Demons in place of elves
Retailer desperation may explain irreverent new holiday ads,
Demonic possession isn’t typically part of the Christmas canon, save for horror movies and visiting relatives who’ve had too much eggnog. This year, however, it’s given a starring role in a Sears holiday ad in which a young girl becomes inhabited by an evil entity, has her head spin like a dreidel, then transforms her brother into a chicken.
Not quite the Dickensian spirit of yore.
The commercial is just one of a number of new Christmas ads that swap yuletide sentimentality for slapstick, sex or shock value — a rising trend as a certain Kmart jingle makes the rounds.
But is it a sign we’re less reverent of the holiday, or of something else?
“There are always a few rogues every year that attempt to push the envelope,” said Gerry Bowler, author of The World Encyclopedia of Christmas.
“I don’t think it’s anything particularly to do with Christmas but rather with the whole culture — one in which we’re progressively more vulgar.”
Indeed, it’s nothing new to see the holiday season trivialized, secularized and altogether exploited. Bowler noted that as far back as the 1930s, Santa was being portrayed as a drunk to sell alcohol, and has since shown up everywhere from lingerie ads to condom packaging.
Bowler said the difference now isn’t a greater hardening toward Christmas, but rather stronger inoculation against “retailer desperation.”
To wit, a 2012 Ipsos-Reid poll for Postmedia News found seven in 10 Canadians still prefer “Christmas season” to “holiday season.”
Furthermore, the proportion of people professing to attend religious services at Christmas was relatively unchanged from the year prior — about three in 10.
It’s no wonder Barbara Phillips, a noted advertising expert, chocks up this year’s crop of quasi-edgy Christmas ads not to secularity but rather to the pressures of the Internet age on marketers.
“Before, they were always concerned about the 30-second advertising spot; now — and this year especially — they’re very concerned about the YouTube potential of their ads,” said Phillips, professor of marketing at the University of Saskatchewan’s Edwards School of Business.
David Dunne, adjunct professor of marketing at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School, agreed that the Internet is the major force here, remarking that it’s “a much higher risk game” when the options are to “go viral or get ignored.”
But he said that a markedly different attitude toward the holiday is still a factor.