The market is not wrong

With more and more ahead of the actual Christmas period, television begins to program a series of films (especially American) in which Santa Claus, in all imaginable versions, reappears on earth to sow good feelings, friendship and love and to dispense happiness and gifts to humanity, children in the head. It is an artfully designed mechanism to set in motion the disproportionate machine of the Christmas economy, but at the same time a change of course compared to the myriad of films infested with criminal gangs, murders, corrupt cops and horror plots that form the basis of the television proposal daily.

It is known how much easier and therefore economically convenient it is to sell "bad" than "good", but at this juncture hearts seem to soften, to be more willing to follow the story with a happy ending, to open a small window of possibility in the usual reading of the world mainly of negative sign.

In the same period, the advertising cliché also clearly changed, as pounding and unbearable as ever. Crowds of grandparents, parents, children and boyfriends burst onto the scene and lovingly exchange panettone, jewels, perfumes, chocolates and rivers of golden bubbles to celebrate the holidays next to set tables, cyclonic sparkling Christmas trees, snowmen erected in the garden , glittering sleighs that ply night and starry skies, snowy landscapes and omnipresent Santas.

Everything normal would seem to think at first sight, the nativity in a climate of total poverty has turned into an unstoppable consumer machine, but so be it, the world goes like this ... All happy waiting to undo ribbons, open gift packages and cut panettone to share with joy in the family which, for the occasion, seems to be back in vogue.

But there was a great absence in this kaleidoscope of the end of the year 2021, a worrying signal that gives us the merciless photograph of a company that has stopped investing in the future; the commercials on toys have practically disappeared, the dream that every child hopes to see materialize by magic in front of the fireplace or under the tree, that of the "letter" drawn up with care, the one that lights up the imagination and increases the wait.

The equation is as simple as it is relentless, few children = few toys, the market is not wrong; in the parties par excellence of the little ones ... they have disappeared, or rather the object and substance of their childhood, the game ... And it doesn't seem like good news to me.

Michelangelo Dotta

NP Gennaio 2022