The advertising and media worlds are awash with knowing lies
CAN I have read this right? It seems that cosmetics companies occasionally make digital alterations to the images in their commercials. Where do bears go for a number two? What does the Pope get up to on a Sunday morning?
This startling revelation was confirmed this week when L’Oréal were censured for using a suspicious photograph of Rachel Weisz in an advertisement for something called Revitalift. The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority noted that the post-production boffins had “substantially changed her complexion to make it appear smoother and more even”. The regulator went on to prohibit any further use of the image in print advertisements.
Saints alive! It’s not as if Weisz was ever likely to compete with WH Auden for the title of world’s most crinkly person. Couldn’t they just have left her alone?
On balance, we must, of course, agree that the ASA did the right thing. Women are under enough pressure from body fascists without having to measure up to cyber-versions of already satisfactorily pulchritudinous movie stars. The less deceit we encounter in the media the better.
It is, however, difficult to avoid emitting a cynical discharge of air. We all know we’re being lied to, don’t we? Nobody really believes that a carton of unguent will make us look smoother than the woman who recently married James Bond. When Cheryl Cole swings a cascade of hair as luscious and animated as a whole romp of otters, we suspect that something fishy is afoot.
The media is awash with knowing lies. The arguments between that little Irishman and that blubby R 'n' B star on The X Factorcould not seem more staged if the participants were dressed in medieval jousting gear. Jeremy Clarkson did not really set his hated caravan on fire while attempting to grill sausages.
Few phenomena have been so unsatisfactorily named as “reality television”. The genre is now sufficiently established that, whenever a new series is launched, the supposed real people instinctively adopt familiar character types.
Chuck is the arrogant Lothario. Trixie is the neurotic flake. Spike is the confused nice guy. Commedia dell’arte featured a more varied selection of archetypes. Please tell me you’re not fooled.
The most conspicuous knowing lies, however, surely appear on the covers of supermarket tabloids. You know how these things work. Somebody snaps a photograph of, say, Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan looking in different directions while standing outside Waitrose. “Is it all over for telly’s first couple?” the pink headline bellows. Well, it must be. An aggressive tear (as in ripped paper, not weeping) has been placed down the centre of the page, thus confining man and wife to their own miserable rectangles. If that’s not evidence I don’t know what is.
An entire industry devotes itself to detailing the largely imaginary travails of “crazy” Angelina Jolie, “henpecked” Brad Pitt and “jealous” Jennifer Aniston. If the journalists weren’t demonstrably agents of Satan you would feel inclined to admire their chutzpah. Here’s how it works. Brad Pitt has been snapped drinking a bottle of beer. Angelina is pictured bearing her teeth slightly. Aniston has taken to running her hands through her hair. The only reasonably deduction (it seems) is that Jolie’s eccentricities have driven Pitt to alcoholism and that Aniston is considering taking him back into her hitherto lonely life. Weeks pass. The dream couple remain together. A happier set of photographs emerges. Now, we are told that Pitt and Jolie, more content than ever before, are tiring of the constant late-night phone calls from a certain discontented former sitcom star.
Noting that such stories are consistently proved to be false, one must reasonably wonder how anybody not suffering from a recent brain injury could possibly believe them. Not many people do.
The most useful analogy is probably with professional wrestling. In the United States, this shamelessly staged activity – in which undertakers smash stepladders over the blameless heads of ersatz lumberjacks – is usefully classified as “sports entertainment”. We can (and often do) make unkind remarks about the rural Americans who hiss at the villains in such extravaganzas. But the evidence suggests few believe any genuine contest is taking place.
Readers of monosyllabically titled tabloids are, surely, indulging in a similar temporary suspension of disbelief. When the magazine is placed in the budgie’s cage the reader reluctantly returns to the real world, where Brad Pitt is not an alcoholic and Jennifer Aniston is not a phone pest.
False advertising is, of course, in a different category. It would be as well if we didn’t drift back to a time where marketing wonks were allowed to tell us that cigarettes cured gout and whiskey reversed male-pattern baldness. But let’s not pretend that we don’t – like those wrestling fans – rather enjoy swallowing information we know to be untrue. The Wombles were just blokes in furry suits, you know.