The Doors of Ikea
The new Ikea adverts are doing my head in a bit and not in an “I must buy furniture now” way. There’s this poor girl I’ve seen on tube posters: she’s sat on her Ikea chaise-langue starring, in abject, lysergic, terror, at a small toy crocodile that is glaring at her from the edge of her Ikea carpet.
Where are the girl’s friends here? Why isn’t her best mate holding her hand and soothing her with words like “it’s ok, you’re just tripping, it’s not a real crocodile and it’s not going to get you and we’re all friends here and we love you, you’re ok”. Meanwhile her boyfriend should be bashing the cuddly reptile over the head proclaiming “See me! I defeat croc! Ha-HARR! I is mighty!”
But no; boyfriend, as I saw on the false-cover of today’s Metro, is in his bedroom burning out one retina at a time while staring at his Ikea globe lamp shadethrough his telescope. He is cackling “I stare at suns with telly-scope and I no go blind. It night time now no sun.”
The friend who should be comforting her is doing herself less physical harm: as seen in the television advert she’s wandering her own living room with a magnifying glass “oo-ing” and “ah-ing” at all the lovely Ikea things in her house until she lights on a very shiny lamp.
It’s so shiny that within it she can see whole worlds and new worlds and worlds within worlds until, at the heart of this multi-verse she sees an eye, blurred and concave, staring back at her. The eye does not flinch. She never sees it blink.
She is found by her mother three days later still staring into the lamp. She speaks, after a fashion, but she never uses a recognisable word ever again.
Where are the girl’s friends here? Why isn’t her best mate holding her hand and soothing her with words like “it’s ok, you’re just tripping, it’s not a real crocodile and it’s not going to get you and we’re all friends here and we love you, you’re ok”. Meanwhile her boyfriend should be bashing the cuddly reptile over the head proclaiming “See me! I defeat croc! Ha-HARR! I is mighty!”
But no; boyfriend, as I saw on the false-cover of today’s Metro, is in his bedroom burning out one retina at a time while staring at his Ikea globe lamp shadethrough his telescope. He is cackling “I stare at suns with telly-scope and I no go blind. It night time now no sun.”
The friend who should be comforting her is doing herself less physical harm: as seen in the television advert she’s wandering her own living room with a magnifying glass “oo-ing” and “ah-ing” at all the lovely Ikea things in her house until she lights on a very shiny lamp.
It’s so shiny that within it she can see whole worlds and new worlds and worlds within worlds until, at the heart of this multi-verse she sees an eye, blurred and concave, staring back at her. The eye does not flinch. She never sees it blink.
She is found by her mother three days later still staring into the lamp. She speaks, after a fashion, but she never uses a recognisable word ever again.
posted by Scott Wood at 17.8.07
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