Royal Navy Reserve uses Billy Elliot as a recruiting gimmick

[andrewcraig]

Quite why anyone would choose to join the Navy Reserves after watching this horror show is anyone’s guess
http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio ... ves-advert

We’re living through a purple patch of amped-up military recruitment commercials. For a while it looked as if the pinnacle of the crop would be the new British Army advert; a regurgitated Billy Elliot drama in which a dirty-faced tyke tells his dad that he’s always dreamed of being shot at by foreigners for pennies. But now, snatching the crown at the last possible second, is the new missive from the Royal Navy Reserves.

It starts from the same place that all armed forces adverts do, by bleakly reinforcing the message that your life is a miserable cycle of beige monotony and that your death, when it comes, will be small and acknowledged by nobody. Then it offers the alternative. The problem here, though, is that the Royal Navy Reserves doesn’t quite know how to sell the alternative. Because a lot of being a Royal Navy Reserve, it seems, either involves being dropped into some water or scrabbling to get out of some water. And that’s not fun. It’s clearly not fun.

You could watch a million adverts and you won’t find a single person having any less fun than the woman here. God, she hates being a Royal Navy Reserve. She contorts with agony as she gasps for air. She grimaces with displeasure during a run. There is a moment, 17 seconds in, where she pulls the precise face that Shelley Duvall did when Jack Nicholson hacked through the door in The Shining. The happiest this poor woman ever looks, in fact, is when she gets to stir a cup with the wrong end of a spoon. The message is clear. Royal Navy Reserves: it’s awful, but quite good if you like stirring things with the wrong ends of spoons sometimes.

[Eltonjohn]

Your subject line makes no sense: the RN(Reserve) doesn't allude to BE.

PS the article writer doesn't get a lot of things, evidently. Having trained with the likes of the RNLI and the US Coast Guard (reserve / auxiliary / volunteer) we train to sustain life, just like the Navy folks. There's just a wee bit of water covering the earth's surface after all.

Getting into and out of watery situations to assist others is just a way of doing business safely. Water symbolizes rebirth / baptism; that others may live... and not drown.