the untold stories
by Douglas
Messerli
Unknown director
(Outloud Ad Agency) Made by Britian / 2020 [1.30 minutes]
For their 2020 Centenary year, British airways created
an “all Brits are wonderful” ad, filled with children, blacks, lesbians, gays,
and a transexual. The ad also carried a brief film appearance by David
Bowie and a speaking role for Olivia Colman.
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It begins with a simple theme, “We love you
Britain,” continuing on “with all your different views on the world” (spoken by
the transsexual), a little person adding, “and with different stories to tell.”
A handsome young man of color being hugged by his parents adds, “maybe it’s
your big heart.” “The sense of style,” continues a woman dressed in and accessorized
by everything in leopard skin, followed by a child carrying a “Winnie-the-Pooh”
dog. A black man moves forward in the plane commenting, “The way you pick
yourself up when things get tough,” only to be met with a loud bang on his
forehead as a woman’s suitcase bams into him, she continuing “and dust yourself
off. Sorry.” A woman alone forwards the narrative, “Where you follow your own
path,” as another black man continues, “Where you tell it like it is,” an all-too-cute
young girl reassuring us, “Politely of course.”
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A woman turns to the camera responding, “Where
you’ve led revolutions,” one of two gay men continuing the beat, “of all kinds.”
It continues with a few more pleasantries, attempting to damper the
revolutions, but suggesting that they all quietly make history.
This is most definitely what one might
describe as a “feel good” advertisement, only somehow it treats almost everyone
on that plane to wherever as a kind of pokéman figure being punched back into his
or her own slot, not at all making me feel good. Evidently there was no time
for anyone’s different story.
Los Angeles, August
23, 2024 | Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema blog (August 2024).
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