4 - Ken Russell and Television Advertising

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Given the detailed scrutiny to which Ken Russell’s career has been subjected, the relative lack of attention paid to the television commercials that he directed is a curious oversight, and one that deserves correction. For although it would be hard to make a convincing case that television advertising forms as important an element of Russell’s contribution to moving-image culture as the films he directed for the BBC or the cinema, it is nevertheless true that the commercials he made in the mid-1960s constitute a very important part of his oeuvre and contributed to his artistic development at a time in his career when he was making the move from television into feature films. This chapter will provide information on Russell’s work in advertising whilst also seeking to tease out some of the influence that television advertising had on his work, both through his own direct experience and via his collaborators’ involvement in this medium. The chapter will also suggest reasons as to why Russell stopped making commercials, moving beyond his own slightly hyperbolic recollections in order to more closely integrate his work in advertising with that in other areas.

Russell’s tendency to dismiss the television commercials that he made, and his splenetic attacks on the industry that produced them, might in part explain why his adventures in advertising have so often been overlooked. It seems that scholars, critics and fans are often willing to take Russell at his word, because his word is frequently so entertaining. Take this diatribe, for example, which is reproduced in John Baxter’s An Appalling Talent: ‘The corrupted minds who produced [advertisements] are real enemies of the state. It’s the ad men who are shaping society and they’re shaping it to their own image, which is a rotting death’s head.’ Such a passionate denunciation conforms to the idea of Russell as a visionary film-maker who momentarily compromised his integrity and virtuosity by prostituting his talent and becoming ‘a media whore’. Russell is often presented, not least by himself, as having attempted to atone for these lapses in his subsequent feature films, a number of which contain withering critiques of advertising and commercialism and their baleful influence on an artist’s creativity.