Beer goggles: what adverts say about pre- & post-democratic SA
Have Castle adverts ever truly reflected the reality of our society?
"The Perfect End to a Perfect Day."
This somewhat inane platitude becomes poignantly ironic when it is unearthed and exposed in the denuding light of the post-apartheid present.
The "Day" of white nationalism, and the sentimental Voortrekker mythos to which South African heritage was ideologically yoked, has indeed come to an end, and this Castle advertisement is reassuringly anachronistic, easily dismissible as a quaint relic of our sordid past.
But then, is this advertisement's jocular, post-apartheid counterpart any less synthetic?
Castle has "Stood the test of time" in no small part because it is endowed with what Darwin called "cryptic colouration": the ability to adapt its veneer to the surface of its surroundings.
The image of a cohort of merry, multiracial compatriots affirming their national affinity no more evokes the fraught reality of South African society than did the smug, imperial corollary of a "Perfect Day"...
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