Heineken's Froth And Bubble

Decadence. The importance of this idea – especially today – should not be lost to you under the noise of the news media screaming at you about Greek debt and 'part default' and 'austerity.'

After the zenith of an age, there remains the overgrown and the overbuilt – unfunctional and existing only because of the wastefulness of the supreme owners of the money and the power that was construed at the height.

Are you familiar with that current filmic commercial advertisement for Heineken beer? You know, the one with the magician and the appearing rabbit, the guy, the girl, and the Chinese waiter and the curly-haired singer in the tuxedo... It's called 'The Date.' The Art Director was Alvaro Sotomayor.

This ad was not dreamed up in fifteen minutes, if you know what I mean. I know people, or at least once upon a time I did - at board level at Heineken. They are very much the kind who believe in a cosmopolitan ideal and a modern cosmopolitan world and lifestyle. And in that vision, Asia has long been a significant market for Heineken even though they are also totally a global brand.

It's a great ad. But it is also the very essence of the meaning of decadence: referring to everything yet tied to nothing, lacking in intellectual depth, pointless, meaningless, and possessing no moral values. Believe me I am the very last person to preach to anyone about moral values(!) however it is decadent; it expresses a decayed intellect and a nondescript salad-mix world. Okay today's kids will love it and care less about what it is being lost in the process. And okay it will sell beer. And that's the problem with decadence, it happens when the money no longer cares or needs to care about anything other than serving itself and devising rationales for its own careless behaviour.

The art deco world and the modernistic industrial gothic world were thought of as examples of decadence. They are not. Human beings used the overhangs of that overbuilt past wealth and there and we got a slightly positive image of 'decadence' as a result. No one is going to use anything from the imagery or the ideas or the economics reflected in this ad 'The Date.' They are all perfectly useless and meaningless. The argument will of course be raised that multi-ethnic, multi-cultural egalitarianism is the point. It's not the point; selling product is the point. And that's because a totally mindless lack of regard for any of the cultural motifs used in the ad is shown by the producers. It is all facile and fatuous. Cultures are cultures because they have depth and meaning. 'Fun' is not an excuse for terminal shallowness. When you have money, and you have the sense of humour to sponsor and project 'having fun' on a global media platform, you also have the cultural responsibility to demonstrate that you care about something too. Ultimately, this ad shows absolutely no respect for the past, and for the real people of the past, and for culture and no matter how many times these monied upstarts assert they are respecting the egalitarianism of modern 'mondo-cultural' youth, you really have to wonder whether it is all because they have no clue and are fatuous, rather than that they are just being 'carefree.'

Because they are forever just being superficial. And there is never any depth coming from them at all. And the froth and bubbles are starting to look a bit thin, more like scum, in fact, than froth. And that is what I think of the leaders of the Euro-zone, too. Everybody looks upon the guy with the date in the ad as if he is a superstar worthy of greater respect and admiration ahead of everyone else... Certainly this is the vision the Euro-zone leaders have of themselves, and certainly the way ratings agencies, most banks, and the Murdoch media, look at themselves.

It's a fatuous fantasy. Sort of forgiveable in a commercial about beer.

Calvin J. Bear