LET ME COUNT the ways in which I hate the following television commercial . . . a grey-haired man in his late 40s relaxes in his well-appointed living space, reading a newspaper, as men in their later years are prone to doing. He is seen from the point of view of two conspiratorial girls of perhaps eight and five, lingering in the doorway.
Clearly they are his daughters, and in their hands they are holding some kind of box. Nudging each other along, they walk across the room, clutching the mystery package and giggling. Naturally, they are accompanied by the strains of an oboe (I’ll return to the tyranny of this particular instrument).
“Daddy?” The man lowers the newspaper.
“We think it’s time.” The younger of the two holds out the box. It contains a bottle of hair dye. “We think you’d be a really good catch for somebody.”
Daddy accepts the box, baring his teeth in a strange manner. It’s a big ask for any actor: finding a smile that combines overwhelming love for two daughters with the requisite tinge of sadness. At this point I reach the understanding that the man’s hair turned grey at the loss of his wife; what happened was a Lynchian overnight greying of the hair upon hearing the news that Sandy crashed her glider in the Rockies. We love plucky, handsome widowers; he is being so brave about everything, and that is why we’re hearing strains of oboe, which is musical shorthand for the same kind of message. (There has been sadness. But there are children, who are magical creatures. Soon, there will be joy.)
Looking at that strange smile, it’s hard not to think that a small part of the melancholy stems from the fact that this man will never again be able to read the newspaper in its entirety on a Sunday. He seems to convey great regret at having fathered these two girls, along with grief for his weekend and for his wife – because frankly, his children are out of control. The five-year-old has been possessed by a much older, image-obsessed harridan, who believes that Daddy will never again have sexual intercourse unless he dyes his hair, and a second daughter who agrees that this is somehow both their business and their responsibility.
I'm not at all outraged by the idea of using sex to sell a men's grooming product. In the excellent Roger Dodger, the lead character – a morally bankrupt copywriter – explains the job to his nephew: "I gotta get home, look for work. As we speak, consumers everywhere need reminding of just how fat and unattractive they are." That Mitchell and Webb Lookhad a great sketch about a brainstorming session at a toothbrush company, in which one man becomes convinced that it might be possible to make people feel bad about the fact that they have never brushed their tongues. "If we can get them to brush their tongues, we can get them to do . . . anything." Like use kids to sell sex to adults, via hair dye.
A shot of an unnamed man’s scalp being blackened strand by strand is accompanied by a caramel voice-over, and from there, we cut to a restaurant in which the father with the newly-tinted hair has already scored. Unbelievable. There he is, enjoying a night out in the company of a cougarish woman in her 40s, in a dining room the colour of carbonara. This, we are led to believe, is their first date, and yet the man thinks it’s okay to produce a mobile phone and take a picture of them.
“It’s for my daughters.”
I don’t know why he has to explain to her the reason for taking the picture. After all, she’s the kind of woman who doesn’t mind dating a guy with a bad dye job, so I doubt very much that she’s going to break a sweat about something as minor as having her picture taken for her date’s children. Besides, children are angels from heaven who bring nothing but joy, and anyone who denies that this is the truth is a hateful satanist and deserves to spend the rest of their days in jail. If that woman were to decline the request for a picture (for the bravest little girls in the whole world, ever), she should be drowned in a vat of boiling oil. Next she’ll be saying she doesn’t like oboes.
Is Daddy sending the picture to his daughters to let them know that he and his date are now embarking on a long-term relationship together? I would have thought that was grievously jumping the gun. Surely he’s over-estimating the significance of one date, but maybe I’ve got it wrong. Maybe he’s merely bragging to his daughters about the piece of ass he has just managed to snag.
Or maybe he’s more insecure than that and wants to prove to them that he did manage to secure a date with an actual functioning human being and not some kind of programmable love-bot.
Back in the house, one would expect the daughters to be found upstairs, putting a bottle of Moët on ice and arranging flavoured condoms in a fan across their father’s bedspread. But no, they’re downstairs in his seat, taking receipt of the picture on a pink, young girl-ish phone (my little phoney?), and exchanging an exultant high-five. Job done, beautiful not-at-all-creepy miniature adults. Daddy’s back in the game and finally getting some.