VO5 and the Communist Revolution?

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So what has VO5 hair styling gel got in common with the Chinese Communist Revolution? I thought the answer was: "nothing", until I saw a recent ad campaign.

A young couple are seen wearing grey uniforms in a communist school. They exchange furtive glances and receive a reprimand. Finally the lad sneaks a message to the girl. It's VO5 hair gel. With their hair anarchistically spiked, they flee oppression and conformity.

Yikes!

Why did the West engage in an arms race with the Communists when the answer was so much cheaper? Flood Moscow and Peking with hair gel and watch those rebels grow and disseminate Western ideology.

According to the advertising prats in their top-floor conference rooms, anarchy, rebellion, and freedom from the drudgery of conformity is now bottled and available over the counter at most high street stores.

Where's Johnny Rambo when you need him?

Free advertising.

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There's been a big furore about the sexualisation of young children through advertising and the media but the dangerously mixed messages to certain sectors of our society still filter through.

Where are the parents when their kids put on clothes with the words Sexy, Foxy or Gorgeous emblazoned across them? The answer is that they probably bought them while signing petitions to keep X-offenders out of their town. Hmm!

The sight of a salsa troupe of eight- or nine-year-olds on Strictly Come Dancing dressed in two-piece costumes was a little disturbing. More unsettling is the Persil ad with the young child who wants to become a penguin, which contains an unnecessary under-the-table shot of the the child's legs and waist.

Worse still is the trend to buy Playboy branded clothes and accesories for children. When I asked a family member why they were buying their child a range of those items for Christmas the answer was "She only sees a rabbit design."

Am I the only person in the UK that is disturbed by the funding of a sex empire through sales to children. Plus certain adults will take the image and its association with children in the wrong way. Children may not be old enough to realise the significance of the pretty image but when they are older they will associate the logo with pleasant childhood memories as opposed to the reality and its current brand image.

The great mind-shapers of the world understood the philosophy: Get into a kid's brain and you're in there for their lifetime. Seems like Heffner's read the same book too.

There's no business like showbusiness ... ?

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But it's not really true. Prostitution springs to mind.

SlagA pointed me to a great interview on www.sitcom.co.uk. The interview reinforced my impression that to get ahead in the biz, you have to have links in the biz.

The interview described a situation where a big TV company funded comedian Lee Mack to write a sitcom, the end result being a series of unrelated gags. The first lesson for budding scriptwriters is that character and their interactions / reactions derive your humour. The producer then called in Andrew Collins (Grass / Eastenders) to give it structure and characterisation. My question would be: Why did a producer fund a project totally deficient in the basic component of all sitcoms - character? They didn't even have a script to start with. The obvious reason is that Lee Mack and Tim Vine are big(gish) names associated with the idea.

Another example is Lead Balloon. I only saw the pilot so can't comment on the rest of the series. If anyone else had sent in that first script it would have been rejected. Bland slow dialogue and amateur revealing of upcoming gags. The best performance was the whispering shop assistant - nicely observed. So what swayed the decision on Lead Balloon getting made? Most likely Jack Dee's name attached to it. I was hoping it was going to be a prophetic title but they got the go-ahead for a new series as the first was still running.

Anyway that's my cynicism excised for the weekend.