Carp
Car ads are the bane of American TV. If it's an SUV, it's all about rough terrain and ghastly plushness. If it's not an SUV, it's either about price (for a cheap car like a Toyota) or about dishtun-tannun driving across what looks like a desert or salt flat, generating a cloud of dust to emphasise coolness and speed (this for a prestige model like an Infiniti). Eat my dust. Really very unsubtle and uninteresting.
While on Indian channels you have TV spots for ballpoint pens! Teacher tells students to use Add Gel pens for great exam performance! Culture shock! TV spots don't come cheap. Does this mean that ballpoint pens are making Indian corporates rich? Fascinating.
Frequently, American TV ads are about price: how cheaply you can have something. How much you can have. In a 30-second ad spot (say), there's not much time to be clever and memorable in describing the product's attributes and drill on about value for money. So mostly it's the money. D'you know -- even the cars in the ads are now all silver (if prestige) or beige (if economy). And black or red (if SUV). What happened to the bright colours: red, yellow, two-tone paint jobs? They are so out.
Which is why Indian TV ads are so much more entertaining. You have whole 'families' roped in to sell the brand of cooking masala which will give every dish its proper lurid hue. And you have the terrific Hutch phone ads -- network follows you everywhere like pug follows kid, a band of nicely-scrubbed kids plays a tune just for you on clarinets and saxes just like the tune of your choice announces that you have 1 New Message. The sepia tones, the Goan look, the small-town open faced kids -- clever.
(But Hutch, or Nokia?, has another ad for messages, with little envelopes hurrying around in a city, hopping into the skyscraper-phones with message beeps. That ad is completely without cultural content -- it could be anywhere, and was probably made for that reason. And therefore: boring.)
Amitabh Bachchan is a big reason for the charisma and watchability of TV ads these days, despite his two-tone hairpaint job. Why have a pen when you can have a Parker? Some American film actors do wonderfully in interviews or on talk shows -- I still remember with awe a conversation between George Clooney and the guy who used to do the BBC's Film '98 (or '97 or '99) -- but they're unconvincing when trying to sell you something on TV. Directly, I mean, not as lifestyle trendsetters. Can you imagine Robin Williams selling you a breakfast cereal? Or Uma Thurman, who eats by appointment only? Would Pierce Brosnan be able to sell you a ballpoint pen? (Now a $2,000 wristwatch, that's a different thing.) Tabu sells milk! That juvenile fellow with the hair... Shahid Kapoor, he sells anti-dandruff shampoo! Hooray! These guys are really working for our custom. I like it.
So, these days there's a new car out. A Hyundai, a Cabera or Salera or Calera, I really don't remember. In America Hyundai means Cheap, but Shiny. Here, MPs and businessmen want their Sonatas, preferably in gold. (For us real estate-minded Indians, it's all about how much road space your car occupies and the tone of your horn.)
The ad for this Cabera/Salera/Calera is an American-European ad. There's Albert Speer's 'cathedral of light' effect, what looks like European tunnel lighting passing over this shiny car surface, headlamps -- and then suddenly the regular prestige-segment desert sequence, with plenty of dust flying. Come on, yaar... Let's see a feature like a sliding roof (completely useless in India) made into a Karva Chauth must-have. (That's the Optra. Awful name.)
It's a harbinger of a deadly dull trend.
Way back about ten years ago when Delhi had its first, big, international auto fair, and I touched a Rolls for the first time, cars were exciting. Perhaps it was just post-adolescent car pangs, but I really breathed harder, dreaded and desired, at every turn inside the caverns of Pragati Maidan. I went several times, and always worshipped at the Rolls stand. In a very pure, non-acquisitive way, may I add, just for the love of beauty (and the related manly virtues of wealth and power) and unattainability. It was a fever of urgent need and fulfilment. Yikes.
We seemed to be on the threshold of a world of impromptu nobility -- the pleasure of observing a bright yellow Mercedes SLK, with the top down, while swaying in the bus on the way to college. Just like that.
The British newspapers, the regular broadsheets, have wonderful, slightly wonky weekly automobile sections. I used to read them all, as my mum got them from her office. Quite apart from realising that English can actually be found in newspapers, I was introduced to a whole new world of aesthetics. Whole sections on the Arts. Whole sections on real estate -- grand old houses for £2.5 million. (Barns! Conversions!)
Part of this whole squirming with pleasure at the beauty of 'items' was those weekly automobile sections. The thorough car reviews: I had no idea a car owner could be so fussy, find so many criteria by which to measure a model, set such high standards. The most niggling little things. Precisely how convenient the little finger hook was for pulling down a rear seat. Whether one's eighty-year-old granny could do it unassisted. And the antique cars, the tradition of unembarrassed devotion to authenticity. The fabulous articles by the families of four who drove from Nottingham to Tehran in their caravans. Ridiculous, improbable, terribly cool.
So, surrounded by Fiats, Ambassadors, Maruti 800s and Gypsies, all nice enough in their own way, I was absorbed in this mental world of the aesthetics and pleasure of automobile machinery with a history. People and the car. Civilisation and the car. Regardless of the doltish people who sat in the back seats of Mercedes' on Delhi's roads, some of whom are my own neighbours.
But then I went to America and realised that it's just another place -- a nice place in some ways, of course, especially as it contains so many of my friends -- and that cars are just cars. You pay more, you get more. You can't pay much, you still get a car. There was so little culture associated with the car -- culture in the sense of a reflective pleasure in the object along with its history. Certainly I didn't meet the right sort of people (although there was a cool woman graduate student colleague, skinny with greying hair, who had one beat-up old pickup truck and a Harley Davidson). But the object itself was so ubiquitous and so standardised that it had ceased to exist in the imagination of most people. So it died in mine.
Back in Delhi, it fades further every morning and evening on my way to and from work. I have a short commute, half an hour and only four traffic lights, but -- to drive in this city is to learn to hate your fellow citizens. It is to doubt the idea of citizenship altogether. I'm convinced that the way one drives reflects one's true nature. We Delhiites (no longer Dilliwale) are, by and large, a venal, greedy, cowardly, aggressive, slavish, mean-minded, shitty predictable lot. We deserve each other.
The only thing that saves me from total automobile disillusionment these days is the Car Stereo. Radio in the morning (for oldies, classic rock), and audio-cassettes on the way home: Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Italian pop, Phantom of the Opera, Simon and Garf... You can create your own space this way, and are in a better frame of mind to follow your Delhi driving maxim: Take No Panga.
While on Indian channels you have TV spots for ballpoint pens! Teacher tells students to use Add Gel pens for great exam performance! Culture shock! TV spots don't come cheap. Does this mean that ballpoint pens are making Indian corporates rich? Fascinating.
Frequently, American TV ads are about price: how cheaply you can have something. How much you can have. In a 30-second ad spot (say), there's not much time to be clever and memorable in describing the product's attributes and drill on about value for money. So mostly it's the money. D'you know -- even the cars in the ads are now all silver (if prestige) or beige (if economy). And black or red (if SUV). What happened to the bright colours: red, yellow, two-tone paint jobs? They are so out.
Which is why Indian TV ads are so much more entertaining. You have whole 'families' roped in to sell the brand of cooking masala which will give every dish its proper lurid hue. And you have the terrific Hutch phone ads -- network follows you everywhere like pug follows kid, a band of nicely-scrubbed kids plays a tune just for you on clarinets and saxes just like the tune of your choice announces that you have 1 New Message. The sepia tones, the Goan look, the small-town open faced kids -- clever.
(But Hutch, or Nokia?, has another ad for messages, with little envelopes hurrying around in a city, hopping into the skyscraper-phones with message beeps. That ad is completely without cultural content -- it could be anywhere, and was probably made for that reason. And therefore: boring.)
Amitabh Bachchan is a big reason for the charisma and watchability of TV ads these days, despite his two-tone hairpaint job. Why have a pen when you can have a Parker? Some American film actors do wonderfully in interviews or on talk shows -- I still remember with awe a conversation between George Clooney and the guy who used to do the BBC's Film '98 (or '97 or '99) -- but they're unconvincing when trying to sell you something on TV. Directly, I mean, not as lifestyle trendsetters. Can you imagine Robin Williams selling you a breakfast cereal? Or Uma Thurman, who eats by appointment only? Would Pierce Brosnan be able to sell you a ballpoint pen? (Now a $2,000 wristwatch, that's a different thing.) Tabu sells milk! That juvenile fellow with the hair... Shahid Kapoor, he sells anti-dandruff shampoo! Hooray! These guys are really working for our custom. I like it.
So, these days there's a new car out. A Hyundai, a Cabera or Salera or Calera, I really don't remember. In America Hyundai means Cheap, but Shiny. Here, MPs and businessmen want their Sonatas, preferably in gold. (For us real estate-minded Indians, it's all about how much road space your car occupies and the tone of your horn.)
The ad for this Cabera/Salera/Calera is an American-European ad. There's Albert Speer's 'cathedral of light' effect, what looks like European tunnel lighting passing over this shiny car surface, headlamps -- and then suddenly the regular prestige-segment desert sequence, with plenty of dust flying. Come on, yaar... Let's see a feature like a sliding roof (completely useless in India) made into a Karva Chauth must-have. (That's the Optra. Awful name.)
It's a harbinger of a deadly dull trend.
Way back about ten years ago when Delhi had its first, big, international auto fair, and I touched a Rolls for the first time, cars were exciting. Perhaps it was just post-adolescent car pangs, but I really breathed harder, dreaded and desired, at every turn inside the caverns of Pragati Maidan. I went several times, and always worshipped at the Rolls stand. In a very pure, non-acquisitive way, may I add, just for the love of beauty (and the related manly virtues of wealth and power) and unattainability. It was a fever of urgent need and fulfilment. Yikes.
We seemed to be on the threshold of a world of impromptu nobility -- the pleasure of observing a bright yellow Mercedes SLK, with the top down, while swaying in the bus on the way to college. Just like that.
The British newspapers, the regular broadsheets, have wonderful, slightly wonky weekly automobile sections. I used to read them all, as my mum got them from her office. Quite apart from realising that English can actually be found in newspapers, I was introduced to a whole new world of aesthetics. Whole sections on the Arts. Whole sections on real estate -- grand old houses for £2.5 million. (Barns! Conversions!)
Part of this whole squirming with pleasure at the beauty of 'items' was those weekly automobile sections. The thorough car reviews: I had no idea a car owner could be so fussy, find so many criteria by which to measure a model, set such high standards. The most niggling little things. Precisely how convenient the little finger hook was for pulling down a rear seat. Whether one's eighty-year-old granny could do it unassisted. And the antique cars, the tradition of unembarrassed devotion to authenticity. The fabulous articles by the families of four who drove from Nottingham to Tehran in their caravans. Ridiculous, improbable, terribly cool.
So, surrounded by Fiats, Ambassadors, Maruti 800s and Gypsies, all nice enough in their own way, I was absorbed in this mental world of the aesthetics and pleasure of automobile machinery with a history. People and the car. Civilisation and the car. Regardless of the doltish people who sat in the back seats of Mercedes' on Delhi's roads, some of whom are my own neighbours.
But then I went to America and realised that it's just another place -- a nice place in some ways, of course, especially as it contains so many of my friends -- and that cars are just cars. You pay more, you get more. You can't pay much, you still get a car. There was so little culture associated with the car -- culture in the sense of a reflective pleasure in the object along with its history. Certainly I didn't meet the right sort of people (although there was a cool woman graduate student colleague, skinny with greying hair, who had one beat-up old pickup truck and a Harley Davidson). But the object itself was so ubiquitous and so standardised that it had ceased to exist in the imagination of most people. So it died in mine.
Back in Delhi, it fades further every morning and evening on my way to and from work. I have a short commute, half an hour and only four traffic lights, but -- to drive in this city is to learn to hate your fellow citizens. It is to doubt the idea of citizenship altogether. I'm convinced that the way one drives reflects one's true nature. We Delhiites (no longer Dilliwale) are, by and large, a venal, greedy, cowardly, aggressive, slavish, mean-minded, shitty predictable lot. We deserve each other.
The only thing that saves me from total automobile disillusionment these days is the Car Stereo. Radio in the morning (for oldies, classic rock), and audio-cassettes on the way home: Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd, Italian pop, Phantom of the Opera, Simon and Garf... You can create your own space this way, and are in a better frame of mind to follow your Delhi driving maxim: Take No Panga.
posted by frantyck at 11:52 AM
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