Capitalism in Action.

So I saw New Years Eve, it was AWESOME. I'm joking in a big way. Obviously. But it was interestingly terrible in a way I wasn't expecting.

So the characters were dull, I mean really really dull. Afterwords we were talking about the various different couples and we forgot a fair few. This was literally minutes after we saw it and I forgot all about Halle Berry and Common at war. That is a less than a good sign, lets be honest. I also was able to predict almost every plot 'development' hours before it happened. But I'm not getting down on it for this because I a) expected this, and b) as discussed, would kind of been pissed at it if it wasn't the case. It would not have been half a fun experience if 'Hessica' had not started crying with laughter when Lea Michelle began singing Auld Lang Syne. Seriously, on what planet are we meant to believe that they would let a random Bon Jovi back-up singer sing that, in Times Square, at midnight, on New Year's Eve. Yes, I know his character wasn't called Bon Jovi but I care not a bit- he was essentially playing himself so I never bothered to learn his character's name.

My main issue with the film, however, was surprising and it didn't hit me till the last couple of minutes as Jessica Biel gave her final stupid little voiceover about the importance of love and the purity of the season. While we got this drivel, we were treated to a shot of the clean-up of Time Square and a final tracking shot up to the fallen ball. On the left of the screen is a building-high poster of Robert Downey Jnr. in Sherlock Holmes 2:The Game of Shadows, which can be seen soon in a cinema near you. In fact, the trailer for it showed before New Years Eve. It then hit me like a freight train- this was an act of mindless selling and consumption. Most of the crowd scenes had thousands of people waving inflatable tubes with Nivea branded on them. Of course I understand we live in a capitalist world so I'm not expecting New Years Eve to be a communist propaganda piece but it just felt so overt and unrelenting.

Sure, any film where Time Square is featured as a prominent location is going to be visually bombarding its audience with adverts for films and products but this seems so much more than that. The selling and consumption binary is being taken to its ultimate level under the guise of entertainment. The main aim of this film is not to tell a story that means anything real, it's not trying to edify its audience. Yes, it's trying to entertain its audience but with utterly insidious primary desires. It's selling everything, not just skin care products and future films; it's also selling the actors in it, the city of New York, the commercial synthetic idea of this random day of the year and, most effectively, the reductive and simplistic idea of love that Hollywood has been pushing on us for years. We, the audience, by sitting in our seats are being treated to a three course meal of popular culture and commercialism. Watching this film made me think about Josie and the Pussycats and the whole idea of subliminal messages in music and television which seems near enough to truth for that film to be not so much satire as documentary.

Edward Murrow said in his RTNDA Convention Speech in 1958:

“This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and even it can inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise it's nothing but wires and lights in a box. There is a great and perhaps decisive battle to be fought against ignorance, intolerance and indifference. This weapon of television could be useful.”

He's talking about television but film surely has the same potential, whether we choose to use it or not. This film is using its considerable armoury to promote truncated, prescribed ideas about the way people should act, look, love and, most importantly, what they should spend their money on.

On an unrelated note, I need to go buy some Nivea Body Pure and Natural Body Lotion.