Concept Comes First

Maybe I’m being reactive. In advertising, the “bottom line” is the priority. When shareholders are expecting the most bang for their buck, there’s no room in that 30-second commercial for social commentary or too much realism. In TV land, people smile when they bite into food, men are comedians, women clean the house, and everyone is attractive without being vain about it.

Away we go, with functional and randomly aquired attire.

That might explain why this photo looks so weird to me. These people look NORMAL. I mean, they seem to be enjoying themselves, but the hair and beards aren’t helping them much. The outfits were thrown together, half of the pieces need to be thrown away or burned, and this couple’s only concern seems to be for their own comfort. Just like in real life.

I just watched Away We Go and Sunshine Cleaning almost back-to-back this weekend, and the characters and costumes really stuck out. Sure, our old friend advertising has always been a little too pretty for its own good (with a few amazing exceptions), but even Hollywood normally doesn’t take the realism this far. Why would a producer shell out  over a million for a beautiful face and magnetic onscreen presence when the artsy-fartsy director is just going to hide it all under glasses and a $10 haircut?

Someone was paid a lot of money to make these people look normal.

Don’t get me wrong—I loved all these characters. So much of their story can be seen in the “imperfection”, and not many of us “real people” have a wardrobe stylist correcting our color/pattern choices each morning. Real people wear the socks and tie their kids gave them on their birthday—vibrating, unmatchable colors be damned. Personally, I roll with jeans, t-shirt and a hoodie 300 days out of the year (I don’t even own a suit), so I have no fashion stone to be casting here.

The first time I saw “anti-style” like this was in very strange and amazing movie called Being John Malkovich. Supposedly Lance Accord, the cinematographer, was almost fired when the producers saw how disheveled and ungroomed the cast looked in dailies. I remember being completely taken aback by the movie myself. I was so unprepared for the visual “dirt” on display I could barely watch the movie without squirming in my chair.

Again, this doesn’t represent how I view people in real life. I hope it does, however, illustrate how overperfect TV and film usually is: Put a normal-looking person onscreen and people are blinded by the contrast.