Why everyone is talking about Esselunga's new commercial.

Today Esselunga miraculously found itself at the top of Twitter's trending topics - and for good reason. Yesterday saw the release of the supermarket chain's new commercial that followed what we might call "The Apple playbook" that is, creating advertisements with their own storytelling, which are about hyper-shareable human situations and in which the product or brand to be sold exists in the background but remains emotionally connected to the storytelling of the advertisement. And so, this time, the protagonist is a child daughter of separated parents who gives a peach to her father hoping to reconcile her parents.

But because in this country any creative product that tries to raise its head above recognizable-but-forgettable homogeneity, this advertisement for a supermarket chain (let's emphasize: supermarkets) has ended up in the center of absurd controversy about how divorce is portrayed, stereotypes of the family with separated parents, and so on. As if this two-minute commercial represents some source of cultural or institutional authority capable of saying anything serious about the issue of divorce - wait until the Twitter audience discovers that there is Kramer vs. Kramer. On the other side of the political spectrum, there are those who instead see this commercial as a kind of ode to the traditional family and therefore assume that there is an entire political agenda behind this commercial that in a few months' time will take us to a dystopia like The Handmaid's Tale. But perhaps the truth is that this commercial, which in its deepest essence means nothing but an advertisement, shows how deeply toxic the public debate in this country is.

Beyond political convictions, which are out of place in the case of an advertisement that has to talk about a real world in which divorced families simply exist, the element that generates the greatest frustration is the way so many people from even dramatic backgrounds have brought up the «What about me?» argument. Almost as if the Esselunga advertisement can be about everyone's personal cases. But the fact is that the advertisement is not about any particular person, it does not paint the private life of any specific family nor of all families, but above all it is not intended to be (and could not possibly be) an anti-divorce apology. In the Twitter comments we see shocking comments from people who start with the assumption that the advertisement is anti-divorce and go so far as to bring up the topic of feminicide and domestic violence. For those, it would be good to go to the dietary supplement aisle and buy a "chill pill" since they are evidently getting heated over nothing. A girl on Twitter says this commercial seems inspired by the motto "God, country, family" but it would be good to clarify where "God" and "country" are even mentioned in an ad about an otherwise divorced family.

The advertisement is not even saying that «divorce is wrong», as one user writes, but how could he say that? It is an advertisement for a supermarket. Does the advertisement entrust children with the responsibility of keeping the family together? How could it? It is a supermarket ad, not a judge. The only sane thing about Italian culture that this commercial has brought out is the extraordinary wit of the memes that have come out of it-the best of which are based on that famous scene from Call Me By Your Name.