with them particular tropes of arrangement or instrumentation or production (quiet verse/loud chorus, fretless bass, Auto-Tune, etc) and for a few months or years, it sounds as if everybody’s doing it, even if the songs themselves are different. 

Which is presumably why the Portraits offered up a lame, wimpy arrangement of a fondly remembered song – because they’d heard similar things done on John Lewis adverts. If it does get to the stage when arrangements can be the subject of a plagiarism claim – and I really hope it doesn’t – it could even be argued that it’s the Portraits who have absorbed the lessons of John Lewis Past, replicating the insipid abuse inflicted on the Smiths, Randy Crawford, REO Speedwagon and more and ruining the Oakey/Moroder song.

Anyway, here’s a recording that may be many things, but it’s far from lame and not the slightest bit wimpy. Take it away, Philip. And buy yourself a sofa when you’re done.

Come to think of it, maybe these bots do a better job than I gave them credit for.

PS: Also, this:

God knows the West has had some daft ideas about Asia over the years. From the prurience of 19th-century Orientalism via the half-arsed borrowing of religion and philosophy that characterises New Age thinking through to every movie that’s been badly and pointlessly remade — although I still maintain that The Magnificent Seven is more fun than Seven Samurai even if it’s not actually a better film — I’m sorry. That said, Asia’s more than capable of missing the point when it comes to Western culture. Call it Occidentalism.

For example, a Thai lingerie firm is currently running a big campaign featuring a well-known model/starlet adopting a selection of Hollywood poses that I’d describe as iconic if that word hadn’t by now been devalued to a point where it’s essentially meaningless. The problem is that the images take what’s most obviously appealing about the originals (famous, stylish, beautiful woman) without really delving into what it represents to people who may actually have seen the film rather than just checking out the DVD cover.

So let’s start with Audrey Hepburn. The whole damn point of Audrey Hepburn was that she could be elegant and sexy without the need for big knockers or an enhanced cleavage and certainly felt no obligation to flash around what little she had. If there’s a single movie legend who looks out of place advertising bras, it’s either Audrey or John Wayne. And, as inevitably happens when people try to sum up her particular charm, it’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s, one of her worst movies, that gets picked as a reference point. And in it, Audrey was playing a character who may not have been a hooker exactly but was something pretty close, which I’m not sure is quite the sort of role model the brand wants to present to the Bangkok middle classes. Maybe this is just payback from Asia for Mickey Rooney’s horrific yellowface act in the film? If so, fair enough.

Next, on the left, we have Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct. Now, it’s a long time since I’ve seen the movie, but as I recall, the whole point of this scene is that Ms Stone’s character isn’t wearing any knickers — which makes it a very odd reference point for a company that makes undergarments. I’m not even sure who the one on the right is meant to be, by the way. Edie Sedgwick? Frankie from The Saturdays? A very young Angela Merkel? Answers, please, on a pair of Sharon Stone’s unworn knickers.

But this is the one that really unnerves me. The reference is presumably to Dominique Swain in the 1997 adaptation of Lolita, which may have been more faithful to Nabokov than Kubrick’s earlier version but was otherwise worse in pretty much every respect. Leaving that aside, child abuse is at the heart of the movie and the seductive, lolly-licking, bra-strap-dropping, skirt-lifting character being portrayed in this picture is meant, in the novel at least, to be just 12 years old. In this case, I really do hope they’ve missed the point.

I haven’t written very much about the current brouhaha in Thailand because the whole thing’s at once too deadly serious – a battle for the very soul of an entire nation – and too bloody silly – uh oh, Frankie Valli just cancelled his Bangkok gig sceduled for Wednesday. But I was tickled by this stand-off last week between John Sparks of Channel 4 and Dr Seri Wongmontha, or “the flamboyant Dr Seri” as it’s almost obligatory to describe him, a supporter of the anti-government protests. It’s all entertaining stuff, with a sort of ramshackle panache that would enliven Western political debate immeasurably. But once the duel was over, Seri apparently addressed his adoring fans thus:

Well, that’s unpleasant, although I suspect the good doctor is simply expressing what a lot of people in these parts think. The problem is that his reference to yellow skins (implicitly those of Chinese ancestry, albeit sometimes at a remove of several generations, and overwhelmingly the sort of people who tend to study abroad) bestows this supposed genetic superiority on the Bangkok elites while potentially excluding the far darker-skinned rural Southerners who have provided much of the heavy lifting for this month’s attempted shutdown. And since the organisers are attempting to stamp out the notion that the protests are all about maintaining class privileges – despite some of their most ardent supporters going off-message when there’s a microphone in front of them – that’s a bit awkward.

But hey, it’s not just Thailand that’s got caught up in a bit of hey-aren’t-foreigners-a-bit-rubbish? embarrassment. Thanks to Richard Lloyd Parry for directing me towards this gem from Japan:

PS: And this, by Patrick Winn, is another good take on the class aspects of the struggle for Bangkok’s streets.

PPS: Oh, it’s all coming up now. This, from China, courtesy of James Crabtree. It’s the line drawings that are particularly noteworthy: 

An advertisement for Dunkin’ Donuts in Thailand has provoked outrage and embarrassment; not in Thailand but in the United States, where accusations of racism have been levelled.

OK, let’s look at this. It’s a picture of a woman with her skin painted black. Clearly in the US and elsewhere in the West, this has connotations of blackface and minstrelsy with which we are now distinctly uncomfortable. But in Thailand it doesn’t. It’s a picture of a woman with her skin painted black, to match the colour of the product being advertised; just as a British TV presenter appeared a few days ago with her skin painted silver. If the DD ad were to run in the States or in Europe, I could see the problem. But it isn’t; it’s running in Thailand. And yet, because it offends the sensibilities of Americans, it gets pulled. It might be overstating matters to say that the withdrawal of the ad is in itself an act of racism, but it’s certainly an act of cultural imperialism, its close cousin. And yes, ultimately the Dunkin’ Donuts brand is owned by a US company; but doesn’t this whole story demonstrate the extent to which the American hegemony is maintained as much by twerking Miley and Affleck as Batman and crappy fast food as it is by threats to bomb Syria?

Of course, racism goes on in Thailand and it’s far closer to the surface; I don’t think there’s a Thai phrase analogous to “I’m not a racist but...”  Thai racism, though, is inextricably bound up with class consciousness, with a distinction between those who work in the fields and those who lounge in air-conditioned luxury. When another doughnut brand, Krispy Kreme, launched in Thailand a few years ago, rich kids sent their maids and drivers to stand in the long queues on their behalf. This is the issue that’s been dividing Thai society over the past decade, provoking those running battles and burning buildings you occasionally see on TV. And if the activities of Dunkin’ Donuts’ Thai franchisee need any moral scrutiny, maybe it’s over the fact that the model in the advert is the daughter of the CEO.

What’s A Creative, exactly? I’ve heard the noun being kicked around in advertising circles (“This is Miles, he’s The Creative who’ll be working on the account.” “We’ll punt it over to The Creatives, see what they can do with it.”) where it seems to exist as an implied rebuke to everyone else in the organisation. How, after all, do you describe someone who isn’t A Creative? An Uncreative? A Destructive?

And while we’re on the subject, is it these Creatives who are expected to read the magazine called Creative Review? Or has it become something akin to The Economist; I wonder how many readers of that publication define themselves as economists. I only ask because a recent feature (in CR, not The Economist) dealt with David Pearson’s cover designs for Penguin’s new editions of George Orwell’s major works. The one that has attracted most attention is for 1984 Nineteen Eighty-Four, where the title and author’s name are obscured by black foil, and only visible in the right light because the characters are debossed. It’s a bold step, entirely in tune with the theme of Orwell’s novel, but it clearly carries with it certain commercial risks; what if the casual bookshop browser (if they still exist) can’t identify the book? And such concerns are presumably what prompted the following deliciously Gradgrindian comment, from one Graham:

One wonders whether Graham is a Creative, albeit one of a distinctly practical bent. Or is he more likely a bitter Destructive, taking a furtive peek in the Creatives’ magazine and venting all his hatred and resentment on the cool kids down the corridor?

I notice that the following does not include any blogging sites per se.  Not even Posterous. The only thing worse than having the piss taken out of you is of course, not having the piss taken out of you. Have blogs finally gone Betamax?

While I’ve got you though, this is rather lovely. Even if its sole purpose is to sell t-shirts.

In case anyone needed reminding that the foam-flecked wings of Islam and Christianity don’t hold a duopoly on swivel-eyed witlessness, ultra-orthodox Jews in Jerusalem have taken to ripping down advertising posters that contain images of women. Which is an affront to freedom of expression and insulting to women – until you remember that feminists have had plenty to say about the depiction of women by the advertising industry, and quite a few have taken direct action to express it.

Hmm. Similarly confused thoughts come to mind when watching the following:

Now, according to AdRants, the clip has been “banned”, although I’m sure there was never any intention of using it in mainstream media; it will live and/or die on the web, where it exists as much to sell the reputation of the creative team as it does to shift units of denim (rather like Benetton’s latest attempt to foster intercultural harmony). It’s offensive, in the sense that quite a few people will be offended by it, although different elements will offend different people: the implied lesbianism; the implied necrophilia; the buttocks. I suspect, however, that the big problem comes with the pile of dead women, and the clear suggestion that someone is going round killing them for their jeans. The question is whether it’s less or more reprehensible when we know that the killer is a woman; we can hold onto the notion that killing women is A Bad Thing, but this time we can’t really blame it on the patriarchy, can we? As Camille Paglia said – and she’s a woman, so it’s OK –  “There is no female Mozart because there is no female Jack the Ripper.” But if there were, she’d almost certainly work in advertising.

The Smiths, you see, were my band. I was born in 1968, and following the rule that the music that comes into your life during your 15th year is the music that will never leave you, the Smiths have been sitting on my skinny shoulders ever since. They didn’t offer a cure for my teenage ailments – the insecurity, the frustration, the acne – nor were they crass enough to tell me not to worry about them. Instead, they crafted an aesthetic in which all of them, the worry included, were nurtured, even celebrated. Life was indeed a Beckettian mess, but it might be survived, and you might even get to read a few decent books along the way. My flawed, misshapen humanity was as worthy of respect as that of the smooth-skinned, white-toothed hunks who could catch a rugby ball without bursting into tears.

And then the zits and the insecurity faded (although neither really went away) but the Smiths were still my band. I never became a devotee of Morrissey’s or Marr’s solo output, but the material they made between 1983 and 1987 remained, an anchor in bad times, even raising a goofy smile when it caught me unawares.

And then this happened:



Now, I know that in the download age, musicians and composers have to make a living. It’s not as if the Smiths are the first band to have farmed out their back catalogue to the advertisers; the Beatles have flogged running shoes, the Rolling Stones have hawked computers, and I suspect their financial needs are less than those of Morrissey and Marr. And I don’t really mind that it’s a crappy cover version; the song has suffered far worse. It’s not even that it’s John Lewis, a shop that I’ve happily used in the past, although I do wish they’d stop sending me promotional e-mails every few minutes just because I bought a washing machine from them a few years ago.

No. It’s Christmas that’s the problem. The modern, retail-driven Christmas is a festival that might as well have been designed simply to contradict everything the Smiths ever (claimed to?) stand for. It’s about optimism, sentimentality, consumption, warmth, family, hand-knitted comedy jumpers and chocolate liqueurs. It’s about a world in which the anguished yearning expressed in ‘Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want’ can be satisfied with a new pair of football boots or a games console. One can only assume that the person who decided to use the song in this context simply failed to understand it and – far more galling – its composers elected not to disabuse him. I wonder if there might have been a shortlist of other possible songs, if M&M had suffered an attack of scruples; perhaps ‘I Want More’ by Can, or ‘Having It All’ from the Absolute Beginners soundtrack.

It’s as if Morrissey had wandered into my teenaged bedroom, with its postcards of him and Oscar Wilde and Louise Brooks, and offered to do something about my acne, and then proceeded to deposit a huge, steaming, vegeburgery shit all over my face. And then Johnny Marr appeared at his shoulder, volunteering to clear up the mess with a big, fluffy John Lewis towel, which only made things worse. And then I realised they were both wearing Santa hats. And hand-knitted comedy jumpers.

The London Underground has banned a poster for the Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration Lulu because it resembles graffiti. Except that I’ve never seen a graffito that looks remotely like that. Lucy Jones, in the Telegraph, is glad that it’s been banned, but that’s because it glorifies violence against women. Except that it doesn’t, so far as I can see – although some of those commenting on her article probably wouldn’t have much of a problem with that anyway.

And that’s before we get to the fact that Reed took his inspiration from the works of Wedekind and Alban Berg, and the vexed question of whether some art forms (theatre, opera) are allowed to depict ghastly occurrences, while others (heavy metal, advertising posters on public transport systems) aren’t. In any case, I just listened to 30 seconds of the album, and I’m pretty sure the poster will turn out to be the least horrible aspect of it. When did anybody last ban anything on qualitative grounds?

Actually, the Chinese government has done just that, cancelling the talent show Happy Girl, apparently because it kept overrunning its time slot, and because the content was inappropriate for prime time. Although some have whispered that the real reason for its demise was that phone voting encourages notions of democracy; and that it proved to be far more popular than the earnest, plodding programming of China Central Television. Under this analysis, it was essentially shelved for being too good.

I’d heartily recommend the efficient and friendly services of Turkish Airlines to anyone, provided you cover your eyes and ears when the safety video comes on.

Leaving aside the fact that for every customer who responds positively to the Manchester United brand there will be at least one who retches, the treatment of the footballers reminds me of how black actors were expected to perform in Hollywood movies in the 1930s: all that’s missing is the eye-rolling. Is it really surprising that millionaires who are paid to goof around like overgrown eight-year-olds might lose any grasp they may have had of the niceties of social behaviour or responsibility that are expected of other adults?

From next year, product placement will be allowed on some British TV shows. The reason this is necessary, we are informed, is that technological changes have made it easier for viewers to avoid advertising placed between programming. But I suspect it’s just as much because viewers have developed a more sophisticated understanding about how advertising works, and are thus more cynical about it. Introducing product placement to the likes of Coronation Street may work, but only on those viewers who remain a bit naïve and trusting about the essential benevolence of consumer capitalism and the way it manipulates human desires; the unaware; the incurious; the dim. And inevitably, as product placement becomes a more popular revenue model for TV companies, programming targeting the dim and incurious – indeed, actively excluding the curious – will become even more prevalent.

And we will look back on the current glut of celebreality shows as a golden age of British TV.