Friday, December 5, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Durex recruit Mozart for their latest TV ad
Heather Buck as The Queen Of The Night in ENO's The Magic Flute. Photograph: Tristram Kenton
Something for the weekend (well, Tuesday) - and a hilarious advertising misprision of classical music: the current TV ad for Durex's Play O lubricant for women. There are 30 seconds of perfectly groomed young women in the back-arching, pupils-dilating throes of carnal abandon - either in flagrante delicto with a partner, or in the bath, or pressed against a window, that sort of thing - and the music Durex have chosen to accompany it is the Queen of the Night's Act Two aria from Mozart's Magic Flute. The people at Durex judiciously repeat the very highest part of the phrase five times, where Mozart originally has it twice, amplifying the sensual excess of the moment and the women's pleasure, thanks, presumably, to judicious use of Play O.
It sort of makes sense in terms of the deliberate extremity of the vocal acrobatics Mozart demands from his soprano - top Fs in the outer regions of leger-line land above the treble clef. But dramatically, I'm not so sure. Far from erotomania, the aria is actually about a mother trying to turn her daughter into a murderess, as the Queen of the Night bribes Pamina with disownment if she doesn't agree to kill Sarastro. "You will no longer be my daughter" is the phrase that accompanies Durex's advert. Not quite the "I want to get my rocks off" that probably would have worked better, from the adman's point of view.
No matter though: the reason the ad works is the unwritten equation between high-pitched operatic excess and physical or emotional extremity, above all in women. Feminist theorists have had a field day with male composers' treatment of women in operatic plots, and one interpretation of the Queen of the Night is as Exhibit A in the prosecution's case against operatic misogyny. Mozart's character is an evil, hysterical woman, on the side of unknowable but ineluctable darkness, who is defeated by the male world of goodness, light, and wisdom, symbolised by Sarastro and his kingdom. Durex and Play O would presumably rather be on the side of female emancipation ('it's all you need' coos the voiceover), but they're unwittingly tapping into cultural stereotypes of feminine sexuality oppressed by patriarchal hegemony. Or, well, maybe it's just an advert …
It sort of makes sense in terms of the deliberate extremity of the vocal acrobatics Mozart demands from his soprano - top Fs in the outer regions of leger-line land above the treble clef. But dramatically, I'm not so sure. Far from erotomania, the aria is actually about a mother trying to turn her daughter into a murderess, as the Queen of the Night bribes Pamina with disownment if she doesn't agree to kill Sarastro. "You will no longer be my daughter" is the phrase that accompanies Durex's advert. Not quite the "I want to get my rocks off" that probably would have worked better, from the adman's point of view.
No matter though: the reason the ad works is the unwritten equation between high-pitched operatic excess and physical or emotional extremity, above all in women. Feminist theorists have had a field day with male composers' treatment of women in operatic plots, and one interpretation of the Queen of the Night is as Exhibit A in the prosecution's case against operatic misogyny. Mozart's character is an evil, hysterical woman, on the side of unknowable but ineluctable darkness, who is defeated by the male world of goodness, light, and wisdom, symbolised by Sarastro and his kingdom. Durex and Play O would presumably rather be on the side of female emancipation ('it's all you need' coos the voiceover), but they're unwittingly tapping into cultural stereotypes of feminine sexuality oppressed by patriarchal hegemony. Or, well, maybe it's just an advert …
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