Having It Shoved Down Your Throat
Permit me to sound like a miserable bastard for a few paragraphs …
Last Friday Tracey and I had a day out. I jokingly called it my work Christmas do. We went to the cinema to see BEOWULF in 3D, ate some Chinese food, came home for the evening to crack a couple of bottles of wine and watch 28 WEEKS LATER … and we had a fun day. The food was splendid, the wine was equally palatable, and both movies were very entertaining in their own way. BEOWULF had Ray Winstone promising to ‘kill your monstah!’, and 28 WEEKS LATER was wonderfully grim, just how I like my horror movies.
But I’m not here to talk about the movies, not really. Let’s go back to the cinema for a bit…
We were the only ones in the 12:10 screening of BEOWULF. Got there in plenty of time, as I always enjoy the trailers beforehand. Bought our sweets. Took our seats. But we didn’t get trailers to begin with. We got adverts.
I don’t mind two or three adverts at the cinema. You get used to it. They want you to drink coke, so they have some overpaid celebrity adding to their vast fortune by drinking a can of Coke and pretending they’re enjoying it. They want you to eat Mars Bars, so they show you how great they are in the hope that you’ll pop out to the foyer and buy one before the movie starts.
But last Friday, they wanted us to do a whole lot more. Smell good, wear nice clothes, drive fast cars, book a holiday, drink whisky, eat party food, shop in M&S … And that’s Christmas for you. It’s invaded the fucking cinema now as well.
We sat there for twenty-five minutes watching adverts before the first trailer came on. Twenty-five minutes of my life. Wasted. Thing is, I know what whisky I like to drink. I know what clothes I like to wear. And last Friday, I didn’t fancy a Mars Bar.
Fuck off and let me watch the movie I came to see.
Happy Christmas, UGC Cinemas in Newport. You owe me half an hour of my life (because fuck it, I’m charging interest).
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Comments
December 13th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
I sympathise – and this would be a large part of the reason that Jo and I only tend to go see movies if they’re on at the IMAX these days.
Otherwise, Jo and I wait for them to appear on Sky, and then we Sky+ them and watch them when it’s convenient to us, with a handy pause button in case we need to nip out and make a cup of tea in a quiet bit.
Watch something when someone else tells me to? And be advertised to in the process? Not bloody likely.