Christmas Night with the Scars

Strange time to upload this (Good Friday?) but what the hell.

From the good old days when marketing and Brand Image weren't so important, and so no-one tried to "connect" with the audience so much as kick them in the teeth for being stupid, here's a Christmas Public Information film about fire.

If you read my ridiculous spiel about these things on "An Abyss of Suffering..." (and who could blame you if you hadn't), well, this is another example of what I was talking about, the uncanny ability of PIF makers to make a house fire seem like the worst thing that could ever happen to anyone. Intensely dispiriting as the best fire PIFs can be, here we have a little girl narrating the story of her Christmas gift the previous year: misery and death. In this film, we have survivor's guilt, parental guilt, black irony, primal horror, and lashings and lashings of rich, creamy despair, culminating in, of all things, a partially symbolic final shot.

The government's interest in keeping the public paralyzingly terrified about leaving their homes is unknown. Predates Wham! by several years, can't think of a joke anyway.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Advert
• Commercial
• Ad
• PIF
• fire
• burning
• immolation
• public
• information
• film
• PSA
• misery
• despair
• Christmas
• children
• death

[Gwena1990]

Yes, completely agree. Have you seen the Northern Ireland Road Safety ads?

[Applemask]

Not without flinching.

[Gwena1990]

How come are all the best PIFS come from the 1960's - 1980's? I mean, the road safety ads by Think are good, but I think that the ignorance by some people that might be down to censorship here in the U.K...I don't know. Though I have seen the Road Safety Ads from Northern Ireland(nothing to do with fires, I know) that AXA sponsered(petrifying enough seeing one, let alone the whole series!) Maybe 'P.I.F' wise, we should take a page out of their book? Anyone else seen them?

[Applemask]

Some of the 90s ones are good, but absolutely everything on earth is "demographically targeted" these days, aiming at an imaginary group of people and therefore effective for no-one. (cf "Moment of Doubt".) Combine that with a resurgence of hand-wringing squeamishness and you see why PIFs in the oughties have tended toward the bland. As we head into the teens, though, there are signs that they're toughening up again.

[steveasat2]

Screaming mother of Cthulhu, what kind of sadists do you limeys have writing public service announcements? I am genuinely afraid to fall asleep now. I'm gonna have to watch "Hostel" just to keep the nightmares away. And they ran this thing at CHRISTMAS?! That is hard core. I grew up watching a leaf fall in slow motion to explain SIDS. I am not prepared for this.

[Applemask]

I love this comment. We're British, dammit, we don't mess around.

[alexiscortez]

Announcer: That was a public information film

me: no duh genius nah nah this is a commercial about fire being fun and that parents are too stupid to watch their kids then going to a drunk party. :P

[dragonfitter]

between the road acidents fire and child neglect i am amazed mankind didnt die out in the 1970s

[Thebustermann]

@disjoinedchip2 He could just mean the McCallisters... a reference to Home Alone

[disjoinedchip2]

@flyersphan65 mr and mrs mccann.

[disjoinedchip2]

@moksheebs don't you mean the mccanns?

[Franco16971]

Or Santa will rip your arms off.right?

[moksheebs]

tell that to the McCallisters.

[flyersphan65]

What kind of idiot would leave their children alone in the house anyway.

[hotelmario510]

Erm, yes, you did call it propaganda. You called it a 'propaganda piece of sh*t'. Or are you schizophrenic?

[konkelberryfinn]

And its not like i said that either, or was it?

Anyway this is awesome