By Beau O’Neill (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: January 30, 2013
Looming over the highway in Abbotsford, like an inorganic, commercial sequoia giant, are brightly-lit electronic signs. You might have seen them if you have vision; you might have seen them if you’re blind, they’re so bright. These monsters of advertising are a little piece of Times Square within Abbotsford. At night you can see this rod-destroying medium of advertising a kilometre away.
A strange occurrence happened to me while I investigated the sign off King road. I had parked my car up the street a ways, in a No Parking zone, due to lack of available spots. I only wanted to take a few pictures of the behemoth in its stupendous glory, but I found an irony in its placement in front of a bungalow sharing its property, and so I lingered around a little longer to snap a few pictures of the immense metal structure that dwarfed the house. I was attempting to fit both objects into one photograph to give a proper sense of scale, when I noticed a man on the porch, cigarette in hand and cellphone on the ear. He was walking slowly back and forth and observed me without interruption.
I decided to call it quits on my amateur documentation and walked back to my car, the man following me until a bush came between us and he lost sight of me. I got into my car and drove up to the stop sign, then drove off, just as a large unmarked cube van rolled onto the street I was leaving. Eerily the driver stared me down as he took the turn.
I was curious, so I parked my car illegally next to the AESC and walked to the head of the street, hoping I wasn’t seen. I saw a man jump down from the van’s passenger side, as the man from the porch walked to the curb and greeted him.
I then realized that the van was not unmarked, but bore the name of a delivery company. Nothing curious would be happening with these signs.
The narrative would have continued on a TV show with me being kidnapped and plenty of blood being shed.
Why is that relevant? This sign is a television set in the living room of your daily travels. Though the volume is always muted, the picture is always running, and the effect is similar to that achieved by the Riddler’s device in Batman Forever, sucking away the brains of the motorists.
No, this screen promises excitement, but only delivers the banality of an infinite commercial break. Its method is to wear the passersby through visual attrition. Billboards do not attack you the way this screen does, with flashing lights and images. Billboards do not yell at you with brightness, “Check this out you already distracted driver!” Billboards are not television sets. Nor should they be.
But this futile lamenting will only accomplish nothing. What we need is action in the future to oppose a proposal to illuminate a certain geospatial coordinate with advertising. This beast is a sign that Abbotsford welcomes lying down on its back whoever she’ll take in whatever form of outrageousness.
What’s next, military ads popping up on campus? Ha! As if the university’s student union would be so whorish as to accept an offer from sanctioned murderers.
