Lynx Bullet

I saw this at a bus stop earlier today:

It's a teeny, tiny can of deodorant. Called 'Bullet'. Wow.

I think we all know who falls into Lynx's main market target audience - young men. On the basis of that slogan, I'm guessing young single men. In fact, having seen the advert for this on their website, I'm tempted to go as far as saying it's aimed at (slightly desperate) single young men. Which is probably a shame, because it has the potential to be a nifty little product, that has a decent idea behind it. Easily portable fragrance for stinking men - good plan.

But - and yes, it's a large one - there is one glaring problem with the marketing here, isn't there? Isn't there? Or is it just me that has a problem here? Can I be the only one that takes issue with the use of the word 'bullet'?

Okay, let's overlook the latent sexism of the Lynx advert - obviously, that's ridiculous, but we've come to expect that of Lynx; it isn't the issue here. Lynx adverts have always shown single, pathetic men being a bit sad and lonely but suddenly managing to pick up some stunning, scantily-clad model after a quick application of Lynx. In a way, that's always been the magic of the Lynx ad; even losers can have some companionship if they use Lynx. That said, if you read 'companionship' as 'casual sex' the charm is lost a little, though you probably have a more accurate world view. Let's not forget that Bullet slogan: Pocket Pulling Power.



No, the issue here is that word 'bullet'. Has Lynx settled on this as a name because knife crime is under the spotlight so much, and - presumably - isn't cool any more? Suddenly, it's become alright to make adverts that encourage young men to buy Bullets? Come to think of it, when did it become alright for someone (at 21.19) to design this thing? The Louis Vuitton Bullet (or LV-Bullet, for short):




Designer bullets? What? If that's not glamorizing gun crime, I don't know what is.

Since when was it alright to glamorize ammunition in the way this Lynx advert does? Lynx seem to be happy saying that young men should carry bullets with them. There's an especially bad bit in this press release by 'acclaimed thespian' Matt LeRoche.

"For spontaneous guys on the go who are often faced with unexpected pulling
opportunities".

Sorry, what? What exactly is it that makes those men different to your average gangster? They're 'on the go'...from the Police.

"Bullet is perfectly pocket-sized, measuring just under eight centimetres".

So, like a bullet, then? Like a small piece of lead designed to be fired at high velocity at another person with the intention of killing and/or maiming them? One of those, yeah? How is this a good thing to be selling and putting up on posters? Especially when we know that gun crime - especially in London - is increasing, who in Lynx decided this was a good product name? Surely there were better suggestions? The main exponents (read: criminals) of the explosion of gun crime are young men, who unfortunately happen to overlap with Lynx's target market. I say 'overlap'...they're the same people. Alright, so the criminals are getting younger, but they still see bus stop posters and TV adverts, and they still use deodorant (probably...).


Now, I realise that I may be in a wishy-washy, liberal minority here, but am I the only one that holds onto a basic belief that guns are - essentially - bad? Is there really only me that can't help thinking violence is not always - if ever - a good option? Am I the only one that thinks that a kid brought up like the Western-loving one in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is a bad thing? I mean, a kid that has this webpage made about him must have something wrong somewhere, right? Therefore, making guns (and associated accessories) look good is also inherently bad, right? In fact, that word 'accessories' is probably more significant than I intended when I typed it - now I see it's a frighteningly good word for the whole issue of weaponed teenagers brandishing their status-symbol killing implements. On the whole 'accessories' front, look at the first paragraph of this Guardian report.

But, it's okay for Lynx to market their products like this?

Stags & Hens at Hull University

This is the first show I've seen Hull's Drama Society do, and I feel a tad guilty that I should have seen more. I mean, it's hardly fair to judge them on the basis of Stags & Hens alone. But then, this didn't exactly grab me. A fairly brief review follows:

What sort of theatre do you put on when your venue is a nightclub? Plays set in nightclubs, of course. Hull University Drama Society's latest offering is Willy Russell's Stags & Hens, which takes place entirely in the toilets of a cheap, run-down nightclub (in the play, that is – the actual club is fine).

Now, the problem here is that – as stated – the whole thing happens in the toilets. Apart from the last scene, nothing really happens anywhere else. Unfortunately, this makes the Drama Society's production pretty static and stolid. Characters move about a bit when they say something, occasionally moving from the sofa to a standing position, or one stock pose to another. The group of girls alternate between preening and (often aggressive) hip-wiggling as forms of expression, while the lads give off a slightly misplaced bravado that isn't endearing.

What happens in the last five or ten minutes though, acts as a massive shot in the arm of an otherwise tired piece, and I wished the rest of the show had run like that. Suddenly, there was pace and there was action, there was genuine feeling on stage and there was laughter that came from the acting not just the lines. Pity it took so long to get to this point. The violence that comes unquestioned provides a real lift, but I couldn't help wondering about the women standing mutely by while their friend was attacked – what was all that about mates sticking together? I'm no Feminist, but it got my hackles up.

What Stags & Hens does do is give us a picture of a youth culture just growing into its self-confidence – clubbing youngsters being brought into adulthood by chance rather than necessarily by actual maturity, youth ageing because of outside circumstances. In some ways, it's very much in the mould of Bouncers. But Stags... is much less upbeat – it's positively bitter about marriage, which is a crucial background to a play telling the story of a Stag and a Hen night. In fact, you've got to wonder what Russell's got against the 'institute for the blind', as marriage is called at one point.

Red Riding 1980 on C4

It's funny how good hygiene is as an indicator of character. Hygiene and good taste. You can spot the real villains of Red Riding 1980 a mile off, because one of them fails to employ good hygiene, while the other has rather poor taste in humour.
Even with the cold, distant performance of Joseph Mawle as the Yorkshire Ripper, I can't help thinking the bad guy is Bob Craven (Sean Harris), a Detective who doesn't wash his hands after using a urinal. Okay, so he manages not to touch Paddy Considine's investigating detective Hunter with his hands – demonstrating instead the 'soft' headbutt – but even so, it's not nice. Then there's that wheelbarrow joke...
Having been worried last week about the prospects for justice in 1980, it was good to see the West Yorkshire Police force band together and huddle in to protect their own this week. By 'their own' I mean their criminals as well as their coppers. In fact, the difference between the two sometimes seems to be very vague in Red Riding, which gives far more screen time to the constabulary than to the Yorkshire Ripper himself. This man is a serial killer, modelled on Jack the Ripper, yet when outside help arrives West Yorkshire Police – in the person of dirty-handed Bob Craven – are keen to point out that he is their Ripper, and they will catch him. Still, at least this is a force with pride in its villains. I suppose a strong adversary is a mark of a strong hero...maybe that's the logic best applied to the police force under such withering scrutiny in Red Riding. It's surely no coincidence that both of the first two episodes go some way to exposing corruption and gangland-style dealings within West Yorkshire's constabulary.
Note also the return of some characters from 1974 – including a somewhat altered BJ (Robert Sheehan) and his significant revelations. It's lovely the way this trilogy interacts within itself, the events that ended in last week's 'Jacobean' bloodbath continuing into this week's bloody conclusion.
Best moment of the episode (bar that final, sudden and somehow inexplicable twist) in terms of the trilogy itself? Hunter: Who would you call when a man breaks into your house, kills your dog and rapes your wife? Laws replies: Not West Yorkshire Police, because he'd already be there, wouldn't he?

Red Riding 1974 on C4

More from West Yorkshire...

This week sees the beginning of a dark and ambitious trilogy on C4. Red Riding promises to be gritty and basically 'orrible; I forget who coined the term 'Yorkshire noir', but it sounds pretty grim.

Reviews have so far made the “it's grim up north” joke to the point of overkill, so let's hope the next two films will allow reviewers to move on to other things.
1974 certainly sets a pretty grim – though I prefer 'bleak' – tone for the series which is based on a quartet of books by David Peace (what a surname for someone writing this pitch-black stuff!). It's all about the dealings of West Yorkshire Police and the Yorkshire Post – using fictional characters mostly, though apparently the higher-ranking police are based on real people. The fact that it's West Yorkshire Police makes me worry that my life is becoming dominated by that place, as my last blog post was about West Yorkshire Playhouse. Thankfully, Othello was a rather more pleasant experience...and it's not often you get to say that.

Being set in 1974, and having young men floating about being policemen and journalists, this was bound to feel a bit like Life on Mars. In parts, it does, though I gather director Julian Jarrold tried to avoid that.

"We went for a colour we all associate with the Seventies, which is slightly brownish and muted. What I didn't want to do was to go down the Life on Mars route and plaster it with pop songs of the periods."

he says in The Independent. Really? Well, full marks on the brownish tint conjuring a seventies feel, but if you wanted to avoid 'the Life on Mars route', maybe you shouldn't have given your central character a leather jacket almost identical to Sam Tyler's... Also, what is it about the muted brown stuff that make us think of the seventies? Surely, colour existed back then in much the same way it does now? But then, the trailer for next week's film (set in 1980) has an entirely different colour quality to it – much brighter, with more contrast between black and white.
That Independent article is also one that mentions the 'Jacobean' ending...and Jacobean it certainly is – brilliantly so.

Fresh from failure on Fleet Street – though not exactly fresh-faced – Yorkshire Post reporter Eddie Dunford (Andrew Garfield) is investigating the disappearance and later murder of a little girl who never made it home from school. During his highly professional investigation, he somehow gets his end away three times in the space of roughly half an hour – with two different women. One of them – Paula Garland (Rebecca Hall) – is the mother of a missing girl, and turns out to be real trouble for the poor lad.

Dunford soon regrets laughing at his mate's fears about the Police 'death squads'. Barry (Anthony Flanagan) is obviously just being paranoid...until a sheet of glass flies from a lorry and slices his head off. Hmm, suspicious. It seems these Policemen really are as nasty as Barry thought. In fact, West Yorkshire Police come out of this pretty badly. They're corrupt and violent, and possibly a tad inept.

If you didn't already have a bleak impression of West Yorkshire, you probably will after Red Riding, which may be the intention, but I'm not convinced. From the bigotry of Sean Bean's brutal businessman to the general grubbiness of the council estates, it's not exactly pro-Yorkshire...unless you happen think this is quintessential Yorkshire. It isn't. Then there's the all-too-familiar black bag over the head of a man held prisoner by men in uniform. Okay, he's not a Jihadist held by US military forces in Abu Ghraib, no. He's a British reporter held by West Yorkshire Police in an underground cell near the moorland they chuck him into from the back of a lorry. So that's better, then.

It's not looking good for justice in the rest of the series.

For he's a pretty good Othello (at the West Yorkshire Playhouse)

Barrie Rutter directs Lenny Henry as the title role in Shakespeare's Othello at the West Yorkshire Playhouse in Leeds.


It's not often you think that Shakespeare's tragic Othello might be being played as a comedy. But the Northern Broadsides have cast Dudley's comedian Lenny Henry as the Moor of Venice, and this idea takes a little getting used to.

In fairness to him, Henry is a pretty decent Othello, and a better actor than his TV work gives him credit for. He puts in a good turn as the black general in a white man's army, fighting the heathen Turk on behalf of the Venetian senate just after eloping with a senator's daughter. He shows us not only the stately nobleness of the honoured military genius, the boisterous glee of the newly-wedded lover, but also the shuddering confusion of the man tormented by his own jealous fears and the bursts of rage of the passionate man pushed too far. He is a restrained man in an alien world, with drinking games and loose morals. Deceit lies around every corner, and Othello is just that little bit too trusting to survive long in such a world.

Speaking of deceit, Conrad Nelson swaggers about the stage as an Iago keen to be everyone's confidential friend unless it serves his interests to be hostile to them. He pleads with Othello, his friendship and love for his boss drawing him to discreetly splash about his groundless insinuations, which then permeate and spread through Othello's mind. He's a bundle of feral energy, who somehow manages to cut a dashing figure in his burgundy military uniform.

The Northern Broadsides carry this tragedy off with customary panache, and in far better style than their Romeo and Juliet of last year. Their musicians are in fine form as ever, especially in a drinking game that looks like it may have first seen life in a panto routine somewhere. That's a compliment, by the way, to the stagecraft and handling of a complex set of exchanges. Naturally, the cast all use that 'northern voice' the Broadsides are so keen on. It's their hallmark, what they've become known for. That, and very little set. Othello has just a balcony, and a bed and torches for Desdemona's later scenes. What this means the Broadsides have to do is encourage the audience imagination. With their expansive black set, the Broadsides leave the words to set the scene, and the rest is up to us – turning the stage into a Cypriot street or the Venetian Senate chamber.

The northern voice thing is what makes it so interesting that Lenny Henry (Dudley's most famous son?) has been cast. I've nothing against his casting; he's good, surprisingly good for a comedian taking on a tricky tragic role – the fact that he is a black character written by a white man is sometimes painfully obvious. Henry's accent, though, is more difficult to place. His voice booms out, but where is it from?

It's a funny thing with criticism of classics like Bill Shakey's work, or even older things like the Greek tragedies, that we rarely seem to say much about the script itself (unless we're talking about a 'problem play', like The Taming of the Shrew or The Merchant of Venice). Some of these plays have become so enshrined in national consciousness that there's no point in mentioning things about script - the performance has become what matters. In some ways, that's a good thing; at least we aren't seeing them as only written documents, but as plays to be performed. But are they in danger of loosing their literary status? Is it allowed, or somehow a taboo, to criticse the Bard? Are we allowed to say - for example - that we'd like to see more of Othello's destructive jealousy before Iago has had chance to turn him against Desdemona? Is that so wrong? Or, can I praise the use of that fatal handkerchief at the end, that exposes Iago's villainy?

'The Pillowman' at Leicester's Curve Theatre

Seeing Marc Warren in one of the first productions staged by Leicester's innovative new Curve Theatre made me think again about the different merits of the stage and the small screen.

That was a surprising thing to be thinking about, because I'd expected the venue to be the most interesting part of the afternoon. The Curve is a brand-new addition to Leicester's Cultural Quarter, which is all about breaking down audience/performer barriers with its glass and perspex walls. Passers-by can see into the foyer, which stretches around the theatre like a long, round corridor. What's even more unnerving is the unreserved seating – which I'm sure is bound to lead to some fights for the best seats. This is one venue where it really pays to get there early and start the queue at the door. Oh, and apparently, the theatre's walls can slide up out of the way.

Entering the theatre – a fairly normal three-sided stage effort – for Paul Kerryson's The Pillowman, the audience has to pass several prison cells, following a winding and disorientating route that sets up Warren's first few lines beautifully – he is confused and doesn't understand why he's been pulled into this prison. There's a cage and a deep buzzing noise, all very unnerving, very dark and very apt.

This entry and the need for interpersonal interaction in the polite, civilised scrabble for seats are two of the things that I think the Curve has over the small screen. TV doesn't allow for the identification with a prisoner's plight that the cells in that twisting corridor do, nor does a living room have the community feeling of a couple of hundred people who've shared the queue and barely disguised greed of grabbing the best seats.

Also, there's nothing like a live audience for comedy, and Martin McDonagh's script is certainly funny. Yes, it's incredibly dark, yet it manages to be both brilliantly scary and blackly funny in almost the same breath. While occasionally being over-wordy, The Pillowman is otherwise a really bleak investigation into the responsibility of writers and the influence their work has on others – with an awful lot of child abuse. It is sharply staged, with an almost bare stage managing to convey the claustrophobic feel of a prison in a totalitarian state.

Marc Warren – who looks about thirty but is actually at least a decade older – plays Katurin, one of the contenders for the honour of being the Pillowman of the title. Katurin the writer has been pulled in by a brutal police and accused of child murders bearing striking resemblances to his twisted and gruesome short stories. Warren is best known for his TV work – most notably Hustle and Mutual Friends – and it shows onstage. His voice doesn't seem suited to the stage, booming out as though he's struggling with projecting beyond the range of a camera microphone. Strangely, this sort of delivery works well for the hyper-reality of the short stories he recites with a touch of humour shining through the macabre elements.

TV has nothing on the reversal when Katurin's special needs brother makes a terrible confession – it's a moment TV would cut away from, but in a theatre that silence is agonising...and beautiful.