DETRiments: Mike and Joy

"Mike and Joy" was the outlier of DETR's "What's It Like?" drink driving campaign of late 1999, for various reasons. It centred on the perspective of bereaved relatives, in a series themed predominately around conversations with perpetrators, and how they accommodated the terrible knowledge that their lack of judgement had resulted in the death of another. It also forwent the baffling expressionism that punctuated the sorry testimonies of Terry, John and David; the surreal images of an undressed performance artist and misplaced eels are replaced by close-ups of the characters' physical surroundings, mostly remnants of the deceased in a manner designed to suggest a ghostly, lingering presence. What immediately connects it to the WIL series is the title card at the beginning. In accordance with the changed perspective, it asks a different, less lurid but equally grave question ("What's it like to lose someone?") and closes with an extension of the campaign tagline that explicitly connects it to the Y2K. As the title would indicate, this is the only duologue of the series, with the titular Mike and Joy telling the story of their daughter Michelle, who was died of head injuries when a drink driver smashed into the back of her car.

"Mike and Joy" is the entry that's the most strongly reminiscent of the campaign's then-recent predecessor, Drinking & Driving Wrecks Lives. It too was more interested in the suffering of innocents than the remorse of the perpetrator, to the point where the drink driver's lack of corporeality became a running feature. The focus of D&DWL, at least in the beginning, was the knock-on effects of accidents caused by drink driving, with its earlier installments tending to illustrate how people who weren't directly involved in those accidents were also impacted. We had the quietly devastated family in "Funeral", the lonely mother in "Jenny", the lamenting school friends in "Classroom" and the shaken first responder in "Fireman's Story" ("Pier" was unusual among that first wave in focusing on a crash victim who had survived to tell his own story). "Mike and Joy" most obviously recalls "Funeral" and "Jenny", not only with its depiction of parental grief, but with its closing emphasis on stopped time; just as the watch recovered from Stephen's jacket and Jenny's undisturbed teenage bedroom are reminders of a progression cruelly denied, the photographs of a smiling Michelle convey her own stolen future by reducing her to a series of static images. Like the mother in "Jenny", Mike and Joy are condemned to share in that stagnation, haunted by the absence of their daughter and the loss of the future that should have been. Joy states that life now consists of "a void, and there's nothing to fill it...nothing at all"; they are in a situation in which the world has stopped turning. The explicit reference to the millennium at the end of the PIF represents an attempt to tie this in with the broader concerns of the Y2K, evoking a sense of anticipation that teeters on the apocalyptic. The tagline alludes to the place of the individual within the grander scheme of time, both in terms of our vulnerabilities but also the potentially far-ranging impact of our personal choices. Against a backdrop of cultural celebration, in which our civilisation was giving itself a pat on the back for still being around after 2000 years, WIL served as a grim little countermove, playing on the tension between our best intentions and aspirations, and the world we might inadvertently create through the worst of our weaknesses.

Although "Mike and Joy" avoids the aggressively surreal imagery of the rest of the series, even it can't resist hitting us with at least one baffling and unsettling image. The commencing frame shows the silhouette of a ceramic angel that appears to be missing a wing, presumably a knick knack from Mike and Joy's house, with the sounds of an unseen fly buzzing in the backdrop. The fly obviously signifies death and decay. The angel should be a symbol of purity and salvation, but it seems corrupted, with its dark and broken form, a further indicator of thwarted potential. Elsewhere, "Mike and Joy" captures that distinctively nightmarish qualities that characterised the whole series; the horror of the situation is so uncanny that it appears unreal. Similar tricks are deployed to the other interviews - the alternating proximity to the subjects, and shots in which they appear to speak without moving their lips, suggesting an internal pain that persists below the surface. Most strikingly, the PIF is presented in a queasy purple hue, a representation of the emotional fog Mike and Joy now inhabit. Unlike David, who conducted his interview from a prison hallway, and Terry and John, who spoke in a more generic meeting room, Mike and Joy give their testimony from their living room, and there is a notably more overstuffed mise-en-scene, with the various decorating touches lending as an unnerving a feeling as the institutional backdrop of David's ad. They too are prisoners of a world that's been warped into an unearthly shape, with no prospect of refuge in what lies beyond. The view from window behind the broken angel displays only the vague impression of an oppressive brick wall. Our first glimpse of Mike and Joy shows them gazing from their living room window, into an indistinct space that, save for the outline of some not-so-green greenery, reveals essentially nothing.