I blame the scapegoats (4 page)

'Ah, but it's not that simple . . .' say the
government. 'Tackling these fat cats is a very tough job indeed. It's going to
need the very best people to see it through, a cabinet of the highest calibre,
who won't be tempted to get better-paid jobs elsewhere. So we're all agreed
then, ministers: we'll just award ourselves a massive pay increase before we
get started . . .'

Product placemeNt sIcKEns me

4
August 2001

This
week saw the biggest row in Hollywood since ET quit the movie business claiming
he was always being typecast as a lovable alien.'I am a serious actor! I can do
Shakespeare, look: "To be, or not beee goood, Damn! Damn!"'

The latest scandal to rock Tinseltown is over
a product placement deal for the film
American Pie 2.
You
may have been unfortunate enough to catch the original that is endlessly
reshown on the Sky Godawful Movies Channel, which was famous for a scene in
which an adolescent boy has sex with an apple pie. Obviously this is not something
any normal person should ever attempt, as I said to that doctor at the burns
clinic next door to McDonald's.

In the sequel, the teenagers actually
graduate to having sex with each other and, to the film-makers' credit, the sex
is safe. No condoms were featured in the original film, which led to criticism
that the boy could have been infected by one of the apple pie's previous
lovers. This time round the money men at Universal Studios thought they'd
spotted the chance for some lucrative product placement, and struck a deal with
the manufacturers of Lifestyle condoms which would feature prominently in the
movie (presumably before they were put on, or that PG certificate would have
been a real long-shot). The studio also undertook to promote the Lifestyle
brand in the adverts for
American Pie
2,
but instead of honouring the deal, Universal pulled out prematurely which, as
we all know, is no substitute for using a condom.

It turns out that American regulations prevent
condoms featuring in any commercials that might be seen by a general audience.
Car chases, shoot-outs and robberies are fine, but mention contraception and
you have crossed the boundary of good taste. Which is bizarre because sex has
always been used to sell films. Although at least in
Last
Tango in Paris
they didn't feel the need to establish
what brand of butter it was.

The controversy has highlighted the whole
issue of product placement: the prominent featuring of brand names as a form
of oblique advertising. Somehow you sense that the great films of the past
would not have had quite the same impact if directors like David Lean had
depended on covert advertising. When Alec Guinness staggers out of that baking
little cell in
Bridge on the River Kwai
he
does not say: 'Well, thank goodness I had my Right Guard double protection.'

'Why
"double" protection, sir?'

'Because it protects
your noses and your clothes-es.'

'Yes, and I should add, sir, that this prison
camp is much better since it got taken over by Club Mark Warner.'

'Indeed, the men's morale has been greatly
lifted by the pedalo race down the River Kwai.'

Some might argue that the opening of
Bergman's 1957 classic
The Seventh Seal,
in
which Antonius Block encounters the figure of Death, might have been improved
if instead of embarking on a game of chess they had played with the free
plastic toys now being given out with McDonald's Happy Meals.

'If your little clockwork turtle goes across
the table quicker than mine, I shall release you.'

And if I lose?'

'Then . ..' says Death, 'you'll have to let
me finish your Chocolate McMilkshake.'

Or what about the moment in
Casablanca
when Ilsa walks into Rick's place. All the agony of
Bogart's broken heart is written on his face when suddenly the silence is
broken by a waitress saying to Ilsa, 'Hello, have you been to a Harvester
before?' And only Sam knows who this beautiful woman is, but he acts normally,
saying, 'Do help yourself to as much as you'd like from the salad cart.'

The
trouble is that some films are easier to get sponsors for than others. Few were
surprised when P&O ferries decided not to have their name splashed all over
Titanic.
Of course art needs
financial backing - this has been going on ever since the cigar manufacturers
persuaded Shakespeare to rename his latest hero Hamlet - but product placement
can only diminish the integrity and quality of a film. Furthermore, if a studio
has been paid millions of dollars to show the hero drinking Budweiser, then the
editor is duty bound to leave in that scene however bad it is and however it
affects the rest of the movie.

So now you go to the cinema and you are
jolted out of your enjoyment of the film every time a global brand is shoved
in your face; every time the star pointedly pulls on his Gap sweatshirt and
Nike trainers or the camera lingers on his bottle of Miller Draft or his new
Nokia communicator. But there's a reason that the corporations have to promote
their wares so crassly within the body of the main feature. It's because before
the film proper you have to sit through a dozen arty, pretentious commercials
and at the end of each one you turn to your friends and say, 'What was that an
advert for?' And they reply, 'I haven't the faintest bloody idea.'

I
I August 2001

The
Bible says that God made man in His own image, but really this is just not
specific enough. Does God look like Leonardo DiCaprio or like David Mellor? If
God made John Prescott in His own image then frankly you'd have to question His
judgement. There are certain personalities that make you want to rush through a
bill preventing there being any more of them. One Donald Rumsfeld is already
more than enough.

And yet it seems likely that at some point
next year the first ever human clone will be born. All the visitors will gather
around the hospital bed and say, Aaaah - he looks just like his dad.'

'Yes, that's because
he
is
his dad.'

And
the poor woman who has just given birth to a baby version of her husband will
say, 'What about the eyes? They're a bit like mine, aren't they?'

'Er - not really - I'd say he had his dad's
eyes, ears, nose - well, everything really.'

It was earlier this year that an Italian
couple announced they planned to have a baby that was a clone of the 'father',
and this week the maverick doctor Severino Antinori confirmed the first human
clone was only months away. It has always been part of the human experience to
gradually realize that you are turning into your parents, but this poor child
will never stand a chance. Every time he slurps his drink his mother will say,
'Well, you get that from your father. And mixing your peas up with your mash,
you get that from him as well. And picking your nose and hunching your
shoulders and, of course, you'll never buy your wife flowers or take her on a
luxury cruise like she always wanted.'

And
Dad'll say, 'Leave him alone, he's a good lad. He just never got the breaks in
life.'

'Well, he's only
five.'

Then when the child becomes a teenager the
problems will really start. The boy will look at his dad, and filled with anger
and disgust will shout, 'I'm never going to be like you,' and the parents will
glance at each other and say, 'Do you want to tell him or shall I?' Then he'll
learn that one day he too will wear cardigans and want to look inside churches
on holiday. And the poor boy will explode and shout, 'I hate you!'

'No,
darling, you can't hate me because I love you, and since I am you,
you
must love you too, so in fact you love me, don't I?' That
should keep him quiet for a while.

The
imminence of a human clone this week prompted the French health minister to say
that we cannot permit 'the photocopying of human beings'. It is indeed a
terrifying thought. Just imagine it -you'd be queuing up at the cloning machine
all ready to make a hundred copies and the girl behind you would say, 'Do you
mind if I just pop in front of you, I'm only doing one clone.'

So you let her in,
and isn't it always the way - the machine jams.

'Oh dear, what's happened? The fault code is
flashing "J8" - does anybody know what "J8" means?'

'Is that "Stem
cells jammed in copier"?'

'Er - "Copier
out of DNA"?'

'It can't be - I put
in a new amino proteins cartridge this morning.'

'Oh no - I've got a hundred clones to do
before lunch. Now I'm going to have to pop down to Pronto-clone to do them.'

The
advances in stem cell technology have until now been rightly justified on the
grounds that they are helping prevent diseases. Similarly, everything should be
done to help childless couples have babies. But to create a human being who was
already someone else is an abuse of the human rights of that newborn
individual. It is one thing to clone a sheep, because the life choices facing
sheep are pretty limited. Most lambs come out of their careers interview at
school and say to their anxious parents, 'Brilliant news! He thinks he might be
able to get me into the wool business!' And mum and dad jump up and down with
delight that all the hopes they had for their clever offspring will be
realized: she's going to stand around in a wet field for a few years and then
be served up as Mutton Pasanda with pilau rice.

But
how is any person supposed to live a normal life with the knowledge that they
are a duplicate of someone, possibly a 'parent'? How are they supposed to
become an individual in their own right? It must be hard enough joining the
family business without having 'Johnson and Clone' on the side of the van.
World leaders should act now to prevent human cloning. I cannot understand why
they are dragging their feet. Do they imagine they could use this power and
clone themselves so that they can govern for ever and ever? George Bush is
doing little to prevent it, as did his father George Bush. Oh no, I've just had
a terrifying realization . . .

18
August 2001

As
news stories go, this item has taken slightly longer to reach the front pages
than most, but the scientific journal
Nature
has
just published an exclusive that four million years ago the Earth was involved
in an enormous interplanetary collision. The story was immediately picked up by
all the papers, who each put their own particular spin on it. The
Daily
Mail:
'Earth in cosmic collision; Blair failed to
heed warnings.' The
Sun:
'Planets
collide to create Earth, Moon and Helen from Big Brother.' The
Maidenhead
Advertiser:
'Interplanetary crash created solar
system. No one from Maidenhead involved.'

The revelation that a proto-planet the size
of Mars crashed into the Earth, tilting the Earth's polar axis and accelerating
our orbit, has caused great excitement in the scientific world and given
insurance companies another excuse to put up their premiums. It turns out that
before the collision, Earth had a day that was only five hours long. So you'd
stay up for two days and two nights and then sleep straight through for a
couple of days - it was like being on holiday in Ibiza. The collision sent
billions of tonnes of molten rock into the atmosphere, which typically the
weather forecasters of the time failed to spot: 'A lady rang in to say that
molten gravel and flaming rocks will be raining down for the next million years
- don't worry, they won't be; though do look out for a little light drizzle
over East Anglia over the weekend,' said Ian McCaskill's predecessor, as lumps
of molten lava landed all around him. Some of the debris from the collision
flew up into space and eventually coalesced to form the satellite we know as
the moon, later joined by other satellites sent into orbit by a powerful force
known as Rupert Murdoch.