I hate Sainsbury's. I hate sentimental xmas adverts. I wrote Sainsbury's a letter...
Dear the Sainsbury’s,
I haven’t seen your xmas advert to be honest but from what I
hear it’s a bit of a tear jerker. Now, that’s all well and good but what you’ve
gone and done is set a precedent for future years, where every Tom, Dick and
Wanker will be trying to ‘out-sad’ your efforts this year leading to the tv
being full of tragi-wank xmas vignettes involving animated animals, and no one
wants that do they? Therefore I am proposing that you end this shit-fest once
and for all by producing the tear-jerker to end all tear-jerkers! And it just
so happens that I’ve gone and written it for you! You lucky bastards! So
without further ado, here’s your advert for next xmas:
Scene 1:
The screen fades in on a garden scene, the camera panning
slowly across a snow-covered lawn towards a tree at the back of the
modestly-sized, well-manicured garden, upon whose branches two robins sit by a
nest full of chicks twittering to each other. As the camera gets closer it
becomes a static close-up shot of the birds talking to each other in bird talk.
They kiss (well, they touch beaks) and one flies off with the camera following
behind as music begins to fade in (Shakey’s xmas ‘classic’, ‘Merry Christmas
Everyone’)
Scene 2:
We follow the robin over the rooftops of a middle class
neighbourhood from behind, a birds-ass eye view, and as we reach the city below
we see a homeless man begging for change on a street corner. The robin lands on
the edge of his cup, twitters for a bit then shits in the cup and fucks off,
the homeless man is too busy crying to notice and so he drinks the shitty
coffee (close up of his neck making swallowing movements and gulping sounds so
we know the shit is going in). The homeless then grins a toothless grin and we
see bird-shit and coffee residue all over his disgusting yellow teeth.
Scene 3:
The robin then flies low and in through the door of a Cash
Converters, where we see a haggard and dishevelled young woman, old beyond her
years, handing over a brand new Playstation 4 to the cashier and receiving a
fraction of the price she paid for it before heading outside and handing the
money straight to a man in a fleece lined coat who drops a few bags of smack
into her wrinkled hand.
(Cut to)
The robin is in a squalid flat now, perched on the
windowsill. The same woman from Cash Convertors is slumped against the radiator
with a hypodermic needle sticking out of her arm, a poorly-written Santa’s letter
beside her which the camera closes in on, the words ‘Dear Santa, I would like a
PS4 for xmas’ scrawled across the paper, and commotion in the background as an
angry 9 year old trashes the house and cries and cries and cries and cries and
cries. Whilst crying.
“Children plaaaaaying, haaaving fun!” ay, AY!!!!
Scene 4:
The robin now flies into an industrial estate, where we see
a man leaving work, laughing and joking with his colleagues as he walks out of
the loading bay. He is carrying a large bag with what appears to be a box
inside.
(Cut to)
The robin perched on the top of an old armchair in which the
same man sits, the glow and flicker of the tv illuminating his weary face. He
wears a look of complex emotions: sadness, fear, despair, self-loathing. He
swigs from a bottle of vodka, the bag next to him revealing a case of 12 bottles
of the same. The camera closes in on his face and a solitary tear emerges from
one milky eye and slowly rolls down his ruddy cheek. His face contorts into a
grimace and as the camera sharply pans back we see him reach forward and smash
the bottle on the coffee table in front of him causing the robin to fly off
hurriedly (the ‘smash’ of the glass timing perfectly with a ding-dong noise in
Shakey’s annoyingly saccharine ditty). He takes the jagged remnant of the
bottle and holds it above his wrist, his whole body tense and shaking with
grief as he tries to summon the courage to end this miserable, lonely
existence. The camera pans away as the man looks to the ceiling and cries out
in mental anguish, his body shaking as he begins to sob uncontrollably as we
hear Shakey crooning “Love and un-derstaaaaaaaandiiing….”
Scene 5:
We are now back following the robin’s ass as he passes over
a market stall. A jolly man stands behind the stall and smiles and waves as the
robin stops to pick up a bright red bow from a selection of trinkets then flies
off into the snowy sky.
Scene 6:
We see a repeat shot of scene 1, the camera slowly panning
down the garden, coming to rest focusing on the robin family as father returns
to the nest and passes the bow to his wife, who tweets her delight (as in, she
says it in bird language. I don’t mean she writes 140 characters on a website
where twats go to argue. After all she’s a robin. And robins don’t have hands.
You fucking idiots). The chicks chirrup and jump around excitedly as the two
parents embrace. The scene fades out with a snow flurry and the following words
fade in:
‘Never mind ‘them’, have yourselves a very merry Xmas!’
The end.
It’s ok Sainsbury’s, wipe away those tears. Just think of
all the extra money you’ll make by cynically exploiting the public’s emotional
response to sentimental claptrap in the hope that they somehow internalise a
false association between a corporate supermarket giant and ‘the spirit of
Christmas’, as if those two things weren’t fucking light years apart.
Peace,
Niesche x
