Shooting in the Dark

massive and beautiful tail that’s only useful for sexual display. Everything is about sex anyway, so the peacock actually knows what it’s doing. We do the same when we go out shopping for designer clothes; the more we pay the greater the pulling power, or so we’re led to believe.’
    ‘It doesn’t work,’ Sam said. ‘I’ve been doing that for years and it only got me in trouble. Women who fall for that are messed up, so you end up attracting them, and then they mess you up in turn.’
    ‘But it’s how nature works,’ JD said. ‘You go buy a Porsche or some Bang & Olufsen equipment and what does it mean? It means you’re rich, for one thing, you’ve got taste. It sends signals out into the world about you. Delineates you. You look better than the next guy already, unless he’s got a yacht.’
    ‘Every move I make is a sexual signal?’ Sam asked. ‘Yeah, if you’re a smart monkey and you want to evolve into a human, you have to learn to transform the raw materials of nature into status displays. If you don’t manage that one, you and your offspring’ll be swinging around in the jungle for millennia.’
    ‘On balance,’ Sam said, ‘I’d choose the jungle. The alternative is madness. According to you, there’s millions of us here all putting out sexual signals. The world is jammed up with synthetic peacock’s tails, and most of ’em get lost. There’s guys out there splashing fortunes on new Porsches, Hugo Boss suits, Leica cameras, and they don’t even get a blow-job for it.’
    ‘What Darwin discovered was really simple stuff, Sam. He saw that if peahens fall for peacocks with tails that are gaudier and longer than average, then it stands to reason that the tails are always going to get gaudier and longer. The only way that peacock genes are going to make it into the next generation is if they are carried in bodies with long and gaudy tails.’
    Sam tried to interrupt but JD carried on talking, getting into it now. ‘Where Darwin went wrong was that he thought evolution was driven by the survival of the fittest, but it isn’t, it’s driven by the reproduction of the sexiest.’
    ‘OK,’ Sam said. ‘I’m getting there. This’s why the advertisers never tell us anything about the stuff they’re trying to flog; they just put a pretty girl next to it, or a guy with a cheesy grin?’
    ‘Exactly. Everyone’s given up trying to sell their wares on product features; they go for image, just like the peacock. If you want to sell coffee, you have to show it as a consensual object of desire. If the advertiser gets it right, we all come to believe that his or her brand of coffee will automatically lead to a romantic liaison with someone wonderful.’
    ‘This’s awful,’ Sam said. ‘I dunno if I want to hear any more. It’ll put me off sex.’
    ‘You’re all right,’ JD told him. ‘You have the right mixture of cynicism and poverty to bypass these things. You’ve still got a sense of humour. Guys like you can get away with hitching up your pants and breathing down your nose. You use real signals. But most people are brainwashed into responding to virtual signals. They watch television all night, save up their pennies to buy the right T or the latest trainers.’
    ‘Oh, cheers, JD. That your way of saying I’ve got no style or finesse? I attract women through some base animal signalling technique, like not changing my socks?’
    ‘Don’t make it personal. What I’m saying is that each product, if it’s going to be successful, the advertisers have to create an independent sexual signalling niche for it. OK?’
    ‘I’m listening.’
    ‘And that creates problems. People watch the ads, they see that the guy who buys the product gets the girl. And they then spend more time and energy displaying virtual signals, using these products, than they spend displaying real, biologically validated signals, like humour or gentleness or creativity.’
    ‘So they lose,’ said Sam. ‘They get frustrated, maybe buy more or different products. Deodorants, aftershave, frilly knickers. Rather than improve their personalities, they buy something else that the Man tells them will work wonders.’
    ‘Yeah,’ said JD. ‘They go out looking for more sexual signalling systems.’
    ‘But they just end up with more products.’
    ‘This is alienation, Sam. Welcome to the millennium.’
     
    The psychoanalyst in JD’s novel was a professional watcher. A deconstructionist heavily influenced by