I didn’t notice that the chapter finished off a couple of paragraphs after the previous post. By way of compensation, here’s the next chapter, “Views”.
“That’s the old stuff. People still do ads like that because that’s all they know. They were taught, but they didn’t learn to learn. This is where product has to bow to consumer, where it’s accessible to the public. No amount of hype will guarantee anything. The first 8 hour virtual movie was supposed to be the most ambitious thing ever done, pure pristine techno-art, etc., elite-fodder, and it sold like crazy because people were genuinely interested. The arts crowd hardly got a look in edgewise. People picked up on it without degrees in hypocrisy or incestuous media talk-fests. They liked it, they could wander around the sets, get into the scenes, you know, visual karaoke, and play with the parts. The hype was way off the mark with the audience demographic, the market response, everything. Psychology isn’t an exact science.
The “us” thing is also misleading. It works on crowds and tends to alienate individuals. When you’re with friends you might go along with it, but not necessarily in private. Some people don’t want to be included in. There are territory issues when you start sticking people in groups, too, and not many like to lose out. …….We’ve gone a long way from your promo, John.”
“Actually you’ve given me an idea. Several ideas………”
Six weeks later John showed Al his new virtual concert, a truly magnificent bit of work, showcasing all his acts, and his contract with Musical Mass. He insisted on paying Al for what he’d thought was a social chat. Six figures.
VIEWS
Joe had returned from his dentist, looking like it. Several fillings had been repaired, and a lot of time consumed. Ironically it wasn’t the dentistry that had upset him, it was the magazines. Carla noticed his sour expression and naturally decided to take him up on it.
“You look like a roadkill. What have you been doing? Eating goldfish again?”
“Went to the dentist. It took four hours, because he had an emergency, and I was stuck reading in his chair for two of them. All the lifestyle mags, finance, and of course the Femme Futiles. I almost did a crossword……”
“Which still doesn’t explain why you have that Recently Abused look.”
“The first thing I saw was a sort of Middle Class Vindication. Acres of Gracious Living, mags with hags and fags and things in bags. Bedspreads…thousands of them, in machine prints. Kitchens, most of them canary yellow or worse, expensive everything, all crap. Furniture. Even I know a badly designed sofa when I see one. These looked like they were made to be ignored. Never seen such rubbish.
I tried the finance magazines, because I know enough about finance to know I know nothing about finance. The first thing I saw was an article on my father by someone who’s apparently never met him. it was a rehash of old news, called “Is This The Man Who’s Handling Your Money?” It was about his acting as receiver for one of those super funds that crashed. It said nothing at all about the fact that he actually got them up and running again….I turned the page and found an ad for that super fund.
That was enough. I actually wanted to read one of the women’s mags by this time, anything that wasn’t about money, status and suburban egos. I should have known. The very first article was a coy little thing about how models have to sleep with everyone to get anywhere, and how jealous everyone is of their positions, and the amount of nepotism…….comes to that, I’ve always thought it was like that….”
“Yeah, true. There are a lot of real morons running around trying to be famous, and that’s the usual state of play. Of course everyone you sleep with will rush out and make you famous. That’s how Lassie got started. You do know that one of the reasons we use Hard Women is that they don’t stuff about like that? They’re ex-models themselves. They know the business and have the contacts. The others are sort of wanker factories. God knows some of their models aren’t exactly Mensa escapees either, but they do a good professional job.”
“You’re not saying they get their jobs based on their ethics and sobriety, are you?”
“No, they just routinely cut throats on rates and they do better work, because they have to put up with less crap. A few of the girls I used to know are working for them now because it makes life a little more trustworthy professionally………I probably shouldn’t say this, but you get buried in guys the minute you take your gear off. Also some women. It gets annoying.”
“You had that problem, I know. It’s endemic, then?”
“It’s the real exploitation industry. The rag trade is the best known. Cosmetics are just as rough, and the big money attracts some pretty nasty types. People talk about media using women as sex objects, but they seem to have missed this little fact of life. Anyway, you were saying about this magazine…..”
“I’d never actually tried to read one of these things before. I moved on to learn how to make my marriage successful, and read a few ads for marriage counselors which had somehow managed to find their way onto the margins. Then there was the heartbroken film star, or whatever she was, with her divorce in suffocating detail. This was followed by several pages of babies. Almost identical babies, all dolled up, with “cute” like a supermarket clearance. You ever think of a baby as anonymous? These were. If they’d been wearing uniforms it would actually have helped….
Things then got ugly. The society pages, a collection of drunks and a picture of my mother which might have been taken by the photographer’s guide dog. There was a wonderful shot of her left nostril, looking upward, as if trying to find out what was going on in her sinus. Who invented the Nostril Shot?”
“A person whose sex life has tended to stray from the more accepted venues.”
“That would cover the amount of detail in that particular shot. The rest of her face was in the background. Somehow I decided to try another section and was instantly rewarded with recipes, beautifully presented, and also possible dietary suicide in a column on the side. Then there was the centerfold, a guy, I think, I didn’t bother to find out.”
“You are aware that’s one of the main selling points?”
“Why?”
“People prefer their fantasies to their realities. Calling someone escapist is calling them human. You don’t have to talk to centerfolds. That applies to the rest of the magazine, too. You can sympathize with the divorcee, and drool over all the things you’re not going to eat, and be very moral about all the models, and picture yourself among the nostrils and the drunks… human nature is to include themselves. Of course we don’t do things like that.”
“We’re much too nice.”
He leered.
“Too au fait.”
She pouted.
“Too courant.”
He bounced around the room on both feet. Bill wandered by.
“Skippy lives! Quick, get the gun!”
“Fair go, Bill, the poor man’s just been reading magazines in a dentist’s for two hours.”
“Get a taxidermist!”
“Nah, he’s stuffed enough already. Actually, we were just agreeing about how incredibly too-fashionable we both are, weren’t we, Beryl?”
“Yes, Gladys. What with me and my steel lingerie…..”
“And my sedimentary deposits….”
“Who is this terrible man?”
“I think he’s a voyeur.”
“The beastly beastly beastly beastly beastly beastly thing! I’ll hit him with my suppository.”
Bill raised an eyebrow so slowly that it was painful to watch. With a degree of hauteur which would make a blowfly blush, he said quietly, in a hideous stage voice,
“I shall go and catalog my secretions. Really I shall. Shan’t I just.”
He walked gradually out of the room, each step taking about five seconds. A slow march would have looked like indecent haste by comparison. Each step involved the leg swinging, poising, swinging back, then returning and settling. His face was set in that TV Laundry Martyr look so popular on nappy commercials. Al returned with Dorothy from lunch to observe this measured mania.
“Al; he’s going to catalog his secretions!” gasped Carla, clearly horrified.
“Oh, God, Al, stop him! I remember what happened when he was ten! They had to evacuate the whole street!” wailed Dorothy.
Implacably and silently Bill moved toward his office, still twenty feet away. The minutes passed, the looks of horror on the faces becoming far worse with each second.
“Oooh Beryl, it’s just too too ghastly,” explained Joe.
“Yes, Gladys.”
“Whatever will become of the children?” cried Dorothy.
On the phone to David later that night Al explained why emigrating to Australia had been such a logical move. It was the culture.