Perfection

George has just completed his first ever working week. Well - two days. And I suspect that it will be a long time before he earns that much money in so short a time again. We were very proud of him. He worked hard, was charming, was patient and focussed and never complained, although I know at times it was rather tedious.

It turned out that Nintendo Wii adverts are big budget productions. The director hired was Aaron Ruell, who is both a renowned photographer and director of independent films and an actor who has appeared in a number of Hollywood films, most notably 'Napoleon Dynamite'. He is, apparently, the up and coming man of the moment in the film world. It was, therefore, especially exciting when he asked if he could photograph George for his photographic website (www.aruell.com). He likes unusual looking people and takes very detailed photographs. We'll let you know when the photos are on the site, and that's one of his at the top there.

The actual advert will only be shown on American and Canadian TV, and will be released on 26th November, after which time it should be able to be found on YouTube. Oddly enough, there were 3 children in the commercial, of which two were English. So they were filming an American advert with two little English boys in Australia. The world sure is a small place these days.

It was really fascinating being there. It occurred to me that these days we are so familiar with adverts, films, and tv, and yet what goes into its creation is such a mystery to us. What amazed me most was the attention to detail. Everything had to be absolutely perfect - and this often meant doing things over and over and over again (not easy when you are an active twelve year old boy!). They would take a shot, and then start again because they wanted to move a teacup, or remove a person, or change some item of wardrobe because they didn't feel it was working.

Which brings me to the title of this post. We talk a lot these days about the influence of the media in terms of body image and the pressure to be perfect. We are sold the idea that we should aspire to look like women who are 20 years younger than us, airbrushed and injected, and we are disappointed when we can't keep up. But I realised watching this shoot that the idea of perfection pervades our society far more broadly than that. Through the media we are shown homes which have been styled by interior designers and stylists with no expense spared. Every detail of every thing we see on tv and film has been carefully selected, and then carefully placed in the scene. Nothing is left to chance. Throughout the filming wardrobe and makeup flit on and off the set, smoothing hair which doesn't look out of place to the human eye, straightening collars, pulling down hems and generally ensuring everyone looks picture perfect. Other people move teacups, flowers and other items around until the director and the advertising agency are satisfied. At one point, an extra disappeared and another one replaced him, as the agency had decided they didn't like his look (the poor man was only sitting at a cafe table pretending to talk to a blonde woman. Brutal).

All this creates a lot of pressure on us mere mortals, who are not followed around by make up and wardrobe and set hands. The media sends us the message that we must not only look perfect and be perfect, but our homes and our lives must be perfect too.

No wonder we are all going a bit nuts....