Everything? Everything!

They say the eyes are the mirror to the soul. This Christmas, arguably with too much time on my hands, some television-watching as the seasonal sales got going led me to wonder whether perhaps advertisements are the window to a society. And if they are, I wonder more and more about the kind of society we’ve become.

Let me explain. Depending on the time of day, the average advert segment on commercial television will include promotions for any or all of the following: cars, household products, beauty products, shops, holiday destinations, insurance or finance companies, food or drink items, and toys or other products aimed at children. Often, particularly in holiday times, sales are being advertised. We are urged, in a voice stopping only just short of a scream, to “Get More!”, and to “Hurry!” - just in case, I suppose, the haste of the rest of the country to “get more!” means that we end up missing out. “While stocks last” becomes a mantra of urgent deadlines. The people on these adverts seem to become incredibly excited about these sales. A well-known furniture store regularly features groups of people bouncing around, in an undignified frenzy of ecstasy bordering on the embarrassing, on the cut-price furniture of their dreams. Some of these people seem to be so humiliatingly enthusiastic about their bit-parts in this extravaganza of unmissably good value upholstery that I actually feel the need to avert my eyes when the ad comes on. Another furniture ad bellows out prices in the tones of a terrified cry for help – only £699! £499! £299! £99! HURRY! And don’t even start me on those people in the supermarket ads who tap their back pockets in some sort of deranged mimicry of morris dancing, to celebrate just how much they’ve saved.

But it’s not just the savings. We’re also being told, every day, in tones of great authority, about how we can solve all our financial problems. We can have it all – have it now – and pay it off over 2, 3, 4, even 10 years. Cute cartoon birds spell it out for us. The bird couple have a problem – their money keeps flying out the door. Instead of suggesting that they save for a nest egg, which would seem like a sensible suggestion for Mr and Mrs Bird from more perspectives than one, Mr Bird rings for a low-cost loan to consolidate all their debts. He tweets the good news to Mrs Bird, who stops looking green and sad and flies around a lot. Neither of them, presumably, has read the small print – that if they don’t repay, their nest will be taken and their eggs smashed and their feathers used to stuff pillows…

And then there’s the beauty ads. Aimed mainly at women, these show us the unattainable perfections of the supermodel and tell us that, if we use this shampoo and that make-up and these anti-ageing products, we too will look as good as the models. The fact that the pictures have been airbrushed to remove the spots and lengthen the lashes more than any mascara ever could, is kept very quiet. We suspend disbelief because, secretly, we’d all like to look that good. We watch out for the shampoo and the make-up and the anti-ageing creams in Boots and Tescos. We buy them too – because we’re worth it. I don’t think I’ll get my money back because I haven’t turned into Claudia Schiffer, though. Thinking back a few years, I recall the ad for yet another celebrity fragrance: a new perfume by Sarah Jessica Parker (of Sex and the City) – Covet. In the ad, SJP ends up being arrested when she breaks into a Paris perfumerie to steal a huge bottle of her envy-green fragrance, the strapline being: “You just have to have it.” Of course. Perfume so good you’ll break the law and moral code to get it – the name of the product says it all. There’s a strange quirk in one subset of these adverts, though, which has preoccupied me for years. Why do people in deodorant ads only ever treat one armpit? You watch and see. It’s true. Whether it’s a flick of the roll-on or an undulating, cross-body spray – it’s only ever one side. There was an exception to this rule a few months ago, as someone who is aware of my concerns pointed out to me – one such ad in which a person used a body spray on both sides of her body. I was impressed… for a few seconds, until this delightfully fragrant person lent her body spray to a friend… who sprayed only one side of his body. Remember. Only ever stand on the fragrant side of a person from a deodorant advert.

Infinitely worse than one-sided body odour, though, is the principle which seems to dominate so many adverts at the moment. Alongside the “Get more!” of the Sale ads, there seems to be a universal credo of selfishness. Think about it. There’s the monstrous little children of the Mi Wadi ads, who refuse to share their sugary dilute drinks with anyone (“It’s not your Wadi – it’s Mi Wadi!”), to the woman who invites her friends round for Cadbury’s chocolate crisps and then glares at them through an intensely resentful inner monologue when they have the temerity to eat the things, to Dawn French who wants to eat the entire Terry’s Chocolate Orange on her own, or the office workers who eat their colleague's Chocolate Orange in the most recent advert. Now: maybe these people are just doing us a favour. The Mi Wadi kids are sparing the rest of us inevitable tooth decay; if we eat too much Chocolate Orange we might end up as big as Dawn French, and whoever heard of eating chocolate crisps anyway? But that’s not the point. Whatever happened to the idea of sharing? It seems to be an alien concept to most of us these days, if the ads are anything to go by. Get more, and keep it all for yourself, and HURRY in case someone else gets it before you! Lock your bedroom door before you eat some Galaxy chocolate, remember – just in case you might be forced to share a piece with your family or friends. Then there’s Trudie, the girl from the Cadbury’s Flake placement which used to be on before Coronation Street. Trudie was always eating chocolate, so much so that she became incompetent at her job of set assistant on a drama. She was always quietly in the background, eating a Flake, immersed in the pleasure of the chocolate so far that she forgot to do whatever it is she was supposed to be doing. “Cadbury’s Flake Dark”, was the comment, after the inevitable frustrated cry of “Trudie!” from her set manager. Is “Flake Dark” a sort of brunette version of “blonde bimbo” – did Trudie embody the chocolate? Or was it simpler than that – Trudie was always just off in a dark corner somewhere, eating when everyone else was working and she was out of view, to avoid having to share her treat with anyone? And did Cadbury's really drop the product placement ad slot, or was Trudie simply fired (by Sir Alan Sugar, presumably, if that's not too terrible a pun) in the end, making the ongoing chocolatey soap untenable?

Many years ago, I remember being asked to write an essay in English class about how an alien coming to earth would view our world – our society. If we sat one of those little green men, that some of us still have nightmares about, down in front of a few independent television advert breaks, here is what I think he might see: that we get ridiculously excited about discount furniture; that when we find something we like to eat, we hide it, and ourselves, from all our friends; that we are willing to come to blows over a face cream that will stop us getting wrinkles, that we sweat on one side of the body only, and that we are willing to believe that we are worth the price of the average bottle of shampoo; that you can consolidate all your loans in one easy payment so long as you don’t think too hard about the consequences; that even the Neanderthal believes himself to be witty and urbane with a few beers inside.

If the window to our society’s soul can really be found in our television adverts, then that window seems like one of those fairground mirrors which shows you what you really hope you’ll never look like. Surely we’ve got to do something about this before time runs out? HURRY!