Almost Like a Parallel Universe
If there’s one thing that underlines the unique atmosphere of somewhere foreign to you, it’s the advertising.
Adverts have been a constant almost everywhere I’ve travelled to, and like lichen, or fungus, their appearance and composition varies according to region. The contrast to British advertising is, obviously, more apparent when it’s a language I’m not familiar with, but the difference still holds in countries where English is the primary language.
In Canada and the US, it’s the film posters that stand out. Ones for movies unlikely to be released back home for months, if not doomed to plunge straight to video (and isn’t that fast becoming an archaic phrase?); the subtle shift of a personal time-frame, as if I’m on holiday a little into the future.
It’s the same kind of feeling I used to get from imported US comics when I was small. To launch into old-fartery for a second, the advertisements don’t seem so exotic anymore. Most of the time, they’re just a branch of a campaign that’s already running over here, and even if they’re not, the tone and style is practically identical across the board, a slick scientific psychological method honed over a hundred years of consumer culture. The 21st Century: even the advertising is generic and homogenised.
But at the time, it was a strange contrast to the adverts in the Beano, or Marvel UK’s Transformers. Toys and chocolates alien to Wales and a complete lack of anything from Cadbury’s. Television listings for channels unknown to someone used to the four broadcast in Britain, for programmes that would never make it over the Pond. An occasional dip into a culture very familiar but still undeniably different to my own.
