The Joneses

I am very good at selling things. I get paid very poorly to sell as much as inhumanly possible for an entity that does not care if I live or die – if my stinking corpse could move high margin product, they’d slap a uniform on it, prop it up and complain it doesn’t sell enough. This is the nature of corporations. People live on food, oxygen, water and love. Corporations live on marketing, profits, productivity and not giving a fuck about the people who buy their shit or the people selling it. We’re all in the cross hairs. Yes, I know that in theory, people run corporations. However, the bigger the company, the less humanity you’ll find at the helm. Something has to be sacrificed for the sake of the job.

Yes, this is an extremely cynical view of our world but if it’s not entirely true, it’s more true than you’re comfortable admitting. Origin of species? We’ve evolved from eking out an existence in unforgiving environments for the sake of survival, to creating the unforgiving environments we struggle to survive in so people will one day remember we existed at all. Conspicuous consumption. I have all I need but I demean myself every day to acquire the means to get everything I want. How do I know what I want? Corporations tell me. I would buy a solid gold turd if it came in a cool looking box and would proudly buy a display case to put it in if I thought it might one day come in a collector’s edition gift set.

So what’s the point of all this then? My point is, watch the Joneses. This is a brilliantly satirical look at how we don’t know what it is we want until someone else tells us we want it. Demi Moore and David Duchovny star as Karen and Steve Jones, a pretend married couple who are paid to live in the most gorgeous fucking house you’ve ever seen, drive the newest and hottest Audis on the market, wear the trendiest clothes, and generally set an example for all their neighbours to follow. Even their pretend kids – played by Amber Heard and Ben Hollingsworth – are sexy and awesome. So, how’d the Joneses get all this shit? Well, they are part of the next great corporate innovation – stealth marketing.

Basically, some big corporate entity does a marketing survey determining where all the high income status seeking douchebags live. They send out a team of four salespeople to infiltrate every possible high value market they can and move a shit tonne of product on behalf of a wide range of clients. The goal is to create an illusion of awesome to drive demand for the latest and greatest of everything ... it’s like having a living, breathing Neiman Marcus catalogue move in next door. The genius of this approach is, the less genuine and more obviously full of shit your sales people are, the greater the sales, because everyone in this demographic is as fake as a three breasted sea monkey anyway.

Duchovny is the Joneses sole link to humanity. He is the newest to the game, and only came to it because he was so lonely and lost, living as a fake family seemed more appealing than having none at all. Everyone in the cast is phenomenal and I don’t want to give away too much of the story, other than to say, it is a thought provoking, intelligent and well constructed satire that is absolutely worth the rental. I loved the execution of the concept as much as the concept itself. More than anything, the Joneses left me thinking of the following paradox:

As a salesperson, your job is entirely based on your ability to close the sale. Numbers are everything – this is a cold, harsh, results oriented world. But don’t act like a salesperson, because real people hate that. Salespeople aren’t real people, they’re pretend people who get paid to sell things nobody wants to real people. So, ideally, sell without selling. Be real people and not salespeople, because only then will real people want to buy from you. But always be closing. And structure each interaction so that you emphasize the products your employer wants you to sell the most of, because if you don’t sell what you're told to sell, you won’t be selling anything at all from the unemployment line. Sell your company's products as a solution to the clients’ need. If the client determines a different product, one that you don’t sell is what fits their need best, then you’re not a good enough sales person. Happy selling!

I rate the Joneses 8 out of 10.