I didn’t see the McDonald’s advert when it came out last week, but the subsequent story that hit the press yesterday with a wallop – much like a soggy Big Mac being dropped by a drunk on a urine-spattered pavement – certainly caught my eye. Apparently, the fast-food firm had made a fantastically offensive advert that cynically exploited child bereavement. My imagination running wild, I tuned in, expecting horrific scenes of distraught orphans being forced to, oh I don’t know, eat McDonald’s at gunpoint?
Frankly, I don’t know what I expected. But what I saw – a twee tale of a young lad who wants to know more about his dead dad – fell way, way short of offensive. Let me set out my credentials here: my mother died when I was 10. And frankly, saying you are “sickened” and “disgusted” by this advert seems an overreaction on a number of levels.
The story is simple: a boy asks his mum what his dad was like. He was awesome. He had shiny shoes, women loved him, expert sportsman. The boy – total loser – looks sad. They’re pretty different. But his face lights up once they arrive at a McDonald’s and, as he eats a Filet-O-Fish, his mum says: “That was your dad’s favourite too.”
First – and let’s just get this out of the way – the real reason this advert is offensive is because a Filet-O-Fish is no one’s favourite. And the chances of two people in one family even ordering one once, let alone it becoming their fast-food item of choice is nil.
Second – and OK, seriously then – while I am in no way an apologist for McDonald’s, this is hardly the most egregious manoeuvre in the history of capitalism. I’m looking at you, Coca-Cola, and your 1971 co-opting of peace and love, aka I’d Like to Buy the World a Coke. This is also not the first time sadness or loss has been used to shift a few units. Imagine, if you will, a John Lewis Christmas advert. Lana Del Rey singing *N Sync’s Gone plays softly in the background. A fatherless boy is unwrapping a brand new Dualit jug kettle. His mother smiles fondly. “Hot water was your dad’s favourite, too.” Great, huh? Almost as good as the one where the old man is left on the moon to die alone.
But McDonald’s is not a cosy, middle-class brand. So unlike John Lewis with “its best advert yet”, a “poignant” and “sensitive” work of art, McDonald’s are “over-salted wankers” with an advert that is “shameless” and “absolutely shit”. It’s classism. And also, I fooled you, because all those things were said on Twitter about the McDonald’s advert.
When I started writing this piece yesterday McDonald’s had apologised for any offence caused, but said the advert would continue to be aired. Great, I thought. This is hardly a Kendall Jenner/Pepsi debacle. But by the end of the day, with the complaints mounting, the ad was pulled. What a mess.
When my mother died, in 1985, child bereavement wasn’t spoken about. It was swept under the carpet, pretty much like my mother’s death was. No one talked to me about how I felt. Back to school I went. Children were not expected to grieve. They were resilient, they had short memories, they’d move on.
Today child bereavement – while not exactly front and centre – is at least a talked-about topic. The mental health issues that can arise from suppressing childhood grief have had high-profile spokesmen in the form of Princes Harry and William, for example.
There are also two charities working on behalf of bereaved children – neither of which were around in 1985. Child Bereavement UK kept quiet on McDonald’s, but another charity, Grief Encounter did not. So much so, that when I rang them, the woman on the end of the phone was so livid about the advert that I began to doubt my own feelings. Was I in fact offended and upset? I thought about it. It turned out I wasn’t.
Crucially, what a lot of people spewing outrage all over social media have misunderstood is this: the death of the boy’s dad is not solved by him eating a Filet-O-Fish. The message isn’t “Don’t worry about your dead parent – eat some fast food!” Simply, he is pleased he finally has something in common with his dad. When your parent dies when you are young, anything, no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential, that helps you feel closer to them is a revelation and a comfort.
Today, 30 years after she died, I am still eager for crumbs of information about my mother. I am gathering information for a memoir, and revisiting people from her past. Unearthing a new fact, or hearing an observation about our similarities from someone who knew her, feels like a wonderful kind of archaeology.
If child bereavement had been discussed openly when my own mother died – and you can’t get much more open than an advert on prime-time TV – then perhaps my grief may have felt less like a secret and shameful thing.