Years from now, when people look back on the 2010s they will be confused and scared. They will look at our angry politics, our monochrome Marvel cinema, our weird obsession with one stock image of a man looking at a woman while another woman looks angrily at him, and conclude that we were an unknowable and stupid people who worshipped the offspring of Kate Middleton, and got sad when a big clock stopped going bong.
And if they look hard enough, they will find a piece of art that sums up our era quite perfectly. A work that was released last week, with little fanfare, that will surely come to define us as a people. Historians will watch this work and nod. “Ah, I see now why these people acted as they did. The 2010s truly were a dark and disturbing time.”
The work of which I speak is not a play, not a film; and it is not Bake Off. It is a 60-second advertisement for reclaiming PPI, starring the screaming, robotic, disembodied head of Arnold Schwarzenegger on a small remote-control car, and it is one of the most upsettingly haunting things I have ever seen.
It is set in a low-ceilinged dystopian supermarket; 1980s horror synth ominously growls in the background. Three weary shoppers try to make a decision on what kind of apple, kitchen roll or deodorant they want. They take slightly too long. That is their only crime. For that, they must pay. Out of nowhere, Arnold’s rubber face bursts from the produce. “Surprise!” he screams, rolling out with unnatural speed. The people think of running, but it is too late. He is there. He must be placated.
The horror synth grows louder. “Do it! Make a decision! Just pick one! Do it naaaaaaaaow!” he yells, his metallic body spinning and shaking, like an unholy demon crossed with a miniature all-terrain vehicle. The customers suppress sobs, pick their items and march sadly to the cashier. “You’ve at least made a decision on the PPI, right?” he snarls. The ham-faced shoppers shake their heads, eyes wet with fear. Arnie lets out a guttural, animalistic, “Come aaawn!”, and for a second it looks as if he will bite off their kneecaps with his disturbingly realistic teeth. Mercifully we instead cut to a woman at a desk explaining the details of PPI, and the shoppers are allowed to go home, presumably to sign up for Ocado so they never have to leave the house again.
The advert, part of a £30m Saatchi campaign paid for by the Financial Conduct Authority to inform the public about the upcoming PPI deadline, provokes infinitely more questions than answers. Where is the rest of Arnie’s body? Who is controlling Arnie? Why is he so invested in people’s PPI claims? How does he eat? Does he feel pain? Can he be programmed to feel at all? Is there a chance he will gain sentience and attempt to take over the world, turning every human into a disembodied head who demands to know the status of your PPI claim? None of these questions have been answered yet, but given that the PPI deadline doesn’t expire until 2019, we’ll probably have a few more instalments to find out.
“RoboArnie and the Missold PPI Claim” – which also sounds like another Terminator movie that no one asked for – is part of a growing genre: nostalgia ads, or nostalgiads, which inexplicably use fictional characters from the childhood of the target demographic, usually without logic or reason, to sell products.
Famous examples include MoneySupermarket’s use of Skeletor, where the fearsome Masters of the Universe villain takes time off from trying to enslave Eternia to see how much he could save on his home insurance, and Halifax’s use of Scooby Doo, where he and Shaggy escape from a monster by going into a conveniently placed branch to learn about the rewards of a Halifax current account. It is impossible to watch those adverts and not feel a part of your soul dying. Scooby and Shaggy did not survive 48 years of groundskeepers haunting abandoned fairgrounds just so they could say “zoinks” at a 18.9% variable rate on a Clarity Credit Card. Scrappy Doo did not die for this.
Halifax is the worst offender by far in this new genre. It makes Top Cat, a cat who lives in a trashcan, get a mortgage. Why? Why would Top Cat want a mortgage? He eschews citywide bureaucracy frequently in his get-rich-quick schemes – why would he want to be tied down to a fixed address? Officer Dibble would get a search warrant within hours and the jig would be up. It’s just unrealistic.
And don’t get me started on the most recent Thunderbirds-Halifax crossover, in which Parker wins the lottery and abruptly quits on Lady Penelope. Are we to believe that Parker’s loyalties to Lady Penelope are so flimsy? I’m sorry, but the Parker I know wouldn’t just up sticks and leave.
Up until RoboArnie, I had thought this genre of advert was a lazy attempt to tie your beloved childhood heroes to dull financial products. But watching that Austrian head whizz and whirr around the supermarket floor as confused shoppers held back tears, I realised it was something much darker, something much more relevant to our generation. The message of these adverts is simple: no one can escape the drudgery of modern life – not even your childhood heroes.
Think about the Arnie of the 1980s – fun, over-the-top, muscly, controlled by no one, telling guys with pipes in their chest to “let off some steam”. Now look at what he has become in 2017 – a disembodied head on wheels, muscles sliced off, his catchphrases twisted and mangled to encourage you to check out your PPI claim. Your favourite form of childhood escapism – be it an action film, cartoon, puppet or Iggy Pop – has been wrenched from its fantasy world and forced, painfully, into our dull, responsibility-laden universe of financial products and comparison websites.
No one can escape – not Arnie, not Shaggy, not Scooby, not even Harvey Keitel’s character from Pulp Fiction, who now exclusively helps hen parties who have broken down in the English countryside for some reason. Time comes for us all.
So thank you, the FCA, Halifax and MoneySupermarket. You have created a new subgenre of art that is more terrifying and despair-inducing than anything Hollywood could dream up. May the rolling wheels of RoboArnie haunt your every trip to Tesco.
• Jack Bernhardt is a comedy writer and occasional performer
