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How to Improve the John Lewis Christmas 2014 TV Advert

So the British public is agog at the latest heart-warming bit of commercial advertising pumped out by John Lewis in a bid to win the war of sales via Christmas cuteness. Have you seen it?

When I first watched this, my heart grew ten sizes that day. Or that might have been the cholesterol from the cheeseburger I was eating at the time.

In case you can’t watch it because your computer dates back to the stone age1, here’s the premise:

In a perfect example of encouraging people to buy exotic pets not suited to human climes2, it depicts a young boy playing with his adorable pet penguin (apparently called “Monty”). This penguin follows the kid everywhere – it follows him to football, watches TV with him, sleeps on his bed, eats fish fingers out of his hand (which I’m pretty certain would be bad for a penguin), etc.

Awwww!

However, all is not rosy for Monty. He begins getting distracted by human couples, and how happy they are3, and the kid astutely picks up on this.

AWWW!
To be fair, it might just be the wad of half-digested fish fingers in his stomach causing Monty that pained expression.

Christmas day rolls around, and the kid hurries Monty downstairs to the Christmas tree, and points it to a present. Opening it up, the penguin finds that inside is a female penguin. The audience gives a collective “ahhh” of approval, and then we discover (via the equally approving gaze of the kid’s parents) that the penguins are actually a pair of cuddly toys the kid has imbued with the life of his imagination.

AWW SO CUTE

It’s genuinely one of the nicest things you could see on television all year, but it’s easy (and fun!) to be cynical so let’s just review it in brief:

  • I feel the ending rather ruins the advert. Sure, it’s a nice touch that the kid’s first penguin toy is all grey and scuffed from playing with it (and dragging it through the mud while playing football?) but the advert was cuter when the penguin was actually alive. You felt genuine empathy for the creature, and then that feeling gets kicked in the nuts when it turns out the kid was just Calvin and Hobbes-ing the thing. I guess John Lewis copped out on not emails from angry adults being harassed by their kids to buy them a penguin?
  • The moral of the story is: if your friend is feeling lonely buy him a mail order bride and/or prostitute? She was even in a box, for crying out loud. At least give it some air holes.
  • Since when did England ever have snow that luscious in winter? Never mind sledging, more like dickheads skiing behind cars.

The ending could have had a neater twist than the toy angle, and I’d like to present it here. My alternative ending has humour, embraces other forms of love and generally stomps the real ending into paste on the pavement with its steel toecaps. Listen up kiddies, it’s story time.

The way I see it, the advert plays out exactly the way it does normally, right up until the reveal of the lady penguin in the box. Rather than a look of surprised joy, Monty instead gives a confused look followed by a sigh. We cut back to all those longing gazes at couples, but each time the camera pans slightly to the left or right and reveals that the penguin was actually staring at male couples that were near the heterosexual couples each time.

Er...?
Something like that, yeah. Let’s give the homophobes and traditionalists something to scream about. Nothing goes viral as quickly as controversy!

Mr. Penguin prefers the company of men! However, he just gives a happy little sigh and then gives his kiddy master a kiss on the cheek in appreciation, because it’s the thought that counts.

Now that is the real meaning of Christmas4.

Ahhh.
Now those toys just have to live through the horrors of their kid growing up, just like in Toy Story!

Please note ladies and gentlemen that this is satire. The John Lewis advert is absolutely lovely and I commend them for such a nice sight on an otherwise filth encrusted television schedule. Did I go too far? Leave a comment below! You can login using Facebook or Twitter (or even Google+ if you are desperate).

  1. By which I mean that dodgy early home computers era where you had to run Apple Quicktime with some bloody awful codecs to watch videos. ↩
  2. I point you at the infamous Slow Loris, which although adorably cute actually looks at everything with big wet eyes because bright lighting actually sears its eyeballs terribly painfully. ↩
  3. Incidentally the penguin gives the kind of distracted look that masks a bitter despondence that all young single men have towards outwardly happy couples. I know this because once upon a time I was that man. ↩
  4. Think about it, all those times your grandparents bought you something you really didn’t want and you still feigned pleasure because you didn’t want to hurt their feelings? My advert invokes that perfectly. With more gay. ↩

Post by | November 8, 2014 at 2:05 pm | Christmas, Vaguely Topical | No comment

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