FAMILIARITY doesn’t always breed contempt. Sometimes it creates absurd fascination.

Walking past the Orthodox cathedral in Riga, I always notice a particular poster on the side of a Narvesen kiosk. I’d probably walked past it a hundred times before I actually noticed it, but once I did notice it, it developed a life of its own.

At a glance it’s nothing special - just an ad to say that newspapers are on sale here. It is clearly generic and posed by models. But start to consider what is actually on display and it starts to get truly bizarre.

Look closely and you’ll see the chap at the front isn’t reading a newspaper at all. He’s reading a child’s comic book. Not only that, he is finding it hilarious, laughing all over his face. Yet he’s smartly dressed, as if he is a succesful young businessman or at the very least an up-and-coming bank manager.

So gut-bustingly amusing is his comic that he’s oblivious to the attractive woman standing directly behind him. She in turn wears an expression of exaggerated bemusement as she peers over his shoulder.

Numerous questions arise from this scenario:

• What is the relationship between these two? Did she know he liked to read comics when they got together? Did her father warn her about this idiot?
• How did he get such a good job when he appears to be seriously mentally deficient? Is he some kind of idiot savant, able to calculate moves on the stock market instantaneously but with a mental age of five? Or is he undergoing some sort of mental breakdown? Why does he ignore his wife/girlfriend and retreat into a comic-book world? Pressure of work?
• Is she scratching her head and wondering if she should run off with her yoga teacher?
• Does Narvesen think there is a big untapped market in comic books for busy executives?

A few new questions occured every time I wandered past the poster. It was starting to develop the same sort of meditative power as the icons inside the cathedral next door, though admittedly the Madonna and Child of Narvesen is a touch less mystical.

Then came revelation. Wandering into a new part of town, I spied something new - or at least something half new. A poster of the woman on her own!

This adds a whole new dimension to the drama, answering some questions but posing even more new ones. Somewhat disappointingly it appears her confusion arises from her tiny lady’s mind being unable to make head or tail of the Financial Times rather than as a result of emotional exasperation. She was reading the FT all along, but it was hidden behind Einstein’s back in the first ad. However:

• Why is she on her own - has she ditched the besuited boyfriend? Is this a prequel or a sequel?
• Why did she buy the Financial Times if she finds it so impenetrable? Maybe she’s the one who works in a bank?
• Has this advert been paid for by the International Herald Tribune?

I think the most likely scenario is that she has murdered her boyfriend and stolen his job but now realises that playing the international commodity markets is a bit tougher than she imagined. Where does it go from here? Is she looking for a patsy to take the rap for the crime in some kind of film noirish denoument?

I think she may have just found one…

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 9:05 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.