Gimme a break (from Kitkat commercials)

Children like to bang on things.  They come out of their mother’s predisposed to swinging their arms, hands open, palms facing down ready to clap them on their legs or to clap them together, smiling widely when they do.  It brings them joy to make such noise, and, making such noise is an expression of joy by the baby. 

Baby toys are developed with this in mind, incorporating the child’s love of noise into the toy itself.  They sleep in cribs with dangling mobiles which perpetually make noise while moving in repeated circles.  We give them jack-in-the-boxes which play tunes and then end with a loud bang when a clown pops out of the top of the box.  We gush at the child who has gotten into the kitchen pots and pans and has taken to beating on them with wooden spoons.

A child’s life is constantly filled with noise.  And a child’s ages into a teenager and then into an adult swimming in a sea of sound with little respite.  And seemingly, as the world also ages, it gets noisier and noisier, so much so that the noise has started to become too much.

I think one of the prime example of how humankind’s love for noise has grown out of control can be found in the slew of Kitkat commercials which have been produced.  Sometime ago, a jingle was developed for Kitkat, which was catchy and very memorable.  Anyone hearing the first few words sung in the characteristic way can immediately pick the tune up.  It goes: “Gimme a break.  Gimme me a break.  Break me off a piece of that Kitkat bar.”  Images often accompanied the song showing one of the bars being snapped.

The song was catchy, too catchy, a earworm which lingered in the head a bit too long.

But a few years later, an ad was released by Kitkat which eliminated the words and the song altogether.  Instead, they substituted noises played in a certain sequence to suggest the song.  It was the breaking of the bar or the pleasurable moan of a person enjoying the candy, placed one next to each other, which triggered you to hear the song in your head, making you recall the words.  During Halloween season, the ringing of doorbells and the dropping of candy into sacks was used.

The problem is that noise is noise, that it is random and non-musical.  That it is meant to signal something different than a tune or a song.  To a certain extent, noise is meant to be filtered out and ignored.  Generally, we don’t pay attention to noise because it is annoying.  But when we can’t ignore the noise, it becomes bothersome and irritating. 

We avoid someone who yells and screams because it is noisy.  We have all experienced the slight irritation we feel when someone is clicking a pen or tapping their nails.  We all have experienced the shortness of temper when someone is making noises when they breath or the thumping of bass from a vehicle. 

That is why I do not like the Kitkat ad.  In fact, the commercial irritates me so much that I will not buy a Kitkat even though I have enjoyed them in the past.  The negative feelings I have toward those commercials pour over into my feelings regarding the candy bar itself. 

I know that there are persons who have actually made a living off making noises.  The show entitled Stomp comes to mind.  Similarly, the Blue Man Group has made a living of by playing unconventional instruments.  Although I have not actually experienced either of these shows, I doubt that the show would irritate me like the Kitkat ads.  I can only speculate that, unlike the Kitkat ads, the sounds made by these groups have crossed the barrier from noise to actual music. 

Perhaps there is a conscience intent by the maker of the sound (or at lease a perceived one) to make a musical note and not the splicing of an already created sound into some kind of form.  I must admit while I write this, that such distinction seems like a pretty thin line.  But I think it may be an important one.

One of my favorite bands is Meat Beat Manifesto, who relies on unconventional sounds to make up their sound.  Meat Beat Manifesto seems to have found the secret to taking noise and making it musical.  The sound of the various different noises placed together has a musicality to it so much so that you forget that the songs are composed of noises placed together.  It is pleasing to the ear.

Ultimately, noise is a distraction.  It prevents us from thinking clearly, from being productive.  We should seek to eliminate noise from our lives.  That is why I don’t like the Kitkat ads.