The following cinema ad for Llyods bank was rated U...the fact that it has a 15 certificate displayed front and centre for most of its duration notwithstanding. In practice, the distinction meant little to my childhood psyche, which naturally found it more unsettling than I suspect it would the vast majority of genuinely 15-rated content. A memory I was never quite able to repress involved waiting for Free Willy to start and having to sit through this creepy ad in which a disembodied voice was heard ranting against a black void about how much it sucked to not be an adult. Being a non-adult myself at the time I could relate to the basic sentiment; the voice itself seemed to deep and too morose to strike an assuredly familiar chord (the actor in question was blatantly a full-fledged adult), and the specifics of what he was saying were frequently lost on me (whatever liqueur chocolates were, he made them sound distinctly unenticing), but I could certainly appreciate how, as a kid, it bites to be confronted by just how up to your neck in your own limitations you are. Not being able to see certain films? Sure, I could connect with that. I remembered how surprised I was a year prior to learn that Batman Returns was off-limits. So when he laid down the ad's big poser - "What can you get at this age???" - I was genuinely curious to learn where this was going. The answer that ultimately flashed across the screen in big green lettering - "Your cash is being counted" - struck me as tauntingly abstract and frankly more ominous than reassuring. Not even the catharsis of seeing an orca leap to freedom was enough to dislodge that eerie, lingering sensation from my brain. Later that day, I asked my mother to explain what was meant by "Your cash is being counted" (such was her tireless burden back then); she told me that it alluded to the fact that you didn't need to be an adult to have a bank account. As a solution to the problem raised, it seemed mundane, not exactly a roaring consolation for not being able to watch any and every movie you might fancy. At the same time, it accounted for everything that I'd found so intuitively sinister about the experience. I had my own bank account, but all that really meant in practice was that there was a sum of money out there that supposedly belonged to me, but that I never saw and couldn't do a damned thing with. The void of the screen, and its foreboding promise that unseen forces were counting that money as we spoke, played into to that feeling of my assets existing in a weird kind of limbo, as someone else was pulling the strings, sizing up myself and my resources for god knows what ends. Your cash is being counted? It seemed a clear-cut threat - less about you taking control of your life and your resources and asserting your worth within society than The Powers That Be figuring out everything it needed to know about your worth in advance and all of your pawny potential.
When I finally had the chance to get reacquainted with the advert on YouTube (thanks to The Hall of Advertising), I noted that I'd recalled numerous details about it fairly accurately, but that as a child I had evidently failed to pick up on the pivotal sleight of hand, that being the unique way in which it plays around with the theatrical setting. Cinema curtains are seen to fall across the picture, obscuring the 15 certificate at the centre, before pulling back as the dark abyss of the cinema screen is seemingly transformed into that of a cashpoint machine. Yes, the actual significance of that "Your cash is being counted" statement makes a whole lot more sense to me now. Back then, I'd had zero experience in using a cashpoint, and so that visual trick, and all of the accompanying bleeps and bloops, seemed utterly alien to me. No wonder it had puzzled me so.
If there's a flaw in this ad, it's that it does pre-emptively answer its own question by waving that BBFC certificate in your face at the opening. What can you get at that age, he asks? Well, you could go and rent Freaked for a start. The focus on the age 15 does, on the one level, seem rather arbitrary. Sure, it makes witty use of the visual language of cinema, but a BBFC 12 certificate would have been just as valid for the specific point it's making. I got my first debit card when I was 11, and if the ad was for a specific saving scheme aimed at 15 year olds, then it doesn't make that clear. But then it was clearly intended to tap into that very specific frustration that accompanies mid-adolescence. Adulthood and all of its associated perks looms and appears tauntingly near and yet so far. You are, for all intents and purposes, still a child, and there's an awful lot that the law says you still aren't ready for (for good reason, in most cases - not being able to get married is cited as number two in the monologuer's grievances, but any 15 year old who's seriously concerned about marriage really needs to slow down). Under the BBFC's rating system, 15 is the last stop before you can access absolutely everything that the cinematic realm has to offer. You're mature enough for Freaked, but still too much of a kid for Carlito's Way. But you can bank with Lloyds right now, and that's something this ad insinuates is every bit as exciting. The allure here is that of financial freedom...to a point. Your cash that's being counted is going to have to come from somewhere, after all, and you are very limited in how you can obtain it. You also can't use it to buy liqueur chocolates.
The most interesting thing about this ad is in how it attempts to create a kind of cinematic spectacle out of something as hopelessly banal as pulling money from a cashpoint, by having the two screens appear to merge into one. Perhaps there's also an implicit narrative in there about the parallel experiences of waiting for adulthood to start and waiting for our feature presentation, naively assuming in both cases that that's where all the real fun begins. That may be a part of why this ad stayed with me for as long as it did - it is, in its own unnerving way, a persuasive ode to the perks of living in the present moment, making the most of what's accessible to you right now and not taking it as a given that all the goodies lie in what's being withheld from you. I don't know how many 15-year-olds were convinced that banking with Lloyds was really more exciting than most of the forbidden fruit listed off in the preceding monologue, but for my younger self, it managed to create a truly spooky and dislocating experience from the sights and sounds of an everyday cash machine. Back then, I appreciated that some of the most impactful elements of each theatrical outing were to be located not within the feature itself, but in the various unknown cracks that came before it. The world seems an inherently stranger and more intense place when viewed in big and in the dark, and when what it's showing is all still so new to you. Alas, what's thrilling and new today is tomorrow normal and taken for granted.
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