TACtics: Haunted (You Were Aware Of That, Were You Chris?)

 

When the Transport Accident Commission got started with its television advertising in 1989, its approach was one of unrelenting realism. The pseudo-documentary format of earlier entries like "Girlfriend" and "Beach Road" swiftly evolved into the more salacious shocks of "Darren" and "Fireball", which sought to recreate the sensation of being inside a doomed vehicle moments before a crash, causing the viewer to feel less flies on the wall than active participants in scenarios destined to end in tragedy. The emphasis was squarely on the raw immediacy of those life-changing accidents, and on pinpointing the moment at which we'd slipped past the point of no return and were left to soak in the harrowing realisation that, for the persons involved, things were never going to be the same again. But even the most audacious of formulas can only retain their teeth for so long. Numerous variations and countless psychologically scarred Victorians later, and TAC felt that a fresh angle was in order to complement the emerging millennium. "Haunted" from 2005 shows a dramatic shift from the shock-driven tactics of those earlier campaigns, with an approach that leaned more toward the spirit of the UK's "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Live" series, where emphasis tended to rest less on the accident itself than on the longer term fall-out - in this case, the very longer term. "Haunted" is impressively ambitious in its narrative scope, telling a story that spans multiple decades and demonstrates the bitter extent to which a single failure in adhering to your responsibilities as a driver can leave you mangled as a person, if not always as conspicuously as you might imagine. It seeks to address the very question that was explicitly raised by Ken Stott's character at the end of "Fireman's Story", but was there treated as defying any kind of comprehensible answer - how does a drink driver get on with life whilst having to accommodate the knowledge that their foolish actions brought fatal consequences? Even if you are able to maintain the guise of normalcy going forward, is it not the kind of thing that would be perpetually tearing you up inside?

"Haunted" makes for a fascinating comparison with "Drinking and Driving Wrecks Lives", since it does the one thing that campaign seemed determined to avoid, and does it very effectively - it has you sympathising fundamentally with the perpetrator. This was a perspective largely downplayed in D&DWL, where PIFs centring on the consequences for the drink driver were either about the immediate horrors of being booked for an offence and becoming the most hated person in the vicinity ("Arrest") or filtered through snapshots of the broken innocence for which they were directly accountable ("Kathy" and "Eyes"). The drink driver was usually the incorporeal boogeyman, and rarely humanised ("Mates", one of the few specimens in which we actually got to meet them in the flesh, had them depicted as a snivelling wimp, not unlike the bloody idiot seen staggering about the hospital corridors in "Girlfriend"). They are, naturally, the antagonists of the equations, with the traditional route being to regard them as objects of scorn and contempt (something still manifest in the uncompromising campaign tagline), but the stance taken by "Haunted' is a valid one nevertheless - we do need to be able to put ourselves in their shoes, and appreciate how their lives could so easily become our own if we were to make the same mistakes. In "Haunted" we find ourselves immersed in the world of the perpetrator to the point of entrapment. The claustrophobic cruelties of being wedged inside a steel box hurtling along on a terminal collision course are supplanted with the equally horrifying experience of being stranded inside the head of a man whose outlook has been irrecoverably altered by an ill-advised decision he made at an earlier junction in life, when he hadn't grasped how easy it was to go over the alcohol limit. We get something resembling DETR's "What's It Like?" campaign, with its nightmarish impressions of the offender's inner turmoil, but explored from a more narrative-driven angle.

"Haunted" follows a man named Chris from his early 30s into the later stages of middle age, all throughout which he is persistently troubled by visions of a mysterious boy in an ominous black shirt. Chris gets older, while the boy stays the same age. A subtext of child neglect seems to intermittently suggest itself (Chris's initial reluctance to acknowledge the boy, the lack of a shoe on the boy's left foot), raising the possibility that the boy might be the childhood Chris, or an abandoned son from a prior relationship. It is evident that the boy's appearances represent intrusions on Chris's life within the present, reminders of a past that he would sooner leave behind, but remains beleaguered by. A flashback eventually reveals the identity of the boy - he was the victim of a road accident that Chris caused in his early 20s, when he got behind the wheel after drinking a couple of beers, something that he hadn't considered a huge deal until was faced with the worst possible outcome and blood on his hands. The boy's metaphorical ghost has attached himself to Chris ever since, ready to make himself known whenever Chris gets a little too comfortable in the here and now.

The short works as well as it does, in part, for the lack of any really overt drama outside of the flashback sequence, and even that is handled with a healthy degree of moderation - the featured scenario is similar to that of "Beach Road", with the paramedics trying unsuccessfully to revive the boy while Chris is questioned, only minus the presence of any distraught relatives, a move that allows the emphasis to fall purely on Chris's horror. On the surface, the Chris of the present appears to be leading a very normal and positive life. Whatever the consequences of his drinking driving were for him from a strictly legal standpoint, they are seemingly behind him. He has a job and a couple of kids with whom he shares a patently loving bond. He hasn't completely gone to pieces in the aftermath, but holding it together underneath remains an unending struggle for him. In one sequence we see Chris riding the bus, looking as if he's about to crack a casual smile about something, only to see the kid gazing back at him from an adjacent street and for his momentary mirth to be shut right down. I did wonder if there was any significance to his using public transport in the present day instead of driving, although I suspect that the main purpose of this scene is to show Chris as an active member of a community while illustrating the extent of his isolation (there is an obvious metaphor in none of the other passengers being seated particularly close to him). Awareness of the boy's omnipresence is a burden that he alone has to carry. We see intermittent hints of how this burden might be placing a strain on his relationships, most notably in a shot that shows the boy lying on a bed between Chris and his wife, who are facing in opposite directions - although a wedding ring is still visible on Chris's finger in the final sequence, so I don't think the implication is that it is literally driving them apart. Rather, their physical separation becomes a shorthand for how intrinsically alone Chris is in his suffering, so that even when he's in the company of others, he cannot keep that kid at bay. Those close to him might well be aware of that spectre from his past, but that grief and culpability is not something in which they can personally share.

For Chris, life must go on, but a part of himself has certainly died at the scene of the accident, while the anonymous kid has acquired a kind of ghoulish immortality, as the unabating shadow to Chris's emotional state. Chris is locked into the horror of that terrible moment when the boy was declared dead; in a powerful stylistic touch, the present day is depicted in predominantly gloomy, storm cloud-ridden tones, in contrast to the overwhelming brightness of the flashback, which is firmly established as the incident that overshadows and defines all else. In a way, the boy does represent the younger Chris, in becoming a symbol for their mutually extinguished vitality. The kid is unable to progress any further, while the ageing Chris is unable to fully embrace the life right in front of him, so that even an occasion as ostensibly joyous as his daughter's wedding is undercut by his relentless pangs of conscience. In the full version (see below) we hear a reference to the speech that Chris is due to deliver as the father of the bride, and sense that he perhaps views himself as a fraud, in being called upon to toast the future that he feels he has already cancelled. The film has a cyclic narrative, closing as it began with Chris, now in his early 60s, standing alone out of doors with only his memories, the pain of which has clearly not dulled over time. The final shots within the present are set against a murky evening sky, indicating little prospect of alleviation from his demons - the horizon offers only further darkness.

I'd rate "Haunted" as one of TAC's most affecting pieces. The balance of realism with more abstract storytelling is infinitely more successful than in "Glasses", and it builds up a convincingly intimate portrait of Chris as a genial guy paying for a single (yet severe) mistake from which there is unfortunately no going back. Of note is that there are two different cuts of the film, the full version clocking in at a couple of minutes in length, and a truncated version that's only half as long. The version uploaded to TAC's official YouTube channel is the shorter of the two, which omits a sequence where Chris is seen in his kitchen preparing lunch for his children, as well as various other smaller touches such as the paramedics laying the deceased boy's shirt back over his chest.

Interestingly, toward the tail-end of the decade the UK had "Live With It", an anti-speeding PIF from THINK! with a near-identical premise, although the execution was markedly dissimilar. I wouldn't say that it in any way eclipsed the sombre potency of "Haunted", but for what it's worth it stands out as one of the better THINK! entries, proof that a compelling premise can come in multiple flavours (although in this case always in some variation of grim).

Duffless (aka Kiss My Red Asphalt)

 

It's fair to say that Season 4 was a relatively bright and breezy time in The Simpsons' life. Compared to Season 3, which had an entire trilogy based around scenarios where certain Springfieldians were either at risk or at perceived risk of being done away with by their compatriots, whatever anxieties had been plaguing showrunners Al Jeans and Mike Reiss seemed to be mostly out of their system by their tenure's second half. Season 4 is where they allowed their cartoonier tendencies to rule the roost, and (for better or for worse), the show's world got a whole lot more dynamic and larger than life. Serious and grounded stories were a little less high on the agenda, but that's not to say that the odd dose of genuine discomfort couldn't still work its way into the mix. So which episodes stand out as the darker entries of Season 4 (besides the Halloween show, which is always a given)? Obviously there's "Kamp Krusty" - any installment in which the children of Springfield find themselves far from home and at a summer camp that's actually a sweatshop dedicated to the manufacturing of cheap wallets for sale in Hong Kong was bound to be a harrowing experience. That was a Season 3 holdover, however, so it only half-counts. The implications of "Marge vs The Monorail" are frankly horrendous (how many people in North Haverbrook died?), but played at such an overblown level that they don't necessarily register. The situation in "Marge In Chains" has some distressing overtones, but the script isn't focussed enough to fully realise them. Where Season 4 gets most convincingly uncomfortable, I'd say, is with a pair of episodes where the consequences of Homer's lifestyle choices are at the forefront, namely "Homer's Triple Bypass" and "Duffless". "Bypass", in which Homer comes down with heart disease and requires a major operation, has him once again reckoning with the possibility that his time on Earth might be coming to an imminent halt (as he did in "One Fish, Two Fish, Blowfish, Blue Fish" of Season 2), while serving as a commentary on the American healthcare system, with his quest for surgery that won't break bank. "Duffless' (9F13) is less overtly dramatic - here, Homer is never in a situation where his life is immediately endangered (well, except where an eight-legged freak is involved) - but is in some respects the more emotionally haunting of the two. It works as a quieter, more nuanced character study, in a fairly similar vein to "Selma's Choice" (by astonishing coincidence, both episodes feature trips to dubious Duff-themed attractions), where the lead character is put under pressure and must come to a decision about what it is that will ultimately bring them fulfilment in life.

Debuting on February 18th 1993, this one sees Homer being arrested and convicted of a drink driving offence, resulting in the loss of his licence and prompting Marge to challenge him to give up beer cold turkey for a month. The resulting conflict is a fairly barebones one - once Homer has agreed to Marge's request, there's not a lot for him to do other than to stick it out as his entire world closes in on him and the allurement of the bottle mounts - but there is an honesty in its observations that keeps it at all times compelling. We see Homer being pushed to a really low point, with a good deal of emphasis on the intense loneliness that accompanies his addiction (even while attending an Alch-Anon meeting, he finds no solidarity) and the claustrophobia (a nightmarish sequence where the Duff brand is omnipresent). It's not the easiest going of episodes, but it finds the light at the end of the tunnel, offering up one of the most sweetly redemptive closing sequences of all the series. So sweetly redemptive, in fact, that there's the temptation to accuse it of being disingenuous, since we know that the status quo won't actually be yielding no matter how feel-good the sentiments, but that's a discussion we'll get to in due course.

One of the smartest things about David M. Stern's script is in how it implicitly challenges the underlying assumptions reinforced by what was then one of the series' longest-standings dynamics - namely, how hard it was to feel overly stressed about Homer's drinking habits when Barney Gumble is right there and so perpetually intoxicated that he's barely able to keep himself upright. If you want disingenuous, then maybe take a look at what that's all about. Since as far back as Season 1 (most notably, in "Homer's Night Out"), Barney has been on hand to make Homer look better by providing a sobering example of how Homer's life might have been if he'd really ballsed things up. Compared to Barney, Homer leads a relatively normal existence, with a steady job and a loving family, and for as frequently as he's seen occupying his bar stool at Moe's, he isn't shown to habitually drink to the same excess as Barney. But there is a certain fallacy in all of this, given that that Barney is merely a caricature of an alcoholic, played to such a grotesque extreme that he ceases to be an accurate representation of what addiction necessarily looks like. The implication (particularly prominent in "Homer's Night Out") is that drinking has been allowed to dominate his life because he doesn't have the responsibilities that Homer does to give him the incentive to do better, but then we know that it would be awfully naive to suppose that people with responsibilities like jobs and parenthood can't also be addicts, or that they wouldn't do a better job of disguising it than Barney. Alcohol dependency often exists within the cracks of normalcy, not outside of it. In that regard the opening act of "Duffless" does something fairly deceptive. Homer sneaks out of work early to accompany Barney on a tour of the Duff brewery, where they enjoy a selection of free samples (Barney with far more reckless abandon than Homer). As they're leaving the tour, Homer ostensibly does the responsible thing by confiscating Barney's keys and preventing him from driving them home, only to get pulled over by the cops when he then gets behind the wheel. Homer appears perfectly lucid, but when he's made to take a breathalyser test it's revealed that he is in fact over the limit, resulting in his arrest. Some viewers consider this turn of events to be most unfair, given that Homer had made the effort to be sensible with Barney and was blatantly nowhere near as intoxicated as his companion, but I would argue that that is precisely the point. Homer might have been right to have interfered with Barney, but he ultimately wasn't in a fit state to drive either. (Only a little bit over? You bloody idiot.) It is a common misconception that you need to be drunk to qualify as a drink driver, and while I'm not expecting or desiring for The Simpsons to function as a PSA on that point, it's also a valid observation in terms of what it says about Homer's characterisation. He might be doing okay compared to Barney, but does that actually mean that he's doing okay? I agree that there is an egregious injustice in Barney spitefully giving Homer away and then being encouraged to drive home by Wiggum, but that's Springfield's police department for you. Besides, by the nature of the episode's ending, it wouldn't be accurate to say that Barney gets off scot-free. For what he has to go through, Homer is given fleeting insight into how self-improvement is at least possible, whereas Barney stays deep in the pit of stagnation. 

With Homer having returned home from his legal ordeal, stripped of his licence and faced with the gruelling prospect of attending traffic school and two months' worth of Alch-Anon meetings, Marge quizzes him on his drinking practices using a checklist from a pamphlet, and it becomes sadly evident just how heavily Homer uses alcohol as a crutch for getting through the day. There's a delectable humor in Homer's responses ("Do you ever drink alone?" "Does the Lord count as a person?" "No." "Then yes."), but a genuine undercurrent of pathos too - not least in a moment where Marge asks him if he drinks to escape reality, and we see him take a swig of beer before checking himself out in the bathroom mirror and indulging in the fantasy that he has an ultra-buff body. It's hilarious, but it also illustrates what kind of existential despair is plaguing Homer underneath. For him, drinking offers relief from the weariness of existence, and from the eternal dissatisfaction of being who he is. Agreeing to give it up for a month means having to live with himself, and with the rest of Springfield, in a way that he's really not keen on doing.

With the major theme being how Homer navigates the grim vapidity of his day to day life without falling back on alcohol to ease the monotony, it shouldn't surprise us that "Duffless" emerges as one of the more grounded episodes in a season with a tendency to go off the rails. Conversely, it also offers up a formidable contender for its single biggest "WHAT THE FUCK?!" moment, when Homer attempts to exit the plant through a disused corridor and comes face to face with a spider the size of a Clydesdale horse. People don't talk enough about how reality-breaking that spider is - it is one heck of a fanciful thing to be implementing outside of a Halloween show, even with the unspoken assumption that the spider got really big through exposure to nuclear radiation (a fish with three eyes is one thing, but a spider that's like something out of a 1950s B-movie might be pushing it somewhat). The spider can supposedly be subdued with the recitation of Biblical verses, but if you're like Homer and don't know any of those, chucking a rock at its head will work just as effectively. That spider's not so tough. (It's also purple, which makes it marginally less horrifying than it would be if it were a more conventional spider colour.)

As much as it is, I'll admit that I'm cool with the spider. I rather enjoy the random nonsense of it all. Intellectually, its presence should be treated as a far bigger deal, but it's also the kind of detail you can only get away with if you push past it as quickly and as cheekily as the narrative does. The spider is, in the scheme of things, quite harmless. For me, the thing that prevents "Duffless" from attaining true greatness is the B-story, which sees Bart destroying Lisa's project for an upcoming science fair and Lisa seeking vengeance through a back-up experiment involving a hamster, a supply of cupcakes and an electrical current. It's nothing really terrible, but it's far from my favourite Simpsons subplot, and I promise you it's not because of the scene where the hamster receives a mild electrical shock. I know I've a tendency to grumble whenever the show does jokes about abused hamsters, but on this occasion that's honestly the least of my problems. I'm of the opinion that the two older Simpsons siblings work best when they're a team, and any episode that pits them against each other is automatically on shaky ground. It's not that it can't be pulled off, but I don't think that Stern ever lands the right balance. Here, their rivalry is nowhere near as mean-spirited and one-sided as in "My Sister, My Sitter" of Season 8, but it still leaves rather a sour note, which is ironic for a subplot that was presumably implemented to give balancing levity to an A-story that touches on heavy topics. Bart destroys a futuristic tomato that Lisa had been growing using steroids - not out of malice toward Lisa, but because Skinner presented him with an opportunity for mayhem that he couldn't pass up - leaving her naturally distraught (she'd also had aspirations of the tomato being used to combat world hunger, so...nice going there, Bart). With the science fair looming, she devises an alternative project that involves running a series of tests to determine if her brother is a slower learner than a hamster, with the intention of humiliating him in front of the school.

Quick question to Mr Stern - are we supposed to sympathise with Bart in this situation, or Lisa? Because neither party is coming off particularly well. There is, in theory, nothing wrong with attempting to explore Lisa's pettier, more childish side - in fact, it's what fuels some of the subplot's best laughs ("That'll learn 'im to bust my tomater!" is an absolute banger of a one-liner, and I love how Lisa's degraded grammar all but affirms her personal debasement). There's amusement to be had from her ruthless antics, but it's hard to get past the fact that she is being extremely vindictive. At the same time, I've no real sympathy for Bart. It's not as though he even attempts to atone or take responsibility for wrecking her tomato, nor are we given any evidence of Homer, Marge or even Skinner reading him the riot act for it. So I don't like the fact that he wins at the end (with victory handed to him by Skinner, no less, although it does allow him to give a shout-out to the very scientist who inspired his name). There is something about this whole outcome that feels terribly unsatisfying. Honestly, I'd have much preferred it if Bart and Lisa had both lost and the ribbon had gone to that overzealous father who'd commandeered his son's volcano project and worked too long and hard on it to let the poor confused kid share any of the glory. Also, this might be a tad nitpicky, but another reason I don't much care for the subplot lies in how it fudges the timeline of the A-story. Lisa explicitly states that the science fair is happening in three days, meaning that the actual length of time spanned by the bulk of the onscreen action is very short, and Homer's prolonged period of abstinence is left to be largely rushed through within the last few minutes. This might have felt a tad less hurried if there'd been a little more ambiguity as to how much time had already elapsed when we get to the science fair, and an aching Homer is seen drooling over Ralph's alcohol-fuelled car.

Where the subplot best succeeds is in its darker, more unsettling moments, like Lisa imagining a hamster with Bart's head getting stuck in a maze and crying out "Help me! Help me!" in the manner of the human-fly hybrid from the 1958 version of The Fly (consistently one of the most disturbing pop culture items you can possibly reference - just look at The Emperor's New Groove). Then there's the allusion to A Clockwork Orange (1971), where a highly-conditioned Bart attempts to grab hold of a pair of cupcakes (just like Alex reaching for the topless woman's breasts) before collapsing in a quivering heap. I'm likewise always unnerved by the high-pitched whining Bart makes during his first encounter with the electrified cupcake (which the subtitles on Disney+ helpfully indicate that is a Three Stooges reference - ah well, I've already admitted I'm not massively well-versed in their lore). Incidentally, on the DVD commentary Reiss talks about how difficult it was implementing the moment where the hamster gets shocked (this, coupled with Lisa's white saviour fantasy, admittedly feels like an out of character thing for her to do now, even if the hamster isn't seriously harmed). They were aware that the audience's sympathy would lie with the hamster and looked to make it as quick and easy as possible...which begs the question as to why they were so callously indifferent to that poor expired hammy we saw in "Dog of Death"? Given the frequency with which hamsters seem to end up dead or imperilled on The Simpsons, I had gotten the impression that the show's crew regard them as acceptable punching bags, although Reiss insists that this isn't the case. (Jean does, however, go on to immediately confirm my suspicions about them being a bunch of cat haters, when shares his theory that onscreen kitty carnage is all well and passable in television, but once you've killed a dog, you've automatically lost your audience. I don't know if I buy that as a universal principle. Wouldn't it depend on whether your audience was comprised predominantly of dog lovers or cat lovers?)

 

As brutal as those kids are, the most disturbing portion of the episode, bar none, would be the video Homer is forced to watch in traffic school detailing the potentially grave consequences of drink driving, which is presented by an incongruously buoyant Troy McClure, star of such esteemed driver's ed titles as Alice's Adventures Through The Windshield Glass and The Decapitation of Larry Leadfoot. I've never gotten official confirmation on this, but I strongly suspect that this film was modelled on the Red Asphalt series, an infamous collection of films produced by the California Highway Patrol between 1960 and 2006 that urged responsible driving using tactics straight out of the Mondo playbook (shocking images of crumpled vehicles and mangled bodies abound). Specifically, I believe that Troy's film was based on the 1989 entry, Red Asphalt III, which opens with a similar mise-en-scene and has the presenter saying "What a _____ waste!" multiple times. If you're tempted to look up Red Asphalt III, know that it isn't for the faint of heart (among other stomach-churning vignettes, we're shown footage of a driver whose head has taken a massive battering, and I think you see parts of his brain spilling out into the wreckage). Appalling stuff, and yet I'll admit to having a certain sympathy for Homer's reaction as he sits there giggling at the lurid onslaught. He's portrayed as an anomaly among an audience of fellow offenders who are all at serious risk of losing their lunches, but he nails a fundamental aspect of the experience of having to soak in a production of this nature (either because you were forced to do so in traffic school or because you're a masochistic sicko like myself and your morbid curiosity got the best of you). So often, it is insanely difficult not to laugh, particularly with a specimen like Red Asphalt III that insists on being as overbearing as possible with its grisliness. I would argue that it's not even schadenfreude. Sometimes the brain just goes, "You know what would be the most inappropriate reaction right now? Laughter!", and before you know it you've lost control. Truth is, laughter can be a natural response to stimuli so terrible and overwhelming that it defies being processed in any other way. Homer's exact assertion is, "It's funny because I don't know 'em!", suggesting that it's is a privilege of the distance between ourselves and the subject, and that's valid enough - often, the stimuli is so extreme that it doesn't fully register as someone else's lived horror. The issue doesn't just lie with Homer either; the irreverently upbeat music and cheesy puns that accompany the presentation are concessions that, no matter how high-minded the professed intentions, there is something dreadfully exploitative about exhibiting real-life death and suffering in this manner. All I know is that allowing myself the occasional ignoble snicker is what made it possible for me to get through Red Asphalt III. It is a confounding film. Unlike Troy, the presenter in the initial sequence does a decent and respectful job of reminding us of what's really at stake in these situations: "Remember that each [body bag] carried away contains a destroyed human life. Not a dummy or a cleverly made-up actor, but a real body. A lifeless person. Next time it may be a friend, a brother, your child, or you." But then we go into the studio with our main presenter, and he isn't quite so delicate in his approach. He gestures, with a more theatrical anger, to a pile of videotapes that he tells us were created by highway patrol officers depicting real accidents - "This one is simply labelled: 17-year-old DUI, six dead!" It's all a little much to take in. There are times when awkward tittering is the only coping mechanism we're left with.

It's also the only mirth that Homer derives from what's otherwise a soul-crushing experience. As he gets deeper into his dry month, he finds himself a pariah in every social situation, at once the sole sane individual who can see the rampant futility of the world with his metaphorical beer googles off and a man going slowly to pieces as he's pushed to the very limits of his endurance. Being a rare sole sober spectator at a baseball game opens his eyes to what a tedious, chaotic mess the entire affair is, while having to sit through the supperware demonstration that Patty and Selma are hosting in the Simpsons' home (I'm guessing that he's usually down at Moe's when this sort of thing is going on?) has his thoughts turning quietly murderous. Empathy and community are bitterly denied him, even by those who claim to be peddlers in it. He gets exiled from the local Alch-Anon group when he confesses that his cravings for anything remotely close to a beer had him crawling beneath the bleachers of a football stadium ingesting dirt, and the judgemental pricks therein won't even pretend to understand that desolation (not even Hans Moleman, who here reveals himself to be a 31-year-old who ruined his life through excessive drinking). The greatest menace, though, comes from the Duff advertising that's slapped in every direction he looks, and serves as a constant reminder that it's never less than him against the world. Earlier in the season, "Lisa The Beauty Queen" had tackled the topic of cigarette promotions and their odious efforts to create a generation of young smokers, and it was explicitly noted in that episode's commentary that such an outspoken attack was only possible because cigarette companies couldn't advertise on television and the networks didn't have to worry about stepping on their toes. With alcohol it's a much thornier issue, although "Duffless" still gets surprisingly audacious in critiquing how a product so potentially harmful can be pushed on consumers who can't handle it. The promos Homer has to contend with in the present might not be as bare-faced as the 1950s television ad glimpsed at the Duff brewery, where viewers were urged by a cartoon medic to fill up their undernourished Q-zones with "pure beer goodness", but their sheer omnipresence proves just as diabolical. It illustrates how difficult it is for someone fighting addiction when the pressure to drink is so deeply ingrained within every aspect of the cultural scenery. It gets to the point where even a passing train bearing the Duff logo on every carriage appears to taunt him by repeatedly commanding him to "Chug".

Even with the odds so heavily stacked against him, Homer makes it through the month with his promise to Marge intact, at which point he's eager to head straight to Moe's and get his Q-zone overflowing once more. Marge is disappointed that this would be his first inclination, since the entire purpose of this exercise was to prove to him that he had the willpower to survive without alcohol, not give him an excuse to go on the mother of all binges. Still, when Homer arrives at his sorely-missed watering hole, he finds that he can't go back to the way things were. He looks around himself, takes note of the palpable dolour that hangs over the bar's patrons, and becomes conscious of how much his own perspective has shifted within those 30 days of non-boozing. He tells Moe to put his beer back in the fridge and leaves, having decided that he'd sooner spend the evening sober, and in the company of Marge. It's here that the episode runs into its greatest challenge - we all like happy endings, and after the anguish Homer has endured in this particular go-around, it feels as though he's earned one, but how does it balance itself against our awareness that this newfound harmony is probably not going to last? Homer's weakness for Duff is too prominent a character trait to be going anywhere, and will prove his expressed Achilles' heel just two episodes along, in "So It's Come To This: A Simpsons Clip Show", so does the ending become any less sincere with that in mind? There is a flip side to this problem, which is that alcohol addiction isn't an issue likely to be resolved by just one month's worth of abstinence. Realistically it would be something that Homer should expect to struggle with for a while. So perhaps the ending risked looking disingenuous either way. Instead, it exits on a glorious middle ground, with Homer gaining a moment of clarity on what it is that really makes his life worth living, and the sincerity of that realisation certainly not being in doubt (he was willing to give up the beer in the first place for her). Meanwhile, Moe speaks on behalf of the slighted status quo, asserting that Homer will be back in his usual spot before long, and working in an odd bit of pseudo-fourth wall breaking when he gestures toward the viewer and indicates that they, too, will return. It's then revealed that he is in fact pointing his finger at Barney, who's very much wedded to his personal Hell (to the extent that if Moe's bar didn't close, he wouldn't set foot outside its walls), but for a brief second, the viewer is implicated in this culture of sorry dependency. We know that nothing's going to change substantially for Homer, and we wouldn't miss it for the world. It's as if our need to return to our television sets night after night and while away the hours chuckling at the kinds of sad saps who populate sitcoms is indicative of some existential hole within our own lives. We're all creatures of our own dubious habits, after all.

In the meantime, Homer and Marge are allowed ride off into the sunset singing "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head", in a homage to Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (1969). There's a cute visual gag in that Homer still doesn't have his licence back and is having to ride about on Lisa's little pink bicycle to get anywhere. With Marge perched on the handle bars it should be additionally awkward, but they're managing. It also doubles as a touching metaphor, with the bike, once a symbol of Homer's failure and humiliation, becoming his final means of mobility, a chance to glide free from the burdens of his past, now that his recent upheaval has directed him to an alternate path. It's a path that seems to only ever open on a temporary basis in the world of The Simpsons, but it's a reassurance to know that it's there. 

 

BBC2 edit alert!:  The death of Diana, Princess of Wales on 31st August 1997 had an inescapable impact on the zeitgeist in the UK. I remember tuning into Sky 1 to watch The Simpsons that very day and having to sit through numerous links showing footage of Diana and her family set to mournful music, creating such a deluge of misery that they had me feeling dirty for merely desiring a bit of fun and levity with a cartoon family in between. You'd have thought that "Duffless", which contains an explicit shout-out to Diana Spencer, would have been an obvious target for Sky 1's censoring scissors when it next appeared. Yet I remember being surprised when they aired "Duffless" in what was still the close aftermath and the entire Princess Di sequence was left completely intact. It's not that there's anything overtly problematic or offensive about the sequence in itself (the joke is just Barney being a drunken wally, in mistaking something as ridiculous as a pile of rags for the Princess of Wales, and Homer being comically hurt in the process), but given the atmosphere at the time I wouldn't necessarily have faulted Sky if they'd opted to play it safe and not have Diana joked about in any capacity (particularly given the episode's broader subject matter, and its subsequent talk of fatal road accidents). But no, they either overlooked it or decided it was okay. And then when BBC2 got round to airing the episode (some time later, once things had settled down a notch), they did implement all the anticipated edits, so that Barney simply drives forward without explanation, causing Homer to miss the mattress on the roof of the car and hit the ground, and the sequence immediately ends. While I've no doubt that the Beeb made these cuts in the interests of not ruffling anybody's feathers, it's quite possible that they thought it would be confusing to have Diana referenced as though she were still among the living - as I recall, they also cut the moment in "Treehouse of Horror IV" where Richard Nixon, having been summoned to the Jury of the Damned, protests that he's not dead yet, on the grounds that Nixon was dead by the time the BBC aired it and the joke would have made no sense. To which I say, they should have given a bit of credit to the viewer's ability to decipher the original context - not least because the actual punchline of that exchange was Devil Flanders' "Listen, I did a favour for you!", which will never not be hilarious. Also, the man never drank a Duff in his life.

This was not, however, the most bewildering edit to be made to The Simpsons on account of Princess Diana. Believe me, I've a much juicier anecdote to share when I get round to covering "Rosebud". Spoiler: that one was Sky 1's doing.

Kill List (aka There's A Bigger Picture In The Business World)

The opening act of Ben Wheatley's 2011 film Kill List closes with a fade to black and a whispered voice commanding its protagonist to "wake up". The voice belongs to a child - he's none other than Sam (Harry Simpson), the son of embittered ex-soldier Jay (Neil Maskell) - but is not immediately recognisable as such. It sounds sinister and otherworldly, as though beckoning Jay into another, more treacherous reality. As the second act gets underway, Jay does indeed leave the confines of his drab domestic existence and venture into territory that, while its nature was intermittently hinted at throughout that first half hour, feels miles removed from it. Come the third act, and Jay is once again urged to wake up, this time by his Swedish-born wife Shel (MyAnna Buring), and heads out into a darkness so grotesque and off of the beaten track that by the end he doesn't even seem to be dwelling in the same universe as where he started. On the surface, Jay does not appear to awaken, but rather treks ever deeper into an increasingly unsettled dream - what originates as a drama about marital stresses, set in a familiar world of suburban skylines and awkward dinner parties, morphs into an ultra-violent thriller about the uncovering and destruction of an underground video ring, before lurching into full-bore folk horror for its big finale. Early on, the film teases us with the possibility that Jay's journey might represent a repeated failure to come to grips with reality, as he and his long-time business partner Gal (Michael Smiley) drive to meet with their new Client (Struan Rodger) and park their vehicle underneath an oddly incongruous rainbow (which, as per Wheatley's commentary, was not planned and got into the picture by total kismet), a playful hint that we are not in Kansas (or Sheffield) any more. And yet, the world that Jay spends the middle half traversing is not exactly Oz, and sleeping is the one thing that he never seems to get up to. On the road, he spends most of his time in nondescript budget hotels and assumes the life of a wandering insomniac, gazing out of windows, as if hoping that some grand purpose will reveal itself, and surveying only street lights and vacant spaces. Only as the second act is nearing its end, and Jay is about to return to his domestic life with Shel and Sam, does he find something resembling the answer he seeks. He looks outside, and sees a figure on the horizon returning his gaze. For a brief moment, at the height of Jay's restlessness, the mundaneness that dominates the picture, even at its most repugnant, appears to converge with something overtly more fantastical. Jay is not asleep in this moment. Rather, his reality is only just coming into focus.

The script, penned by real husband and wife team Wheatley and Amy Jump, opens with a series of hauntingly authentic arguments between Jay and Shel, and with Sam silently attempting to go about his business in the backdrop. Crucially, one of these quarrels establishes that Jay has a tendency (as Gal later defines it) to go "way off list", when he is tasked with buying groceries for an upcoming dinner date but fails to follow the list Shel has supplied and spends £197 on copious bottles of wine and tins of tuna. The major underlying tension between them is that Jay has been out of work for eight months, and the family's finances are beginning to feel the strain. Jay is plagued by pains both physical (he insists that the upkeep of the jacuzzi in the garden is a necessary expense for his back, and is informed by Shel, perhaps tellingly, that it is all in his head) and psychological (he is troubled by memories of a previous job in Kiev, the details of which are kept to a minimum). He obviously feels a tremendous sense of dissatisfaction in his day to day life, a feeling of being unable to measure up to the chivalric ideals of the King Arthur legends adored by his son. In one scene he attempts to supersede the Arthurian bedtime story requested by Sam with a mythologised retelling of what we presume to be his own experiences as a soldier in Iraq (they take place in a land called "Bagdadistan") - experiences which, he makes clear during the subsequent dinner scene, brought him little in the way of fulfilment or prestige. Despite the harrowing realism with which the family's domestic disarray is presented in the establishing sequences, it would appear that joy and unity has not completely evaporated from their ranks - Jay, Shel and Sam are at their happiest while play-fighting with the toy swords that Jay has also picked up on his haphazard shopping trip, an ostensibly wholesome interaction that foreshadows the film's tragic final outcome.

The world they inhabit is in decline and about to undergo a "reconstruction" - something set in motion with the arrival of Fiona (Emma Fryer), Gal's enigmatic new girlfriend, who accompanies him to Jay and Shel's dinner party. During the dinner, it becomes apparent that Jay and Gal have a dark history working as assassins for fire, and tensions arise as to whether Jay's arm will be twisted by Gal and Shel into "getting back on the horse" and accepting a local job in the UK that requires them to bump off a list comprised of three names. Fiona, who is seemingly ignorant to all of this and believes Jay and Gal to be travelling salesmen, introduces herself as working in "human resources". She is described by Gal as a "hatchet person", indicating that there is a parallel to be drawn between her line of work and his own. Fiona elaborates on her role through a barrage of euphemisms: "If there's a department that's underperforming, I go in and assess the extraneous manpower and de-force accordingly." When Jay and Shel deduce that she lays people off, she insists that it isn't personal, and that "there's a bigger picture in the business world...a lot of dirty work to be done." Fiona presents herself as almost hopelessly naive - she rubs the Northern Irish Gal the wrong way with her insinuation that the Troubles was an absurd conflict because Catholics and Protestants are "all the same religion" - but we're given enough evidence that she has entered into Jay's house with a sinister agenda of her own. She repeatedly disappears into the bathroom, where we observe her carving an occult symbol behind the mirror, just as Jay and Shel appear to have found a resolution to their own falling out. Elsewhere, there is a moment where Gal takes Sam aside and jokingly (one would hope) advises him to give tap water a wide berth because "the government puts stuff in it that shrinks your balls". He echoes Jay's concerns about modern suburban life being stifling and emasculating, while evoking the feeling of there being some malevolent unseen design dictating the characters' lives. The horror of Kill List lies in the gradual revelation of this design, and how it conceals itself within the most banal of corners. If Jay spends any portion of the film within a dream, it is surely in the grey prosaicness of that initial act, where he has the luxury of being able to stay submerged in ignorance and in his (relatively) guileless fantasies of attaining legendary heroism. Shel is right about the jacuzzi's significance being all in his head, insofar as in represents an indulgence in a materialism that seems totally detached from the reality of their situation. As pointed out, their picture doesn't extend any further than their front door, but there is a bigger picture beyond it, in which Fiona is clearly well within her element.

Jay and Gal sign a contract with the Client (who insists on spilling blood from the palm of Jay's hand as part of the process) and set out to hunt down the individuals on their given kill list - the Priest (Gareth Tunley), the Librarian (Mark Kempner) and the MP (James Nickerson). But even then, these contract killings play out in a world that seems oppressively ordinary and mundane. They note that the home where the Priest resides "doesn't look like house of a major villain", and the Librarian's front walls are adorned deceptively with flowers. The most notable things to happen to the men when they're not handling their business involve a credit card declining (an everyday annoyance, but one that Jay frets will brings unnecessary attention their way) and, a notch more disconcertingly, an encounter with an evangelist Christian group who get Jay's goat by breaking out into a singalong of "Onward Christian Soldier" at a hotel dining area. The outside world seems eerily empty and (aside from the Priest's parishioners and some out of focus children Jay observes on a sports field) largely devoid of incidental souls - the Christian group prove intolerable because the dinning room is, as Gal observes, "like a graveyard and yet they still fucking plod up next to us". A mounting feeling that something is off comes in the reactions they get from their targets as they corner and dispatch them, giving the impression that they are in a bizarre joke that the hitmen are not - the Priest thanks Jay before he shoots him dead, while the Librarian tells him how honored he is to have met him before being brutally pummelled to death with a hammer (and despite being a contender for the film's most luridly violent sequence, it turns into somewhat of a black comedy number, with the Librarian repeatedly thanking Jay in between drawn-out screams of agony). Meanwhile, Gal tussles with his conscience in ways that Jay does not - despite sharing in Jay's disdain for the Christian group, he is not without religious leanings and has misgivings about the prospect of killing a priest (which he attempts to overcome with the resigned observation that, "At least we're not killing a toddler" - interpreted by some viewers as a hint as to what actually went down on that fateful job in Kiev). He also grows increasingly uneasy with the relish with which Jay seems to embrace his hitman duties.

 

Once again, Jay cannot resist the temptation to wander off list, when he catches wind of the kinds of videos the Librarian archives (implied to be of the snuff or pornographic variety) and is so morally repulsed that he forces the Librarian to reveal the whereabouts of the people behind them so that he can personally take them out. But even with Jay actively looking for trouble, we get the inkling that the really dangerous stuff is going on where he is not. Although Fiona supposedly dumps Gal in the aftermath of the dinner (he reports waking up to find her gone and a Dear John letter taped to his penis), we learn from Jay's communication with Shel that she has integrated herself into the family home in his absence. In their quieter, more casual conversations between waiting for their quarry to appear, Jay and Gal discuss Fiona and dance unknowingly close to her insidious nature - Jay describes her as a "glary-eyed phantom", while Gal calls her a "real demon in bed". Gal confesses that he has been unable to get her out of his head, and it seems that he is not the only one whose mind Fiona has infiltrated. She is the figure that Jay sees outside of his hotel window, having emerged from the void to return his heedful gaze. Fiona has become a seemingly omnipresent part of Jay's life, capable both of keeping tabs on him from alongside the road and lying in wait for his return back at home. The two of them share a conspiratorial wave that indicates a possible sexual attraction on Jay's part, although whatever adulterous stirrings he might feel prove entirely symbolic. She represents the allure of the unseen world beyond his domain, the apparent purpose for which he has persistently hungered in his day to day life. Her entry into his family's house is not benevolent, but rather points toward the darker meaning of her claims of being in "human resources" with a duty to "assess the extraneous manpower and de-force accordingly". "Hatchet person" would indeed be an accurate description of what she does, for she has identified and earmarked several inessential individuals for death, although not necessarily the same ones on the list that the Client has handed Jay and Gal. This particular list lands a lot closer to home.

A figure in Kill List who gets little attention in discussions of the film but who strikes me as an intriguing component of its underlying puzzle is the family cat, who seems at once to represent all parties in the equation. The cat itself goes unnamed and is only briefly seen alive, but is supposedly responsible for the mangled animal carcass the family find in their back garden at the beginning of the second act, before Jay goes off to resume his role as ritual executioner. The animal is a rabbit, but is so badly mutilated (it has effectively been turned inside out), that Jay is only able to identify it as such by dipping his finger in the mass of blood and organs and tasting it (much to Shel's revulsion). The cat is, notably, black, a choice that would appear to align it with the bewitching Fiona and her raven hair - indeed, there is a sleight of hand within the script in which the cat and Fiona become momentarily blurred. When Shel remarks, "She's taking the piss", our immediate thought might be that "she" refers to Fiona. We might even assume a connection between the dead body that turns up on the family's lawn and the occult symbol that Fiona had secretly carved in their bathroom the night before. Jay's response clarifies that they are talking about the cat, although the context, along with the severely mutilated state of the rabbit, primes us for something a little more sinister. There is, in the imagery of Jay cooking the rabbit and devouring it out in his garden (with Shel having objected to his doing so inside the kitchen), the suggestion that a sacrificial offering has been made to Jay, and of a state of separation being required between Jay and his family in order for him to accept it. At the same time, we might detect questions about Jay's real nature in Shel's comments about the cat to Sam: "Daddy thinks the cat brings us little presents...I just think the cat likes killing rabbits." Jay aspires to be a provider for his family, and whatever evil he might commit as a hitman is supposedly being carried out for their benefit, although could it be that he's really in it for the thrill of killing? Later, when Fiona returns to the family home, we hear that she has been bringing Sam presents, a development that seems uncomfortably evocative of the cat's supposed rabbit-killing practices, once again aligning Fiona with the cat and raising questions about her own intentions. Conversely, the cat is also tied up in the innocence of Sam, which is imperilled with Fiona's arrival - according to Shel, Sam has reported having bad dreams about the cat, a hint of the danger facing himself and Shel. Finally, the cat is a hunter who becomes the hunted, foreshadowing Gal's own grisly fate, and the extent to which Jay has been the prey of external forces all along.

(Spoilers now follow) 

The cat is the first of Jay's household to die, when, thrown off by the experience with the video ring, he tries returning home with the contract unfinished and the matter of the MP still outstanding. She might not, however, have been first individual close to Jay to be eliminated by the powers secretly pulling the strings. Prior to discovering the cat's lifeless body strung up on his porch, he visits the local clinic, seeking medical attention for the infected cut on his palm, and finds that his regular GP has been replaced by a mysterious gentleman (Damien Thomas) who advises him to think only of the present moment - the question of what happened to Dr Bapkin is never answered. By now Jay has already journeyed past the point of no return. His entire world has been rearranged in his absence, and he finds that he cannot slip back into the way things were before. Nor do he and Gal have any means of altering their place within this scheme. When they approach the Client to ask that he release them from the contract, offering to find replacements to complete the job in their stead, they are refused, with the Client informing them that he sees them for what they are: "You're cogs...so keep turning." They are warned that their families will be killed if they do not live up to their duties, but it seems that Jay never had any genuine choice in this matter. For as they set out to locate the MP and complete the contract, Jay finds himself unwittingly fulfilling a second, unwritten kill list. By the end of the film, he will have lived up to his full potential, but every single being he cares about will have been obliterated on his path to glory.

Jay and Gal journey to the MP's whereabouts, on secluded rural grounds, and find him fronting a gathering of masked pagan cultists carrying out a ritual human sacrifice. Upon becoming aware of the hitmen, the MP openly accepts death, but the other cultists attack and pursue them down an underground tunnel, where Gal is set upon and gutted like a fish (or rather like a rabbit?). Jay is able to fend the cultists off, but Gal is left so brutally eviscerated that Jay is obligated to mercy kill him. The context in which he kills Gal is clear, and yet it proves troubling that Gal's last words, before Jay pulls the trigger, are "Thanks", echoing the dying words of his previous targets and implanting the suggestion that Gal is yet another sacrifice who goes willingly so that Jay may fulfil his purpose. Jay attempts to escape and to reunite with Shel and Sam (who have relocated to a holiday cottage for their safety), but is ultimately captured by the cultists, who force him to duel with one further target, a cloaked "Hunchback", in a knife fight. Jay rises gamely to the challenge and emerges as the victor, having stabbed the Hunchback multiple times, only for the cloak to be removed and it to be revealed that his opponent was really Shel with Sam upon her back (recalling their mock battle from the initial act). Sam has already succumbed to his wounds; meanwhile, the bleeding Shel looks Jay in the eyes and collapses into a fit of laughter before she too expires. This laughter is considerably more disturbing than Gal's reaction to being put down by Jay, in part because it isn't entirely explicable. It seems improbable that Shel was herself a part of the conspiracy all along, given that in the preceding scene she was shown putting her own military background into use in an effort to protect Sam from the attacking cultists. And yet she too seems to go down embracing her own destruction, and Sam's, as though she's suddenly in on the joke that has, until now, eluded Jay. For his part, Jay responds to the final reveal with more limited emotion - he seems saddened, but not exactly distraught. He'd previously admitted to feeling bad about the cat and was obviously distressed at having to kill Gal, but by the end seems to have lost his ability to be overly appalled by his situation, or indeed by himself. Kill List closes with the cultists removing their masks, revealing that their members include Fiona, the Client and the replacement GP, before the expressionless Jay is crowned as their new leader.

Jay ends up realising his destiny as an AntiChrist figure, or more accurately an AntiArthur figure, an ostensibly ordinary being who becomes king when his capabilities are recognised as excelling that of a regular man. Unlike King Arthur, Jay's actions throughout the film indicate that his reign is unlikely to be one of benevolence. Jay and Gal had earlier asked the Client how long they had been working for him; the cultists had, it seemed, already marked Jay out as their prospective new leader since long before the depicted events, and had been manipulating him for all of that time. Wheatley's film invites inevitable comparisons with Robin Hardy's highly influential folk horror The Wicker Man (1973), and to the similarly gut-wrenching fate of its protagonist Neil Howie - Jay is valued for his ability to sacrifice others as opposed to becoming a sacrifice himself, but in practice we might sense little difference. Jay has spent the narrative in search of a mythical chivalry, which ultimately must stay mythical. He needs, fundamentally, to see himself as a righteous man combatting the evils of the world, but there is clearly a great deal of darkness in his soul with which he has long struggled to reckon, and which he finally gives way to. He indicates during the dinner scene that his dissatisfaction in serving in the Iraq War came from it being difficult to know where he stood in that conflict, and wishes that he could have gone up against the Nazis; he also expresses something resembling admiration for the Nazis when he states that they "had no time for extraneous", raising questions as to whether that yearning stems from him seeing them as clearly-defined villains or as worthy adversaries. He later tries to justify the killing of the Priest to the reluctant Gal on the grounds that the Priest is potentially a child molester, and adds, "As a parent, I'd do them all, even if I weren't getting paid." He insists that he feels no remorse for going off list and massacring the video ring because "They were bad people, they should suffer." But by the film's end, he has sacrificed the very values he saw himself as fighting to uphold, in the form of his wife and son, and the question of whether he was truly his family's benefactor or merely a man who revelled in violence has been answered. It is Jay's weakness for violence, we suspect, that has made him so susceptible to the manipulations of the cult; his deficiencies in cutting it as a family man, meanwhile, are precisely why the family themselves needed to be cut loose from the picture. So long as they were around, they were reminders of where he was failing to be all that he could be. And with them removed, he no longer has any pretensions of being guided by morality.

In those final moments Jay wears a crown, but has he actually transcended the level of the cog the Client had earlier asserted that he was? Or has he in fact been recognised as the ultimate cog, a killing machine that can be programmed to destroy anything so long as he can be convinced that it serves a higher purpose? Jay's impassiveness during the closing arrangement could be interpreted two ways - perhaps he's come to terms with that grim reality and is sinking into his new role, or perhaps the hollowness of his supposed victory is not lost on him. There is an uneasy feeling of destiny in this outcome, as if something well-entrenched in Jay's nature was always going to bring him to this point - in one scene, he shares with Gal that he "used to love looking at fires" as a child, foreshadowing the flaming torches that surround him in the final sequence. The prevalence of the inhumane in the everyday is a recurring theme throughout - it is notable that even the innocence of Sam's play pretence reveals a cultural worship of violence that is ingrained from a very young age. He likes to play with swords and other toy weapons and, as acknowledged, it is that seemingly joyful sword fight at the start that emerges as one of the film's most chilling omens on repeat viewings. Sam is clearly upset about the cat, but during its burial is busy firing off his water blaster.

We might be left wondering what the interval with the evangelist Christian group had to do with any of this, aside from depicting Jay in a more restrained mode - he talks about how much he would like to massacre the group, but settles simply for taking their guitar (because Jimi Hendrix they ain't) and giving them a royal chewing out. The group is in some respects an entirely everyday annoyance, strangers who encroach on boundaries and show no consideration for the world beyond their own bubble. But they are also an intrusion from from an entirely disparate reality, with their talk of redemption seeming misplaced enough against the tedious banality of the restaurant, let alone the dark path that Jay and Gal are currently on. Jay suggests that they pass on a message to God, that "If you're the kind of people he hangs about with, stay out of my way", while Gal requests, with more feigned cordiality, that if they're "speaking to the big man, put in a word for us". By the end, Jay has become the big man (one that any devoted cultist would be thrilled to be personally bumped off by), and has swapped out his family for the kind of odious folks a god would hang about with. His own end point was foreshadowed when he told the evangelists' leader, "Your time and place is in a very isolated location, where no one is likely to be for about a hundred fucking years". Jay has wandered extremely far from home, taken up the mantle of a god of a forbidden landscape (without ever ceasing to be a cog), and still seems every bit as alienated as he was when he began. 

The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #59: Britain's Bipping Hyena Problem

 

It's no secret that hyenas get a bad rap. Much has been made about what appalling PR Disney's The Lion King was for their kind. Beside the magnificent lions they made for gruesome little characters - scrawny, sleazy, slavering and perpetually cackling - but it goes deeper than them not being what you'd describe as conventional lookers. There is something the film finds innately cursed about the hyena, casting them as the very antithesis of the values signified by the Circle of Life (this is in spite of the repeated emphasis throughout on the connectedness of all beings, which should very logically include the hyenas), so much so that their mere presence in the Pridelands must not be tolerated, lest it lead to the order breaking down (there's even a dubious attempt at coding them as Nazis, by having them goose step through Scar's big musical sequence). Simba learns early on that one of his key responsibilities as monarch will be to keep the hyenas in their miserable little ghetto and outside of his kingdom; Scar's downfall, meanwhile, comes in allowing them to enter in and have free rein. I don't for a second believe that Disney did this because they thought that real hyenas were bad and wanted to convey that message - rather, they just needed an animal that fit certain archetypes and symbols in terms of the story they wanted to tell. But we all know that Disney has a lot to answer for in terms of colouring the public's perception of particular animal types (they made Dalmatians a beloved breed, while Siamese cats have conversely never quite shaken the stink that Lady and The Tramp left on them). Their hyena negativity wasn't exactly an isolated instance in popular culture either. In Yann Martel's 2001 novel Life of Pi, there is a section where the narrator says something along the lines of, "I am not one to harbour prejudices against entire species of animal, BUT..." and proceeds to rant on for about two pages or so about what an exceptionally grotesque creature the hyena is, to the extent that even an animal enthusiast couldn't extend them much love (it's been a long time since I read Martel's book, but at that point I remember rolling my eyes so far back that I may have glimpsed the insides of my skull). Once again, the hyena is contrasted unfavourably with a type of big cat. The tiger, Richard Parker, is every bit as much a dangerous predator, but his deadliness is offset by how beautiful he is to look at, whereas the hyena (or else Frenchman) represents survival at its most monstrously brutal - there is no nobleness or majesty in his case, just killing and the crunching of bones (he is effectively a metaphor for death without hope of spiritual deliverance).

I have precious little time for Martel's flowery posturing, but I can say this much in Disney's defence - contrary to popular assumption about its impact on the hyena's reputation, The Lion King made me vehemently pro-hyena. To me, Shenzi, Banzai and Ed were by far the most sympathetic characters in the picture. They were born into a world where the status quo did not favour them, and where survival was patently a lot harder for them than it was for the lions. Even as a child, I picked up on the contradictions in Mufasa's teachings about the Circles of Life, between what it meant in theory and what it meant in practice, and that struck me as terribly unfair (with hindsight, it was probably even more unfair to the antelope, who were expected to venerate the very creatures that were violently murdering them, but the movie downplayed that by not giving them personalities). As for the entire plot point of the hyenas running riot throughout the Pridelands and destroying it all (implied but not actually shown), I wondered if perhaps they wouldn't have gotten so carried away if the lions had been willing to share with them from the beginning. I felt that there had to be some kind of middle ground, a means for both species to find a balance and to coexist, but alas, the movie was uninterested in exploring such a notion. A year after The Lion King came the movie Babe, which had a message that appealed to me a lot more. There, I detected the faintest echo of Mufasa in the character of Rex, who was insistent on each creature remaining in its proper place, accepting what it was and being thankful for it. Which is all very well when the status quo does favour you. Coincidentally, Babe contains a throwaway line in which it's suggested that allowing a pig to challenge the sheepdogs at their game will lead to other radicalities like "a laughing hyena doing showjumping", and in my head I constructed that as a winking bit of affinity - Babe, a representative of one maligned species, was breaking down barriers so that other outcasts and misfits could have their own turn in the sun.

For myself, the hyena was cemented as the ultimate underdog (although not actually a dog), and I did have Disney to thank for that. It displaced the predominant image I'd previously had of the hyena, which is that they had this tendency to hang around car parks and do damage to vehicles while their owners were out watching Basic Instinct at the Odeon. For that particular bizarre notion I can thank the Central Office of Information, who'd put out a series of public information films in the early 1990s that showed hyenas breaking into cars, and for a while that was my primary exposure to the animal. The PIFs were part of a crime prevention campaign designed to alert motorists to the importance of properly securing their vehicles, with the hyenas themselves being stand-ins for thieves on the prowl for raidable targets, but as a small child I was way too literal-minded to take it that way. Honest to god, I thought this was a campaign about actual hyenas and the damage they would do to your car if you didn't hyena-proof it. At some point or other, I must have figured out that a hyena was not a creature you should expect to encounter roaming around Britain, in multi-storey car parks or otherwise, but for all I knew these were general warnings being issued to people who were going on holiday to places where they had hyenas. For their part, COI certainly seemed to be treating the symbol a bit too literally - for a while they were so intent on making the hyena the face of British car crime that you'd get these signs showing crossed out hyenas displayed in car parks and in car dealerships. After The Lion King came along and made me reconsider the species, seeing those signs made me feel so sad, since I was beginning to get the impression that the hyena had perhaps been falsely accused. I'd been inspired to do my own research on the animal, and I had yet to come across any reference to their alleged car cracking practices. What if this idea that they were car vandals was all just a gigantic misconception, along with the similarly erroneous ideas that they are dogs and hermaphrodites? 

This wasn't the first occasion on which COI had made a PIF representing criminal types as animals. We looked previously at "Magpies: Home" from 1984, in which a group of the titular corvids were shown raiding a bedroom, making an stomach-churning mess of the place and flying out with all of the lacy undergarments they could carry. That PIF had also traded on negative associations with the featured birds (the idea that they steal shiny things, the many superstitions surrounding them, etc), but it didn't feel anywhere near as defamatory. "Magpies" was happy to let the metaphor speak for itself, and didn't feel the need to explain to us how much actual magpies suck in order to drag the thieves down with them. It helped that it was a homage to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, so there was a degree of knowing fantasy in its scenario. The photography of the magpies was also splendid - there was a level on which it worked as a covert celebration of the birds - whereas in "Hyenas" the beasts are restricted mainly to the shadows, with close-up shots depicting them with creepy glowing eyes. Moreover, in "Hyenas" we get a monologue openly stressing the characteristics that (in COI's eyes) make car criminals comparable to hyenas. And honestly, it's pretty messed up. Hyenas are bad because they show no compassion toward their prey? Well neither do lions or tigers. But of course they're majestic big cats, so when they show no compassion it's sexy. Use of the word "victims" in place of "prey" is likewise a highly emotive choice, which suits the particular narrative the PIF is seeking to tell about car crime, but makes the hyena's actions appear more malevolent than they should.

A word that doesn't come up in COI's campaign, but is key to understanding the hyena's negative reputation, and why they would have been singled out as a metaphor for criminality when there were so many other big scary predators to choose from, is "cowardly". COI were inspired to cast hyenas as the villains because of market research indicating that hyenas were unpopular with the public, who associated them with cowardice, and they were looking to paint car criminals in the same light. I must say that I find that to be a strange notion. Cowardice, as a concept, is heavily rooted in ideas of human morality; applying it to the animal kingdom, where creatures are merely doing whatever it is they need to survive, seems futile. What is it, exactly, about the hyena that should make it a coward? All of the negative characteristics listed in the PIF itself are things that you would reasonably expect to associate with any predator. I would hazard a guess that it's because hyenas are seen as predominantly scavengers and, as a rule, animals associated with scavenging tend not to have the best of reputations (the terms "vulture" and "jackal" have negative connotations of their own). People see them as sleazy opportunists, seeking out the fallen and mortally wounded and feasting off of their misery, while stealing from other, more "worthy" predators like lions and leopards, which are capable of doing their own dirty work. That is indeed the narrative COI is wanting to convey of the car criminal, depicted as a skulking beast roaming the shadows of car parks, searching for vehicles that haven't been adequately secured and won't give them much hassle. There is perhaps an implicit suggestion that such criminals are to be seen as more dishonorable than other brands of thief, since they don't have the guts to pull off a more ambitious raid, and want only the easiest of pickings.

Does the PIF mischaracterise the hyena by depicting it as a scavenger? Yes and no. The animals featured in COI's campaign are actually striped hyenas, which are not the most famous kind. They are smaller and have a slightly more wolf-like appearance than the spotted hyena, which is what most people think of when they picture a hyena, and the species represented in The Lion King. The campaign does, however, conflate the two - the animal seen in the logo at the end (and on car park signage) appears to have been modelled on a spotted hyena, and what's more, the audio heard throughout the PIF was taken from recordings of spotted hyenas. Striped hyenas are less vocal than their spotted cousins, and they don't make the infamous laughing noise that COI uses as the basis of their punchline: "Leave it unlocked, and they're laughing." Which is the other reason why hyenas were likely chosen as our metaphorical criminals - it's not hard to construe that noise as mockery, and as the car thieves revelling in their own sneakiness and how easy unwary motorists make it for them. The notion that hyenas are predominantly scavengers would be false in the case of spotted hyenas, which are efficient pack hunters and often have their kills stolen from them by the supposedly virtuous lions, but true in the case of the striped hyena (which is a far less social being). But what COI definitely does mischaracterise is the very process of scavenging, with its insinuation that it's a revolting or dishonorable means for a creature to sustain itself, when in reality scavengers play a vital role in removing rotting carcasses from environments and preventing the spread of disease. We might think them macabre, but they're really our benefactors.

The whole point, of course, was to make car thieves sound nefarious as hell, and like a threat you absolutely should be taking all of the necessary steps to safeguard yourself against. Much like Disney, I don't believe that COI made this campaign because they had it on their agenda to increase the public's hatred toward real hyenas (Yann Martel's intentions I'm less sure about), but they were certainly looking to exploit certain prejudices already harboured against them, and to seemingly affirm these.

It goes without saying that I disapprove of the tone of the campaign, and of the tactic of explicitly villainising the hyena to suit COI's narrative ends, but that doesn't mean I'm all negative about it. On a strictly atmospheric level, I find these PIFs to be pretty unknockable. I dig the dingy, sleazy aura of the car park; multi-storey car parks are spooky venues to have to navigate at the best of times, and "Hyenas" really nails that, depicting them as murky concrete wildernesses where all manner of hidden menaces could conceivably be lurking in the shadows. It's a setting that feels alarming, dangerous and alive. In fact, it always put me heavily mind of the panther sequence from the extended video to Michael Jackson's "Black or White" - with their similar juxtaposition of ill-lit streets, car vandalism and prowling predators, I had wondered if Jackson's video might even have been an influence on COI's campaign, although I suspect that the timing doesn't line up. As for how it uses its questionable anthropomorphisms outside of its slanderous voice-over, I'd rate it as more endearingly comical than the equivalent "Magpies" PIF. You don't get the same sense of the uncanny from these shady hyenas as you do those conniving birds - rather, it treads a wobbly line between the sinister and the just plain silly. When, in the main PIF, one hyena is shown in silhouette, with its teeth (and ambitions) bared at the unsecured vehicle, it is genuinely intimidating. When seen from a different angle, with the hyena poking its face through the open car window, apparently gawking at all the goodies to be pilfered, the tone shifts to something a little more cartoonish. And you do have to love how unashamedly goofy it gets in its final moments, when we have the ridiculous sight of the hyena strolling away with a car radio in its jaws. What does a hyena want with a car radio anyway? At least a magpie could use stolen lingerie for nesting material.

Their star turn as sordid car vandals might have been jolly good acting on their part, although sadly we do have it on record that the specific hyenas used in this campaign were not good parents. Two of the hyenas were a mated pair, and they had a cub that they rejected. We know this because the rejected cub, who was instead hand-reared, was featured in a segment on the CITV show Animal Crazy, presented by Neil Buchanan and Jenny Powell, in 1994. Which is, incidentally, where I first learned that hyenas are not dogs. Even within the context of them rejecting their offspring, there was something "humanising" (for lack of a better term) about the supposed car criminals being described as a mother and father and not simply the villains in a public information film. Buchanan mentioned something about how, due to the unpredictable nature of the hyenas, the set of the PIF had to be constructed inside a cage in order to protect the film crew - which does make me hungry for further behind the scenes information about how the hyenas were trained and the PIFs were filmed. There have got to be some fascinating tidbits to be shared.

In the meantime, we're still waiting for that showjumping hyena to come along and prove he's as elegant as any pony. 

The World's Most Horrifying Advertising Animals #58: Magpie Marauders (Crime Prevention)

In 1984, the Central Office of Information put out a public information film highlighting the omnipresent evil lurking in your neighbourhood and how the slightest instance of haphazard security could tip the balance from order into all-out devastation. Owing an obvious debt to Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (clearly a very en vogue influence on advertising throughout the 80s),  it depicts a mob of magpies launching what appears to be a coordinated attack on a suburban bedroom, having spied a window of opportunity. The human-level cognition with which they seemingly operate is counterweighed by the intense focus on their distinctly inhuman features - their pointed, elongated beaks, their chilly white eyelids, their ominous silhouettes slicing through the sky. We watch as they infiltrate the unsecured room and ransack its contents to a barrage of Psycho-esque strings, picking their way through a jewellery box and reducing a defenceless piggy bank to a pile of rubble - is it just me, however, or do they seem to making off with mostly lingerie? Pervy little bastards. 

Still, the real horror of the PIF has less to do with what the birds take than the absolute chaos they leave in their wake, the bedroom being plunged into a state of upheaval that goes well beyond what a cluster of birds could conceivably do - a tip-off (before the narration confirms it) that this is not to be taken as a literal warning about the perils of letting wildlife get a little too close for comfort around your dwellings, but as a metaphor for something leagues more nefarious. The pillaging magpies are a stand-in for the threat of criminal intrusion, with its gleaming eyes forever fixed on your ostensible place of safety, looking to exploit whatever weaknesses can be picked out, however miniscule, and to hustle its way in. It isn't much of a mystery why the piebald corvids, of all birds, would be singled out - their reputation for thievery and alleged attraction to all that glitters (which might not be rooted in any kind of biological reality, mind) makes for straightforward enough symbolism, while historically they've been associated with a heap of superstitions, adding to their overall uncanny aura. There's also the implication that thieves, much like birds, have a particularly expansive perspective of the residences they're scoping; absolutely all angles will be considered, even the parts that you consider invisible to outsiders, so no aspect of your home security can be taken for granted.

The tactic of depicting the criminal intruders as animals, in addition to representing crime as something innately inhuman, conveys the implicit narrative that the war on crime is a war between the propriety within and the savagery beyond. To be complacent, or to turn a blind eye, is a matter of letting the wilderness in. The Hitchcock allusions mean that there is a ready-made familiarity in its images of avian marauders, a classic cinematic nightmare brought a little closer to home. Despite its foreboding nature, the PIF's message is ultimately one of empowerment - that, despite our vulnerability, we are not powerless against such devastation, so long as we're able to match those gleaming magpie eyes by being just as omnipresent, a force of surveillance every bit as formidably attuned. In the second half, the birds descend on another neighbourhood where the pickings are by no means as easy, due to the houses having locks and alarms fitted, their property being postcoded, and there being neighbourhood watch signs and stickers displayed prominently all over. Curiously, we see very little in the way of direct human presence throughout the PIF, the residents' only corporeality coming in faintest flicker of a hand as we see picking  up a telephone to dial through to whoever it is you contact about the suspicious-looking birds hovering in the trees outside your home. It's an interesting approach that presents the forces of civility as the more stealthy and furtive of the two; it seems significant that they remain shielded in the shadows, while we get to hang out on intimate terms and in broad daylight with the thieving corvids. There's an unnerving duality in which the viewer experiences the sensation of being simultaneously the invader and the invaded, accompanying the magpies as they descend deep into an absent stranger's domain, and watching helplessly as a space nondescript enough to be their own gets ripped apart and turned upside down. Similarly, during the second sequence we're afforded the security of being indoors and on the right side of those correctly fastened windows, before finding ourselves cast outside with the birds, experiencing the intimidation of having met our match in such a watchful and prepared community. The voyeurism of the viewer becomes aligned with that of the magpies, and is ultimately thwarted by the impenetrability of the residents' privacy.

It gets a bit repetitive in its second act (the same shot of the magpies flying upwards, supposedly in retreat, is played four times), but "Magpies: Home" remains a punchy and well-assembled PIF that soars along on its genuinely menacing, moderately surreal edge - the culmination of which is the final sequence where the magpies, now in animated form, take to the skies as their silhouettes morph into the slogan, "Don't Let Them Get Away With It" (compared to the more neutral "Together We'll Crack It", this one emphasised civilian passivity and indifference as the biggest obstacle in combatting crime). And even though they're depicted as the villains of the piece, I can even detect a little earnest affection for the magpies themselves at its centre. It won't be doing anything to soothe the nerves of ornithophobes, but there is a certain level on which the viewer is invited to marvel at the splendour of its close-up bird photography, and at how well-trained these particular specimens are. At any rate, the magpies got off leniently. The COI would return to the criminals-are-animals well in the early 90s, with a somewhat more infamous campaign that focussed specifically on car crime and used a certain predatory scavenger as its pivotal symbol. The results there would be nowhere near as doting.