Harry Potter and the Half Full Coke

I’d like to tell you about the new Harry Potter movie, but my mind keeps refilling with Coke.

It’s a terrible affliction really. Every time I sit down to write a sentence, I’m overcome with thoughts of the bubbly black stuff. You’ve heard of writer’s block – well this is writer’s slush. And it’s incapacitating me. I’ve thought about popping out to the local shops to get a hit, but I don’t think their stocks would suffice. I need an industrial-sized delivery of Coke. Or, better still, my own factory.

Here’s what happened.

Last night, feeling in the need for a ‘pick-me-up’, I went to see Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince at Inox Forum in Kolkata. I confess these late-night multiplex trips have become alarmingly regular over the past few months – I’ve found they help me overcome my aversion to blockbusters (not to mention the outside world). Here’s the protocol: I rock up for the ten o’clock showing, buy a huge tub of popcorn and Coke, and then watch the latest release jacked up on a cocktail of sugar and who knows what else. Frankly, it’s great fun.

So yesterday I got my ticket, went to the confectionary stand for my poison, and then sat down to watch a lot of little wizards run around waving wands in a make-believe world. And then, just as the opening ‘Warner Bros.’ credit rolled and my hand shoveled its first load of popcorn into my mouth, I saw a flash on screen that ruined everything.

The flash lasted for the length of a common blink, included a picture of a Coke and a tub of popcorn, and featured the words “Refill Yourself” (I know this because a longer version was played during the interval – just incase you blinked the first time round, I suppose). In short: I was subliminally messaged.

I think I’d like to tell you that Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince is fun enough, although it rather forgets what it’s supposed to be doing for the first hour or so and gets lost in its own little soap opera a few too many times thereafter. But I can’t say any of this with great conviction because as soon as my Coke was half full all I could think about was how and when I could get it refilled. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince simply passed me by.

And now, this morning, I’m an absolute wreck. Refill Yourself, the message told me – but it didn’t say when to stop. Its tense is horribly, atrociously indefinite. I’m left to ask, with sugar-addled fear: will there be no end to this rapacious Coke binge I’m being put through?

Maybe I should return to Inox Forum and get them to subliminal message me again. I’ll get them to flash ‘Stop Refilling Yourself’ this time. Or – even better – I’ll take advantage of the situation and ask for ‘Stop drinking Coke and Become a Better Person’. It’s either that or look into the logistics of a factory.

I suppose it could be argued that subliminal messaging is integral to the mechanism of film itself, which, to paraphrase Godard, tricks its viewer 24 times a second. But that neither justifies nor excuses the act of trying to get people to buy Coke by implanting messages in their head. Subliminal messaging is a dastardly thing – capitalism at its most damnable – and Inox should be petitioned to stop immediately.

But enough of this talk. I’m off for a Coke.

Article reproduced courtesy of The Statesman. Originally published on 10/8/09