a weird world of happy faces

You know those cashpoints that charge the best part of two quid when you just want to get some of your own money out of your own bank account? That's the money which the banks use to invest in things meant to return a profit. That's the account which comes with monster penalty and admin charges if you go very slightly beyond your overdraft limit or if the bank needs to send you a letter. That's the bank that spunked its cash up the wall on junk mortgages sold to penniless Americans. That's the bank you bailed out through your taxes. That's the bank whose executives' noses are back in the bonus trough and who feel they're tired of saying sorry for past errors of judgement.

Those fee-charging cashpoints, then. Have you noticed that the screens often feature the face of an an attractive blonde woman with good teeth? She smiles pleasantly, her gaze fixed over your shoulder and somewhere into the middle distance. Why is she beaming away like that? Well, maybe you'd be inclined to grin if you were getting two pounds every time someone needed to get some money out. Nice work, right? A piece of piss, taken easily.

Blonde cashpoint lady is not the only example of a smiley face incongruously adorning what could just as easily be a plain surface. Wander around a supermarket. You will see walls and windows adorned with happy faces. Why? To tell you that this shop is for people? To tell you that people drink drinks and eat food? That being in the shop and buying things will make you smile like the faces on the in-store graphics? Does anyone go along with that? Do these faces induce punters to feel better and buy more? Does it work? It's horrible to think that we might be so easily swayed by the presence of a blandly inoffensive face above the checkouts or between the aisles.

This stuff is everywhere. Remember when post offices were stern and ornate Victorian palaces? Before they got converted into bland lifestyle pubs or branches of boring restaurants chains? Now they are styled as retail outlets like any other. So they conform to the branding rules of that sector, right down to the seemingly pointless use of smiling faces on the window panels.

What do these faces tell you? That children are welcome? That standing in line to post a parcel will have you grinning your head off? That post offices are intended for the use of humans? That the buyers of stock photographs don't care that some of the images very obviously originate in North America? Fuck knows. It's a strange sort of visual pollution. The eye may not rest on an unadorned surface. Your gaze must always settle on some stranger's unnatural smile.

Think for a moment. If any of your friends or relatives passed away several decades ago and somehow came back to life in 2012, what would they make of the visual environment that you probably take for granted? It seems a fair guess that they would find it pretty freaky. When did all those smiling faces appear? Why are they all around us, unnoticed, never remarked upon? Smiling, smiling, smiling. Weird, innit?