I don’t like Renault’s TV ads in France.  I don’t like them because they make me uncomfortable. More to the point, I don’t like that the spots seem to be intended to make me uncomfortable.

In an earlier post, I mentioned Renault’s “picturing families” ad for the Grand Scenic. In that spot, we follow a serial monogamist who has fathered many children, one of whom he learned about only last week.

A new Renault spot, “strawberries”, done by Publicis with music by Sporto Kantes, promotes the Twingo. In the spot, the Twingo belongs to a grandmother, who is driving young Sophie (= sophia, wisdom) to school. The pair are both wearing strawberry-colored seat belts (protection). As the pair reaches Sophie’s school, the girl’s (strawberry-colored) cell phone rings. Sophie fumbles in her handbag, from which spills the cell phone and a plastic wrapper.

The viewers see that the wrapper holds a strawberry-colored condom (protection). We see this before the grandmother, the better to gauge her reaction. “Sophie!”, exclaims the older woman. We see her granddaughter cringe, showing off her strawberry-colored lipstick. “So now you like strawberries?” adds the grandmother, to everyone’s surprise. The young girl is poised to take back her condom, but her grandmother quickly secrets it in her bra. The granddaughter laughs and smiles. The grandmother laughs, too.

As with the Renault spot for the Scenic, this ad could have been titled “taking liberties” or “taking license”. It makes fun of social conventions or expectations, and has a good time doing so.

Am I an Anglo-American puritan at heart? Am I fazed by a bit of French libertinage?

I think not. I hope not.

It’s not the sexual backbeat of these two ads that bothers me, but instead how the campaign works:

  • First, the ads try to make me feel uncomfortable, and to laugh at my discomfort; ultimately, the ad wants me to evacuate my discomfort by laughing at it and about it. But I think I’m right to feel unease with a middle-aged man who learned that he fathered a child only last week, and who changes wives as often as one might change … an automobile. And I think I’m right to feel unease with an adolescent girl –too young to go to school alone– who carries with her a supply of flavored condoms. (The spot is broadcast at all hours, and I’m grateful that my children have shown discretion and tact not to ask me to comment on why condoms would be flavored.)
  • Second, the ads are titillating. They are filmed to inspire fascination in persons or actions we find repellent. The Renault Scenic spot follows and takes the point of view of the father; when he confides in us details of the many women in his life, I can’t help but think that we’re meant to cheer him on. Likewise, in the Renault Twingo spot, the viewer cringes along with the young girl: we expect the grandmother to admonish Sophie, and we are surprised when she does not. Both ads show people who are not admirable but who succeed in their transgression, in “getting away with it”.