"Let Life Happen" – John Lewis and Reversible Damage
You can buy insurance to replace household items, but not your child's body and mind.
Written by Bryndís Blackadder: 2021.10.13 Published: 2021.10.14
(Author’s Disclaimer: This article is for political and artistic commentary and entertainment purposes only and does not constitute guidance on insurance contracts or John Lewis’ Home Insurance policies, inter alia.)
The concept of “accidental damage” is stretched to the limits in John Lewis’ new advertisement1 which features a young boy dressed in his mother’s clothing and jewellery (which he stole from her ransacked bedroom) carrying out a dissociative trashing of the family home whilst dancing to Stevie Nicks’ song “Edge of Seventeen”.
In what seems to be an inadvertent visual metaphor for the petulance of the transgender movement, the company is apparently selling insurance aimed at parents afflicted with particularly difficult children who come home from school with destructive new learned “identities”.
The “Let Life Happen” campaign for John Lewis’ Home Insurance is aptly named considering the family members make no intervention to cease the wanton destruction carried out by the child. In the current political climate, parents are dissuaded from setting rules and instead are encouraged to let kids do whatever they want - from taking hormones to smashing ornaments. Instead, the capitalist machine can sell you insurance to plaster over the issues if financial pitfalls occur due to the hands-off approach.
There is an unwitting juxtaposition between the material losses that can be mostly undone by throwing money at them and the “Irreversible Damage”, described by authors such as Abigail Schrier, that occurs when ‘trans kids’ are allowed to carry out destructive acts upon their minds and bodies unhindered by parental oversight or boundary setting.
The advert has been widely queried as misselling a product given that the protagonist is apparently causing deliberate vandalism of the house. Surely no insurance company would cover such intentional damage or demonstrate how much a claimant could get away with?
According to john Lewis’ website2:
“What is accidental damage insurance?
So what do we mean by accidental damage? We mean damage to your home or to objects in your home caused by the policy owner or their family. In our Bronze, Silver and Gold policy documents you’ll see it defined as ‘damage or loss of function caused by a sudden, unforeseen and unintentional event.’”
The site goes on to say:
“Does Accidental Damage Insurance cover damage caused by children?
Yes – happily, with these add-ons you're covered for anything accidentally damaged or broken by your children or their playmates. This includes spills on the carpet or sofa and broken chairs or mirrors – although we cannot guarantee you against the associated seven years of bad luck!”
And continues:
“ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE FOR CONTENTS
We now work and relax from home more than ever, which can increase the chances of things getting broken - either by us or excitable little ones.”
One could easily argue that there was no indication that the child accidentally hit the various ornaments he targeted. His bemused sister would probably consider the calculated and attention-seeking spilling of her paint set as a selfish and intentional attack. If this is a regular occurrence, they will have a tough time convincing any insurance provider of its unintentional nature.
After tossing his sister’s paint palette on the ground the boy paces at the camera with outstretched hands covered in teal and pink gouache, as if possessed like Damien Thorn of the Omen, he then daubs it on his face like war paint in the colours of the transgender flag.
I have written previously3 of the disgraced LGBT charity Stonewall’s rebrand into a colour scheme which I described as Farrow and Ball-esqe aspirational pink and teal, an attempt to make a more middle-class tonal palette representing the transgender flag made up of “baby- blue “ and “baby-pink”. Fitting well with the aesthetic proclivities of John Lewis’ target market.
What is promoted as light-hearted might strike fear into the hearts of many parents. An “affirmation only” care model is being promoted by governments’, NHS and schools’ guidance, wherein any child should be treated as a leader in their own life -with no inhibition- regarding their own “gender expression” and any activities or “treatments” this might necessitate. The donning of a dress followed by the chaotic acting-out could be the foreboding sign of some tough and complex times ahead for the family unit
The theme of the psychopathic or possessed child is a staple of the horror genre because little strikes more fear into a parent than a child they cannot control and who has the power to destroy their lives (or expensive sofas). Whether by creating havoc financially via property damage or invoking the wrath of social services by making a parent put their foot down, the boy is flexing previously unknown levels of power over the mother. There is nothing more tempting than a form of insurance that can ameliorate some of those fears created by having an ungovernable child.
There is a vein of sexism throughout which positions the female family members as passive witnesses to their male child’s ruinous galivanting. This again continues the audio-visual analogy for contemporary “gender politics” where men and boys get a supreme and unimpeachable position in society, particularly if they are cantankerous transvestites.
The advertisement was produced by the ironically named (in this context) company “Adam & Eve DDB” (how binary), an ad agency with clients including the HMRC and Google, which offers “Creative Comeback placements via Creative Equals”4. Creative Equals is a “global consultancy” which promotes diversity targets and BLM and hosts transgender activist speakers such as Munroe Bergdorf at “Creative Equals Rise” conferences.5 Creative Equals has clients such as the Government Equalities Office and the BBC.
The director of the video is Tom Kuntz, who made the smash hit advertisement for Old Spice titled “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like”6. In his “Let Life Happen” film, he is responding to and emulating the 2015 John Lewis advertisement “Tiny Dancer” which was also produced by Adam & Eve DDB. Unlike his Old Spice advert, his John Lewis piece is being “ratio’d” on Youtube with 550 dislikes vs 272 likes (at the time of writing), with commenters bemoaning the overtly political agenda of the advertisement and the apparent misrepresentation of insurance terms and conditions.
The 2015 John Lewis advertisement, which this is referencing, featured a little girl ballet dancing clumsily to Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer”7 and the advertisement was well received. The key difference being the girl was clearly having fun and wasn’t targeting possessions, unlike the boy in the 2021 version, who seemingly is acting out by aiming at objects, which has been raising the hackles of viewers.
“Let Life Happen” is an advert encapsulating the ethos of 2021. It sells the middle class a way of avoiding disciplining their children; they can just pay to have the disaster rectified in lieu of enforcing rules. Let the children act as irresponsible as they like, allow them to smash up their young lives and bodies and permit them to disrespect their families.
It promotes a political movement to those who lap it up. The “woke” progressives see no hypocrisy in promoting a combination of activist movements: from transgender ideology, Extinction Rebellion, and fighting climate change, all whilst treating possessions and body parts as single-use items they consider to be easily replaced on a whim when their brat has another tantrum or leaves another exhibitionist trail of destruction. Who wants to be a “small-c” conservative these days anyway? Conservation begins at home and there is seemingly little care amongst the target audience for looking after possessions or their children.
Consumerism is once again pink-washed with glitter thrown by the hands of a young cross-dressing boy.
By Bryndís Blackadder
Let life happen - John Lewis Home Insurance
34,148 views 11 Oct 2021
Youtube link accessed 2021.10.13
Youtube archive taken 2021.10.13
https://archive.ph/wip/aCsgj
Wayback machine archive taken 2021.10.13
https://web.archive.org/web/20211013100521/
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JOHN LEWIS FINANCE accessed 2021.10.13
https://www.johnlewisfinance.com/insurance/let-life-happen.html?track=jli:SMFBHOME72&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=jli:SMFBHOME72&fbclid=IwAR1DhbsgctWgPu6X9RiI0SZBXJntai7rfaScke6cxMCl9VkiM6qzqiTZN94
Archive 2021.10.13
https://archive.ph/wip/mFp3y
Wayback:
https://web.archive.org/save/https://www.johnlewisfinance.com/insurance/let-life-happen.html?track=jli:SMFBHOME72&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=jli:SMFBHOME72&fbclid=IwAR1DhbsgctWgPu6X9RiI0SZBXJntai7rfaScke6cxMCl9VkiM6qzqiTZN94
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ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE HOME INSURANCE
Accessed 2021.10.13
https://www.johnlewisfinance.com/insurance/home-insurance/accidental-damage-insurance.html
Archive 2021.10.13
https://archive.ph/wip/eLkPZ
Accessed 2021.10.13
Direct quotes:
What is accidental damage insurance?
So what do we mean by accidental damage? We mean damage to your home or to objects in your home caused by the policy owner or their family. In our Bronze, Silver and Gold policy documents you’ll see it defined as ‘damage or loss of function caused by a sudden, unforeseen and unintentional event.’
“Does Accidental Damage Insurance cover damage caused by children?
Yes – happily, with these add-ons you're covered for anything accidentally damaged or broken by your children or their playmates. This includes spills on the carpet or sofa and broken chairs or mirrors – although we cannot guarantee you against the associated seven years of bad luck!”
ACCIDENTAL DAMAGE FOR CONTENTS
We now work and relax from home more than ever, which can increase the chances of things getting broken - either by us or excitable little ones.
https://adamandeveddb.com/people
All Accessed 2021.10.13
Links to :
Creative Returnships
We offer Creative Comeback placements via Creative Equals.
>>>
https://www.creativeequals.org/
https://archive.ph/wip/rNqHJ
Munroe Bergdorf: Brands should 'embrace the radicals'
28 MAY
by Brittaney Kiefer for Campaign Magazine, May 2019
Accessed 2021.10.13
https://www.creativeequals.org/blog/2019/05/28/munroe-bergdorf-brands-should-embrace-the-radicals
https://archive.ph/wip/VoHkk
Old Spice | The Man Your Man Could Smell Like
Accessed 2021.10.13
59,989,704 views5 Feb 2010
https://archive.ph/wip/lWT2s
http://www.mjz.com/directors/tom-kuntz/commercials/old-spice-the-man-your-man-could-smell-like/
Excellent article
"You may have seen our "Let Life Happen" advert for our new home contents insurance offering, which ran between 11 and 27 October 2021. This advert has been withdrawn because the Financial Conduct Authority considers the content to be potentially misleading and could cause customers to be confused about John Lewis’ new home contents insurance offering. This was absolutely never our intention. The ‘Let Life Happen’ John Lewis home insurance advert was created to show a joyful depiction of a young actor getting carried away with his performance, oblivious of the unintentional consequences of his actions. We would like to clarify that accidental damage cover is available as an add-on to John Lewis's new home contents insurance product and only covers accidental (not deliberate) damage. We have decided to contact every customer who purchased our new home contents insurance cover from 11 October to 31 October to confirm they understood these points and are happy with their purchase."
Accessed 2021.10.27
https://www.johnlewisfinance.com/insurance/let-life-happen.html?track=jli:SMFBHOME72&utm_source=Facebook&utm_medium=Social&utm_campaign=jli:SMFBHOME72&fbclid=IwAR1DhbsgctWgPu6X9RiI0SZBXJntai7rfaScke6cxMCl9VkiM6qzqiTZN94
Archive taken 2021.10.27
https://archive.ph/8IExn