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The Forum > Article Comments > Advertising blue > Comments

Advertising blue : Comments

By Michael Cook, published 2/1/2008

Surely it is not being prudish to expect neighbourhoods, where children and families congregate, remain free of sexually explicit advertising.

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For once I am in general agreement with all the posts on this thread. I also followed the links to this poster..and went on searching for a while before I realised that the one I was looking at was, indeed,the one other people's children should not be seeing.

For my part I would sooner my kids look at a poster like that than one advertising Maccas! As a bonus - if kids are really looking at this poster and thinking "oh look, there's a mummy and daddy doing IT" - then the concept of condoms becomes synonymous with the act of sex: and that's a message all our young should be getting.

I was also blown away by the author doing the exploitation of women number on this ad. Draping a scantily clad female over a tractor bonnet, or a computer console, is exploitation. But if an image of a woman who looks pretty content with her lot snogging with a true hunk of a guy is considered "exploitation" then we need an update of the definition of the word. I bet there are a million women looking at that ad thinking "I should be so lucky"!

This is not to say I am indifferent to the issues of womens' exploitation. I fight strongly against it in all areas of both my public and private life. But for the gods' sakes, let's get some perspective. Taking the bandwagon out for an airing on something like this completely negates the effect of riding it when necessary to argue against the very real ills of the world.
Posted by Romany, Wednesday, 2 January 2008 5:09:16 PM
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It really is stretching credibility to refer to an image of an upright couple, from the elbows up, with their arms around each other as 'doing it'. Far more likely that the ad is suggesting that this might be the time to be thinking about safe sex. Given Mr Cook's December article denouncing the proposal that a carbon tax be levied on babies, I think his real objection is to condoms, planned pregnancy and safe sex, rather than the innocuous billboard.
Posted by Candide, Wednesday, 2 January 2008 5:36:53 PM
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Michael Cook uses the emotional angle, Families and children. Indicating a religous fundamentalist thinking.

We where all children, we where all part of a family. Some of us had the luck to have parents who informed us,so when puberty set in, we knew what it was all about. We had the comfort of sharing our feelings and emotions with our parents.

As by the authors piece, if he has children, they will enter the real world ( if he will allow them), ignorant of their being and feelings.

Me thinks the author needs to get rid of his sexual hangup and childhood baggage!
Posted by Kipp, Wednesday, 2 January 2008 5:57:32 PM
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If Michael Cook believes that the billboard is Porn then I think we should doubt his mental functioning.
Posted by Kenny, Thursday, 3 January 2008 8:19:42 AM
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I’m with Michael ... almost.

Sure ... this particular billboard ad is pretty innocuous - no worse than an average bodice-ripper cover. What I disagree with is the pervasiveness of this kind of thing in the public domain - in advertising, on television, in film and anywhere else you find public space. At least you can choose to pick up a bodice ripper and look at the cover - not so with a 30-metre high billboard that you have to pass every day.

I’ve had enough of all this misguided inverted prudery – the kind that says the more sexuality and nudity we are obliged to look at or toilet obsessions we are forced to endure in the public domain – the more liberated and progressive we are as a society. Rubbish!

Today's Western society and the former society that banned innocuous books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and introduced the Hollywood Code are just two sides of the same coin. They are both societies that are trying to exercise far too much control over the private domain.
Posted by SJF, Thursday, 3 January 2008 11:22:40 AM
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Unfortunately my post yesterday had a typo error. It should have been.

1. http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_3.2/hammer_kellner.htm

And who said Marxists cant provide us with some necessary insights into our culture?

Plus this reference also gives a unique understanding of the Passion movie and the deep underlying psycho-patholgy of the Opus Dei organisation.

2. http://www.matthewfox.org/sys-tmpl/htmlpage7

It is interesting that the author of this article was excommunicated by the "church" for his "heretical" views.
What are his views and what does he promote? The necessary values and attitude of universal tolerance and understanding, plus a genuine Ecumenism that seeks to bridge and dissolve cultural and religious differences.

By contrast the official "church" obnoxiously asserts that it is the only source of "truth" in the world, and that all other traditions are false and hence full of "relativistic" errors---and that, as such, the impulse to Ecumenical understanding is misguided.

Meanwhile the founder of Opus Dei was made a "saint" by the previous pope.
This sex paranoid puritan was an open aplogist and sympathizer with clerical fascism. In short he was a psycho-path. The cultural and political ramifications of his toxic ideology are described in the above two essays.
My advice would be to run as fast as you can away from an organisation that makes a "saint" out of a psycho-path and promotes a sado-masochistic SNUFF film as a "missionary" tool.
Posted by Ho Hum, Thursday, 3 January 2008 3:18:37 PM
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