The surveillance part of the video was just a modern update of “he sees you when you’re sleeping, he knows when you’re awake”-- the Santa myth has always been about him watching you all the time (I’ll admit it creeped me out as a kid-- “he sees me in the bathroom too?!”) True there was abduction, but I didn’t see any torture (he had to endure the exact same long march as her, in fact it gave him a heart attack.)
Oy vey. Look, it’s basically all a dream-- the little girl asks Grampa Frost to “bring back my mother to me”, and he does it in a very surreal and harsh way-- compare that to the darkness of “A Christmas Carol” where Scrooge witnesses his own death and is horrified at how people rejoice.
I’m not defending the sick reality of surveillance, abduction and torture in our world, but you seem to be saying we can’t have those things in our fiction lest it glorify them.
As I see it, the weirdest thing about the ad is that a bank is making a criticism of this woman’s wealth and success, and asking us to remember “the things that really matter.”
