culture

LOOK HARDER

Education is wasted on the young. The tweed wrapped frustrations of an art history teacher begging me to ‘look harder Saunders’ were little more than snigger-fodder to a fourteen year old fresh into long trousers. Wisdom, it seems, can take a good half century to percolate from the inner ear to the cerebrum before it makes any sense.

‘Look at the subject, her expression, look at the others and the position of their hands. What does this tell you?’ he would say peering through his half rimmed specs. Yes, this was way back in the day when we still had male teachers.

What Mr Bromeswell was trying to tell us, all those years ago, was that every painting, every image, every photo is steeped in meaning and messages…for those that are open to decoding them, that is. Some of them are strategic: the items chosen to lie ‘casually’ on the linen tablecloth in a Dutch interior, for example. But many of the messages are subliminal, subconscious signals that cry out for an informed observer. And with the world in its current state of what can be politely described as flux, we have never been bombarded with so many hidden messages queuing up for interpretation and analysis. Mr B must surely be screaming down from the heavens ‘look harder ffs!’

Politics

Let’s start with an easy one. Check out this picture of Sir Keir Starmer meeting Donald Trump. Now, try if you can to wipe your brain completely clean of politics and look at the image as if it were a photograph of two random uncles meeting at a wedding. Oh yes, those dark rims do nothing to obscure the sheer terror that emanates from Uncle K’s eyes. And as for Uncle Don, well his disregard for Uncle K is palpable to the point of cringe. Sure, I selected this image, but I challenge anyone to find another picture that switches these roles. Because there isn’t one.

Disney

Disney is clearly trying to tell us something. Perhaps it’s feeling contrite about having created a billion cute but hideously entitled princesses out of our daughters. Whatever its reasoning, its attempt to correct matters with a ham-fisted dollop of DEI has made it look ridiculous and desperate. To cast a non-white in the role of Snow White was a decision, and a huge investment, that must have taken months if not years. The result was a $170 million loss at the box office and public ridicule. Compare that to the $190 million profits from the 1936 version (accounting for inflation).

Pop Music

Take a few minutes to really look into the face of one of our all time biggest pop idols. Forget about the decades of nipping and tucking, look into Madonna’s eyes and what do you see? Her skin maybe stretched to tearing point like budget clingfilm and her hair and lips over-augmented to compensate for time’s wicked revenge, but it’s the eyes that cannot lie. Some of the saddest eyes I’ve ever seen. Sad about ageing, perhaps, but it must surely be that she knows, subconsciously, that pop music is on the same trajectory as she is. And while we’re on the subject of decline, take at close look at Britney, the girl that once fizzed with bright pink vitality now confused, broken and empty. Blame it on drugs and the ageing process if you must, but we are not looking at faces that are proud of their legacy. These are the faces of idols that know the game is up.

As Robbie Williams admits, he would work for months in order to come up with a catchy, anthemic chorus. Today, you can create one at the press of a button. So is pop music dead? Well, formulaic pop music is yes. But the good news is that we’re already seeing the response to AI created music beginning to emerge with bands such as Angine de Poitrine experimenting with microtonal math-rock and unpredictable rhythms that go to show that humans are still very much in charge. Check them out here. Predictable they are not.

Hollywood

Oh dear, oh dear. It couldn’t be more explicit if it tried. Like pop music, Hollywood knows that its heyday lies long behind it. It had an amazing run, made itself stratospherically wealthy, then flaunted its riches back at us only to become even richer as a result. That’s quite some business model. But you can only live off your legacy for so long: Hollywood knows that it is dying and it’s reaching out to tell us that in a most peculiar way. The current Ozempic craze is Hollywood, literally and manifestly, diminishing itself before our very eyes. Drunk on a cocktail of guilt and narcissism, our stars are physically shrinking for us, as if on a kind of hunger strike against their own excesses. So tell me, who is Hollywood’s golden couple right now, the one that we all wish we could be?

Precisely.

The Car Industry

We all know that the Germans are the best engineers in the world. Their car industry has given birth to some of the the fastest, most efficient and aspirational products mankind has ever produced. And now, after eighty years climbing to the top of the world it has decided to dismantle it all piece by piece. As my geopolitical contemporary, Peter Zeihan says: if you’ve always fancied a state of the art BMW, buy one now because they won’t be making them much longer. As part of its strategy of intentional self-sabotage Germany has also decommissioned all its nuclear plants, much like Miliband filling in our gas wells with concrete I guess.

But don’t be fooled by the reassuringly snarly grin on the face of a luxury BMW eDrive machine. It is nothing but a grimace that hides the truth. The truth is that almost 60% of that sexy beast’s power plant was made in China. They deny it of course referencing a barrage of foreign sources and parts suppliers, but that’s the nub of it. Germany hasn’t just opened its gates to a Trojan horse, it has transplanted the damn thing into its very heart.

The same is true of Jaguar. Too many column inches have been written on Jaguar’s do-or-die gamble, so I’ll keep it short: Its 00 concept is openly and brazenly ground zero. It has abandoned its loyal, grey haired and tan gloved fan base in favour of a customer of dubious orientation and origin. At precisely the time, incidentally, that our ageing boomer army will be at its most populous ever. Go figure.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are shamelessly building gorgeous, indistinguishable clones of BMW X5s, G-Wagens, Lamborghinis, Range Rovers, Mini Coopers, Rolls Royces and even classic Corvettes. They are obviously taking the piss.

Let me spell it out. As the West abandons its cultural heritage, the Chinese are on hand to mop it up and regurgitate it for their own amusement.

Thank you Mr Bromeswell. Our destiny could not be any clearer.

Howard Saunders is a writer, speaker and the Retail Futurist

howard@22and5.com

theretailfuturist.com

@retailfuturist

Howard Saunders May 12, 2026 Brand, culture, Future, image, Uncategorized, woke Comments Off Read More

PUPPY LOVE

Most trends born in California become diluted by the time they arrive on our damp and cynical shores: yoga, veganism, vegetable smoothies, poke, Botox and fillers, tooth whitening therapy, therapy, the whole athleisure-wear thing, boho-chic, hyper-gluteal augmentation, even the opioid crisis…all fade a little on their long journey across the Atlantic in order, perhaps, to acclimatise to life beneath our sullen skies. But there’s one trend that has surely been amplified en route from La La Land: canophilia, aka our obsession with dogs.

Unlike the Americans, we Brits have loved our pet dogs for over six millennia as dog culture really kicked off in 4000BC, just at the end of the stone age. So essentially, our relationship with our favourite pet rolled along perfectly happily for six thousand years…until something shifted post Covid. A cultural blip in the matrix perhaps, but today it’s impossible to go to a shop, a bar or a restaurant without a dog sniffing at your ankles.

Restaurants desperate for trade have caved. Perhaps in the name of inclusivity they hang ‘dog friendly’ signs in the window above a shiny bowl as if allowing dogs is the magic bullet they need to get back to profit. A couple of years ago I guess it looked kinda cute, but frankly it’s hard to walk down a local high street now without accidentally booting a tin bowl along the kerb. These are the places I vow never to visit, and I’m sure I can’t be alone.

Q. How does your dog smell? A. Terrible.

The age old joke wasn’t wrong. Owners who exclaim ‘My dog does not smell!’ have been inoculated with doggy stench daily over many years having never left Rover’s side. They even allow him to sleep on their bed for god’s sake. Polite customers, meanwhile, pretend it’s absolutely normal for a bear of a beast to be slumped beneath the next table even when the whiff of wet fur wafts across their creme brûlée. And if you feel an exploratory tongue douse the back of your hand at the bar you can be damn sure that it’s recently been intimate with a dog’s rear end, if not another’s then its own. Peculiarly, for a nation addicted to hand sanitiser we remain stumm. Non dog owners are mute onlookers as they watch their favourite places become, literally, dogged by mollycoddled mutts.

Cultures twist and turn but ultimately they settle by consensus. That’s why we don’t see ‘no bicycles’ signs outside bars and pubs. Culture has deemed it inappropriate to lean your muddy mountain bike alongside your table, so there’s no need to ban it. But since the ‘blip’ we must now endure legions of snapping, snarling, sneezing, yapping, gnashing, drooling, farting hounds in every establishment. And bikes don’t do any of that. Meanwhile, in crazy California where all this began, dogs are banned from restaurants and even stores that sell packaged food.

Hyper-anthropomorphism is hard to say, but nonetheless very real. Today’s dog lovers talk to their pets in cartoon baby voices, celebrate their birthdays (the day they arrived) buy them Puppucinos from Starbucks, doggy ice creams at the seaside, create Instagram pages for them, tie bibs around their necks at mealtimes and push them in doggy strollers when the poor darlings can’t keep up with the pace around Waitrose. They take up seats in restaurants, bars, buses and trains as if we must all accept that the ironically named ‘Charlie’ with the flappy tongue is simply one of us. It’s gone too far.

Clearly these beloved animals are the children we never had. It’s a dog’s job to be the child that never grows up and tells you to f*** off, basically. But they’re also living, breathing status symbols. In the countryside it’s not unusual for a family to rock up at the pub, fully Huntered and Barboured, accompanied by a brace of pony sized brutes as if to flaunt the fact that they can afford to buy steak every day of the week. They may as well drive their Range Rover into the bar. It would be less of a nuisance.

Back in the pre-gastro days it was heartwarming to see a local farmer nestled by the fire, his loyal Collie alert to any unusual comings or goings. But recently dog culture has morphed into an obsessive cult; a perverse display of narcissism that says ‘sod you, these are my true friends’. On a serious note, I believe it plays perfectly into the current phase of self loathing mankind is going through. We may love our kith and kin, but we despise humanity for everything that’s gone wrong on planet Earth. After all, no dog ever started a war.

We all know that teenage stabbings have become so commonplace the press is no longer interested. But leave a pooch in a car without the window ajar for more than fifteen minutes and you’ll be on the front of the Daily Mail beneath the word ‘MONSTER’ the next morning. Seriously, our priorities are way out of kilter.

I may not be a dog lover, but I’m no hater. I can more than appreciate the majesty of an Irish Setter bounding along a deserted beach in pursuit of a far flung stick of driftwood. I can even see it in slow motion as it shakes itself dry, water droplets glistening in the late afternoon sunshine. I simply ask that you don’t bring it sweating and panting into the pub to do that. That’s my point. Dog lovers, please spare a thought for those of us who don’t love your dog, but can definitely smell it. And restaurateurs, please be brave enough to say that your dog days are over.

Bone appetit!

Join me on X @retailfuturist for cherry picked proof that we’re all going crazy.

ps. Big thanks to Bing/Dall-E for all the imagery

Howard Saunders Feb 14, 2024 culture, Food, gourmet, pizza, Retail, Uncategorized Comments Off Read More

AI CHANGES EVERYTHING

Don’t read this blog. Try AI yourself. Go to OpenAI, sign up to ChatGPT and have some fun. You’ll soon see that it changes everything.

You’ll have read a fair bit about it: how it will make most of us redundant (not true) and how it will transform transport, healthcare and education (true). You will have heard that the digital behemoths (Apple, Google, Microsoft and Amazon) have invested billions in it and you may have briefly dwelt on the potential disruption it’s likely to unleash before going back to your cornflakes. But none of this means anything until you’ve tried it yourself. Like I did.

If you’re an accountant or desk bound lawyer of some sort you’re probably half hoping you’ll be put out to pasture on UBI and craft gin within the next five years. But the future isn’t likely to be that cruel, thankfully.

Like me, you probably thought that AI will take many years before it becomes truly creative. Obviously, we thought smugly, it will solve problems, produce huge reports, create spreadsheets and work alongside Jeff in those vast warehouses, but as for anything creative, it simply cannot understand the human condition. And when it does we’re all shafted anyway, so there’s no point fretting.

We were wrong.

Driving to Heathrow with my son yesterday we messed around with ChatGPT. Obviously, first up we asked it to write a few silly poems and limericks. It answers instantaneously. Some of them were hilarious, largely because the results appear so instantly, rhyme and rhythm intact, you can’t quite believe it’s happening. Next up, I asked it to write me a blog about AI. Here it is. Ok, so it’s a little dry but it would damn well sneak into LinkedIn without looking out of place, that’s a fact.

But our jaw dropping moment came after we asked it to write a poem about Roger a guitar playing squirrel. Within a few short minutes the poem blossomed into a screenplay for an entire musical. The AI suggested movie titles, merchandising ideas, marketing concepts, it wrote all the song titles and lyrics, it proposed the creation of a rival band of forest dwelling musicians, named all the characters, suggested a love interest (Samantha the squirrel) wrote a gentle ballad (to break up all the rockin’ melodies) designed the movie poster, the trailer, the tag line and even food concepts for the squirrel themed cafe in Roger’s theme park. No exaggeration, within twenty minutes we had a complete media franchise. And all this was possible within a month or so of launch. Imagine what it will be capable of in a year, five years, twenty-five years! We surely will not have to wait very long before it can instantly animate the entire musical. At least the credits will be short.

Oh, and if you have any doubts as to its musical talents Open AI has also developed a nifty little thing called Musenet that will write all the songs. Musenet is a bit like a digital Bill Bailey in that it can play Lady Gaga hits in the style of Mozart. Or Mozart hits in the style of Lady Gaga for that matter.

Pop culture, it seems, is pretty easy to emulate. From silly make believe musicals to modern pop ballads AI has decoded so many it innately understands how to construct something that will slip seamlessly into contemporary culture. And therein lies the challenge.

Governments think the answer is to retrain. But anything governments propose to retrain you as is surely already out of date. Others believe we should learn to become programmers, to stay one step ahead of the game. But that’s like learning how to build a typewriter when the computer arrived. No, the answer is staring us in the face.

When culture is so predictable, when films are focus grouped into mediocre uniformity, when music is formatted to homogeneity and when art has grown predictably political to the point of irrelevance then it’s for genuine, creative, living, breathing humans to dig deep and retaliate. The birth of AI is not a marker for surrender or throwing in the towel. AI is the starting pistol for a new wave of mould breaking, non formulaic creativity that celebrates our superiority here on planet Earth. Let the browbeaten retreat into the comfort of their self-made defeat. Human creativity will always push through.

Don’t panic. A genuine renaissance is on the horizon.

Join me on Twitter @retailfuturist for daily rants and light hearted banter

Howard Saunders Jan 03, 2023 Apple, culture Comments Off Read More