Let's talk about the single greatest oddity of British Telecom's 1992 "Get Through To Someone" campaign. The edition that conceals it isn't half as unnerving as the one about the woman who frets that her daughter is freezing to death inside a student hall, but it is several times more confounding. On this occasion, we focus on a plucky would-be Lothario who's determined not to get through to someone - or rather, to get through to her by maintaining total radio silence. Our protagonist considers himself a pretty slick fella, and thinks it most beneath him to give his girlfriend a bell to let her know that he loves her, preferring to keep her interested by keeping her hanging. He's so slick, in fact, that he justifies his dubious tactic by misremembering a quote from the 1940 Marx brothers film Go West. "What's that line from the old film? Fanning the flames of desire with the bellows of indifference..." Go West is not explicitly cited, but the quotation in question is markedly similar to one uttered by Groucho Marx therein. Problem is, it's not an exact match; the actual line spoken by Groucho is: "The secret is never let her know you care. Never pursue her. Let her pursue you. Fan the flames of desire with the bellows of indifference!" You might think this is a case of me being unreasonably pedantic, but where it gets perplexing is that we hear the snippet of dialogue playing in the protagonist's head, spoken in some suave, old timey actor's voice, and presented as though it were an extract of culled directly from the film itself. On top of everything else, that suave, old timey actor is audibly not Groucho Marx. Which begs a number of questions. Can we say for certain that Go West is the old film our protagonist has in mind? If not Groucho Marx, then whose voice is it? Is it a legitimate extract from some other classic picture in which a character makes a near-identical observation, using the exact same metaphors? Or is it just a faux dialogue extract, created to sound like it was taken from an old movie? Was the idea to have the protagonist seem additionally foolish, since his memories don't quite align with what's heard in the film itself, or was the intention here simply to allude to Go West without actually having to secure the rights to use any of it? That last one has the ring of plausibility, although why go to the trouble to create a faux extract when you could have had the protagonist (mis)remember it in his regular voice, creating much the same implications?
It should be noted that most ads in the "Get Through To Someone" campaign involved some element of paranoid or delusional fantasy, with characters fretting over the barrage of unknowns presented by their individual situations, before their fears were finally put to rest with a call and a sound of that soothing harmonica leitmotif. "Bellows" is something of an anomaly, in that the protagonist professes to be entirely at ease with a state of no communication. In lieu of a paranoid dream sequence, he gets an internal monologue, and his misquoting of Groucho Marx, in the wrong vocals, is the closest he gets to retreating into fantasy, with the misremembered details distinguishing his musings as a display of personal indulgence (those mysterious misplaced vocals representing his own attempt, as part of that internal monologue, to role play not as Marx, but as a more generically suave actor from Hollywood's golden age) and not objective memory. There seems to be a broader theme involving classic Hollywood; when Debbie calls, and his facade is totally punctured by the sudden surge of panic that has him lurching for the telephone, Sally the dog appears and creates an awkward, albeit jovially dispelled misunderstanding ("Sally, get off! No, no no, she's a dog. No, a sort of terrier type thing!"). Is it a coincidence that she is, specifically, a Cairn terrier, the breed most familiar to general audiences as that of Toto, the travelling companion of Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz? These allusions to old Hollywood are emblematic of the protagonist's desire to immerse himself in a world of airy fantasy, exposed as foolish play pretence the instant reality comes calling and drags him straight back down into Kansas. There, he lives in disarray, surrounded by the contents of an upset fruit bowl, hounded by an over-enthusiastic terrier and suddenly very eager for the reaffirmation of Debbie's affections ("Debbie, listen to me," he implores at the end).
The especially fun part with these GTTS ads is noticing which aspect of the mise en scene works its way into the final arrangement, sharing the BT logo's status as the connective tissue between the featured parties, what function it serves within the characters' narrative and how it might be construed as symbolic of their relationship. In this case, it's the eye-catching knick knack that's foregrounded during the opening frames of the ad, an indoor water fountain comprised of a female figure, and droplets trickling all around the sides of her casing. Her foregrounding is juxtaposed with the protagonist's utterance of "Women...", indicating that she's to be seen as the embodiment of his professed views on the fairer sex. As with "Empty Nest Angst", I suspect that water is once again being used as a metaphor for sex, or at least for sexual desire, with this perfectly contained figurine encapsulated by her own ever-flowing desire serving as a telling reflection of how our protagonist envisions Debbie, treated mean and kept keen. But seems just as appropriate those non-stop trickles to be indicative of his own inner craving to connect with Debbie, barely concealed by his purported inclination to play it cool by emitting those bellows of indifference. In actuality, he's a chaotic geyser of ill-suppressed yearning. In the closing collage, the figure's image is situated so as to appear to be gazing from his direction and onto Debbie, a sly visual allegory for how transfixed by her he really is.
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