A review of a bottle-opener, or decapsuleur.

In the last post but one I was saying about how great it is to laugh at and be laughed at by foreigners.  And that reminded me of a bottle-opener that pokes fun at the British that I saw in a shop in France this summer. A bottle-opener, I have to say, of such crassness that I stood staring at it for several moments, transfixed in astonishment at the totality of horror before me. Then I took a photo of it, which I've since lost, but I found another picture of the dubious product that I have posted here for you to stare at in awe. Go on, take a look at it. A good, long look. Study it. Study it closely. Go on. Feel my pain. 

So there it is.  A bottle-opener, a decapsuleur, mounted on a plank of wood upon which is printed several icons humorously representing Britishness. Or not humorously, depending on your point of view, and your age, and intelligence. It’s harmless enough, to be sure, not offensive in anything except an aesthetic sense. It is clearly not xenophobic or nasty in that kind of way. If anything it seems to come from a nice place, a place where one has a little harmless guffaw and nothing more at the foibles of foreigners. I should also be clear at this point that, whatever I may say about this decrapsuleur, I am a huge fan of almost all things French. I’m presuming, by the way, having failed to observe the bottle-opener’s provenance when I stood in a kind of reverie before it, that it’s a French creation and made for a French market, as it has the word “Decapsuleur” written across the top. On the other hand, it might have been made by a British company for a French market, although it also looks like something that might well go on the wall of ex-pat bar for the burbling delectation of excessively sun-tanned beer-bellied Britons. Whatever the case, it either shows how some French people imagine Britain, or it shows how some Brits imagine the French imagine Britain. And as the manufacturer, whether French or British, wants to sell these things, and as the French shopkeepers who buy them wholesale want to sell them too, whether to the French or to the British, we can safely assume they’ve all done their homework and that this thing reflects an amusingly purchasable version of Britishness in the minds of whoever the potential customers are. Indeed, I’ve seen all the icons or things like them on souvenirs reflecting Britain before, and so they clearly sell. And yet the way some of them are rendered at least in this particular instance is, in my opinion, really quite astoundingly appalling, although I think it’s perhaps the combination of all the images together that renders this bottle-opener such a catastrophic failure of taste. Let’s take each part of the thing one-by-one on its own merits, or, in fact, demerits, and then conclude with some overall observations about the whole horrendous melange.

The Union Jack that covers the backdrop of the little plank is fine. Indeed Union flags, especially slightly weather-beaten-effect ones like this one, are everywhere at the moment, and seem to be very much the thing of the season in the world of soft furnishings, for example, especially cushions.  Then there are some references to lager and bitter, and this is where things start to get distressing.  Okay, I suppose we Brits are indeed famous for liking our beer, although so is pretty much everyone else in the European family, and yet, to be fair, more singularly perhaps, we Brits do indeed distinguish beer by the names of lager and bitter. But simply writing the words “LAGER” and “BITTER” seems a little unimaginative to say the least. Couldn’t they have printed a picture of a couple of bottles or something a bit more interesting? And so the same with “ENGLISH PUB”, also in capitals but in even larger letters underneath. I mean, what the fuck is that about? Whatever it is, it’s just not good enough. I would not have the effrontery for example to produce a French-inspired souvenir and be so lazy as just to write PARISIAN CAFE on it. That would just be such an absymal insult to people’s intelligence as to deserve violent retribuition. I need a break. 

Okay, back. Then, after “ENGLISH PUB”, we have a complete change of theme where it says “Lord Brian”.  Yes, “Lord Brian”, right after the beer and pub references. Where did he suddenly come from, whoever the hell he’s supposed to be? Okay, whatever, let’s try anyway to make some sort of sense of “Lord Brian”. Right, Britain has its aristocrats and its House of Lords, okay, yes, yes, and Brian is a funny name, with Pythonesque connotations, as in “Life of Brian”, which is certainly a quintessentially British thing. And I suppose that the combination of “Lord” and the slightly risible name of “Brian” amusingly evokes the kind of in-bred gormlessness that the British aristocracy do better than anyone else to the east of Appalachia. So “Lord Brian” does kind of make sense, although it still seems to me a bit weird and random. The small crown underneath is, admittedly, a bit of a better effort. It at least relates to “Lord Brian” and thereby restores some sense of thematic coherence that was lost somewhere after “LAGER”, “BITTER”, and “ENGLISH PUB”, royalty being at the head of the famous British class system so unimaginatively represented by “Lord Brian”. And at least it’s a picture, as if whichever one of the gang of goofballs who happened to be responsible for this little bit of the bottle-opener had a sudden attack of shame and decided the least he could do was insert a modicum of effort into his or her part of this egregious endeavour. Then there’s the Bulldog, with its head tilted slightly sideways, presumably for extra funniness. Again, though, at least it’s a picture, not just the word “BULLDOG” printed mindlessly and in shouty capitals across the middle of the plank. It's as ugly as hell, though, although that’s appropriate enough for a bulldog, so some marks for authenticity there.  Then, however, finally, we have it: the coup de merde. Under the dog, it says, almost, “God Save the Queen”, except—oh no!—it doesn't!—it actually says “Dog Save the Queen”! Haaaaa! See what they did there? Fnerrrk!  Dog—DOG—Save the Queen! Dog! God backwards, see? Dog-God! Under a picture of a dog! See?!  See?! Hahahahahaaarrrggghhhnnn....  

Okay, so, to conclude, some of the features of this bottle-opener are fine, others are at least explicable, but others still are an absolute disgrace in terms of either conceptualisation or realisation or both. But does that explain the fullness of the badness of this decapsuleur? No, I don’t think it does. I think the full measure of its evil is to be found in the combination of all the features together in one place, on one single hapless item, in the synergy of awfulness, in the perfect storm of tastelessness, and in the lazy randomness of the combination. “LAGER”, “BITTER” and “ENGLISH PUB” are related to each other. “Lord Brian” and the crown are related to each other. And these are at least a little bit related to the saving of the queen and the tragic, hapless dog. But there is still a terrible sense of a jumble. It’s as if someone has decided that one aspect of Britishness is not enough anymore, not a sufficient blow to the senses to make a satisfactory souvenir, and that in order to sell something as British-ish you have to pile up chaotic heaps of incoherent representation. Or else someone of no discernment, some sort of gurning imbecile undoubtedly, has gruntingly gorged on some random morsels of British culture, has gulped them down without tasting them, has half-digested them, and has then lowered his arse down and shat them all out again onto a small piece of wood. I’m tempted to say it’s so bad that it’s good, but it isn’t. It’s bad, it’s just bad.