Commercial consists of women continuously slapping

[Az]

once again, blackice

[Dauphin]

I still cannot see the problem with the advert.

A minority few may be sensitive to the situation of domestic abuse from a women, but (AFAICT) the advert is not displaying domestic abuse. It is a lighthearted joke.

Should the Dr. Pepper advert where the kid knocks out his date's father be banned aswell?

[Boris Godunov]

Hmmm...I wonder if blackice would protest a production of "The Taming of the Shrew..."

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Dissident
I think it is OK for women to hit men.

Makes up for thousands of years of men hitting women



I have similar views about rape

This thread was worth reading after all.

[blackice]

Re: Withdrawal of Violence Against Men AD

Dear Mr. Miller:

Just as we were preparing to enter a complaint with your company and the
Advertizing Standards of Canada, we received the good news that the ad where
men were seen as being slapped by women is being withdrawn after multiple
complaint from men and women who found it an enticement to perpetrate
violence against men by women, a rising problem in our society.

I am sure that you have been provided with solid arguments by the
complainants, thus, we'd just like to thank you for vowing to reason and
showing good sense. We believe that you not only helped in preventing
violence against men, but violence against anybody since children would have
viewed it without gender consciousness and would have learned that violence
is acceptable in our society, a most regrettable perception since they are
our future generation.

In our daily dealings with issues that frequently involve both parents of
children, we have come
across many instances of gender prejudice and we have come to conclude that
gender bias does not
favour anybody, and very especially, it does not favour children.

Yours very truly,

Bill Flores,
President

Cc:

Hon. Jean Augustine, Status of Women Secretary
Hon. Martin Couchon, Minister of Justice
Hon. Sheila Copps, Minister of Heritage of Canada
Hon. Helen Johns, Minister of Citizenship and Culture
Marillyn Churley, NDP Critic
Bonnie Brown, MP


From: Churley - QP, Marilyn [mailto:mchurley-qp@ndp.on.ca]

Dear Mr. Flores,

Thank you for sending a copy of your letter to MPP Marilyn Churley.

That advertisement was disturbing and offensive, and I am glad to hear it
has been taken off the air.

As an advocate against violence against women, Marilyn Churley is clearly
against all forms of violence in our society, and sees no humour in
something as serious as domestic abuse of any kind. It does no one any
justice to portray women slapping men as acceptable behaviour.

Thanks again for writing.

Kind regards,
Christine Kemp
Legislative Assistant to Marilyn Churley, MPP
NDP Women's Issues Critic

Now there is more but you can see the governments responce to this nadda... all but Marilyn had nothing to say. Nor did one single womens group this shows true colors really. They should stand up against violence not gender specific just violence. Mens groups do...

I still cannot see the problem with the advert.

A minority few may be sensitive to the situation of domestic abuse from a women, but (AFAICT) the advert is not displaying domestic abuse. It is a lighthearted joke.

Should the Dr. Pepper advert where the kid knocks out his date's father be banned aswell?

It was concidered a joke when women where being hit too. That is no longer acceptable in society nor is male abuse simple really. I have not seen the commercial.

Hmmm...I wonder if blackice would protest a production of "The Taming of the Shrew..."

No but you are welcome to.

[blackice]

Osweld you have missed the point entirely...again.
you have a video game you bought it is violent..is it domestic violence? You have a kid watching sports with you and this commercial comes on BIG DIFFERENCE...

[blackice]

I'll take that in the nicest way possible, since I think you're an uninformed idiot.

Brilliant retort Asher! Considering you know the least about this subject of anyone I know....

[Richelieu]

I saw the add three or four times myself and i have to admit that the first time it was... disturbing.
The payoff/punchline did put things in perspective somewhat but i still have to agree with Blackice on this one: it wasn't funny and it was violent.
There are ways to film these scenes so that it's evident that it's a joke. It wasn't the case in this one.

One of the reasons that i found it disturbing the first time was that i knew it was an add... and yet i couldn't find a justification for that gratuitous violence, until the ending. And even then: it was still violence.

[Lung]

Actually, i think the complaint is petty is being done to spite all the feminists who complain about anything remotely sexist (against woment only, of course). Just because the "feminazis" do it, doesn't mean you have to as well. As much as it might help balance the equation, it makes you as judgemental as they are.

I haven't seen it, but as far as i can tell, it wasn't condoning the slapping as it was part of a greater joke. Actually, i commented yesterday about spanking kids, and considering i said it was legitimate, i can't use the "assault is assault is assault" line without risking hipocrisy. I doubt it would cause a wave of face-slapping across Canadia It also reminds me of a scene from Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray gets slapped over and over again. It was funny, because you know he deserved it

Speaking of commercials, there was an ad in Australia years ago where a black Jamaican was lying on a beach chair laughing how he didn't need sunscreen because he had "loads of melanin". He then proceeds to run sunscreen onto the soles of his feet, laughs some more and joins his black friends who laugh heartily. I thought it was piss-funny, but it was taken off air straight away because someone complained Apparently the complaint was that it was racist against blacks!!!

WTF??!!!!!

Just because some other moron complains about ads, it doesn't mean anyone else has to.

[blackice]

The problem is from what I gather is marketing agencies are having a hard time with who to poke fun at. They claim the entire planet has lost it's sense of humor.

Maybe so but I doubt it. They need to find a humor bone that does not offend anyone To that good luck on the other hand the "I am Canadian" ads poke fun at us all yet give us a national pride. Ok they fair better than the feds.

Back to topic the real problem from the letters I have read is the time slot. Kids watched this, that is not good. I am still amazed most all womens groups found it ok. Or am I?

Ad for Budweiser beer on CITY TV which consisted of
about 8 women slapping their boyfriend's/husband's face because he looked at another woman on the street. The ad ended with the man using sunglasses.

[blackice]

Lung it is cumulative not just a reaction to womens rights movements. Since advertisers can not use women in a negative way they swing to men. I think overall we have had it. No different than women. They need to come up with better ideas.

[Lung]

Hello, Blackice Long time, no hear!

Originally posted by blackice
The problem is from what I gather is marketing agencies are having a hard time with who to poke fun at. They claim the entire planet has lost it's sense of humor.

No, it's just that most people lose their sense of humour when they are the subject at hand.

Back to topic the real problem from the letters I have read is the time slot. Kids watched this, that is not good. I am still amazed most all womens groups found it ok. Or am I?

It's the "my house extension's acceptable, my neighbour's is an abomination" attitude There's nothing i hate more than a thin-skinned finger-pointer

The ad ended with the man using sunglasses.

That's funny Didn't their fathers ever tell them to perve from behind sunglasses?

[blackice]

The Miner: In this O'Keefe's Brewing Co. ad from 1949, now part of the Royal Ontario Museum's Fifty Years of Advertising and Design in Canada exhibit, illustrator Rex Woods pays homage to working men. In ads today, men are often kicked, abused and portrayed as dolts.

A commercial for home garden equipment features a man presenting a flower to a beautiful woman. When she realizes he picked it from her own garden, she kicks and beats him till he falls down, then slams the door in his face.
Dominion and A&P run a Mother's Day newspaper ad suggesting children buy their mother a gift since "After all, she married your father."
A number of other ads rely on the instantly recognizable useless-man-in-the-kitchen stereotype as wife, children and pets look on in disdain.
"Men, specifically white men, are the only group that you can still denigrate and it can be called humour," says Greg Kershaw, spokesperson for Fathers Are Capable Too, an advocacy group for non-custodial parents formed in 1993. The problem, Kershaw says, is that the prejudices against men in most ads are the same ones faced by his group, representing more than 2,000 members across Canada, when fighting for the rights of a father after divorce.
Men are relentlessly portrayed as incompetent at household tasks and often made the apparently deserving victims of violence, says Kershaw. He points to the ad for home garden equipment. "She kicks him in the nuts and while he's bent over in agony she puts her fists together and slams him in the back until he collapses on the ground, and then she slams the door in his face. And this is humour," Kershaw says.
His group recently complained to Dominion and A&P about the "After all, she married your father" Mother's Day ad. "I don't have a problem with the ad as long as they run the same one on Father's Day," Kershaw says. Last year, the group filed an official complaint with national industry monitor Advertising Standards Canada after a major department store ran a television ad featuring a glamorous woman going off to work while her husband remained shackled to the kitchen. ASC ruled the ad "sexually objectified men" and the store agreed to stop running the commercial. The group's current target, Kershaw says, is a
Finesse shampoo commercial. In it, a man stands at the front of a half-empty circle of chairs and clumsily attempts to help other men develop an emotional vocabulary to use in their relations with women. "Again, the men all look like idiots," he says.
The advertising industry is becoming well aware of the thinning skin of the white male when it comes to advertising images. Steve Conover, creative director at Toronto-based ACLC Advertising, spent half an hour last month listening to an angry Calgary man who called to complain about a radio commercial created by Conover's agency for Harvey's Swiss Mushroom Melt. The ad's joke is based on the repetition of three great tastes. A man is talking to his wife and repeats everything three times. The punch line is "Let's go to Harvey's. Let's go to Harvey's. Let's go to Harvey's."
"I had a very long and really interesting conversation with this guy who was otherwise normal-sounding, other than the fact that he felt this was sort of a global conspiracy against the white male," Conover says. "He said to me, 'You are making the white man the butt of the joke. He looks like an idiot and I've had it.' And my immediate response was 'How could you tell he was a white male? It was radio.' "
The backlash against reverse sexism seems to have just begun, Conover says, but if it continues, advertisers may have to reconsider their approach since ridicule, it appears, is an essential tool of the trade. "It is getting really tough to poke fun at anybody," laments Conover. "Who can be the butt of the joke anymore, if the white male is forbidden and you have to be extremely careful on any other sort of identifiable group? What do you do -- make fun of dogs? You do that and animal rights people are going to be phoning up."
According to judgments rendered by the ASC's 18-person National Consumer Response and 12-person National Advisory Council on Gender Portrayal, reverse sexism has become a legitimate concern. The ASC's 1998 Ad Complaints Report found that 12 ads violated the ASC's gender portrayal guidelines and two of those were on the basis of reverse sexism. These included the shackled-husband ad targeted by Fathers Are Capable Too and a radio commercial for a restaurant chain in which a father is portrayed as helplessly incompetent in preparing meals for his family. This ad was deemed to "negatively stereotype men" and was also withdrawn by the advertiser.
Divorced dads' and men's groups may be the most reactive, but they're not the only ones complaining. ASC president Linda Nagel says her office has received a dramatic rise in the number of men calling over the past year. "Are the ads different or have men become more sensitive?" Nagel asks. "I think maybe a combination of the two."
In 1997, the ASC ruled that a commercial featuring a Coke delivery man who provokes sexual fantasies in female office workers irrelevantly objectified male sexuality. Columnists and unhappy consumers screamed that sensitivity around gender relations had reached a new level of absurdity. Consumers even called Coca-Cola Ltd. to express their distress about the ASC decision, says Laurine MacNeil, manager of public relations at Coca-Cola Ltd., which quit running the ad in Canada after the ruling.
"Sex is a reality and sex sells," says Ross Virgin, president of In Search of Justice, a men's rights group with 2,700 members across Canada. "But if the advertising watchdogs are going to say you can't do that for women, it must apply equally to men. Why is it not acceptable to objectify women, but okay to do it to men? That is unfair."
Bringing a different perspective is Shari Graydon, president of the national feminist group MediaWatch. Using a sculpted Adonis or a busty blond to sell a product is equally odious, but the threat to men, she says, is less extreme. "We haven't for generations irrelevantly sexualized men in the same way we do women. A man walking down the street and being whistled at by a bunch of female construction workers -- if we can even imagine that happening -- is not going to feel threatened, typically, in the way that a woman would."
The fact is, however, that while there may be more female stereotypes in advertising, there are also signs of change. At the Royal Ontario Museum's Fifty Years of Advertising and Design in Canada (running until Sept. 6), exhibits range from a 1975 "Toot, toot, tootsie, hello," ad for Tootsie Roll to the 1994 Operation Go Home ad featuring a lipsticked toddler above the slogan "Prostitutes Aren't Born."

[blackice]

He is a bumbling embarrassment, a dufus with a beer belly, an ignoramus who can't boil water, let alone fry an egg. But he sells a lot of shampoo and breakfast cereal.
Meet the advertising industry's newest punching bag: the white, heterosexual male. Men may wield most of the power in the real world, but in commercials, they have become objects of ridicule. You can't turn on the television without seeing a man make a nincompoop of himself.
And some men are not amused.
There's the dummy in the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency ad who doesn't have a clue about how to make an omelette; the blockhead in the Finesse shampoo spot who compares his wife's hair to the colour of his workbench; and the jilted bozo who eats Kraft Dinner from a dog food bowl.
They are geniuses compared with the Molson Export guys who stuff French fries up their nostrils.
"I used to laugh them off . . . but I think it's gone so overboard," says Dan Stevelman of Calgary. He's tired of ads that depict men as "fools who need a woman to show them how to function in society."
Some call it harmless humour. Others say it's sexist stereotyping. An advertiser would never get away with portraying women as drooling idiots -- at least not today -- so why do so many commercials mock men?
They're the only targets left.
"We live in such a politically correct environment that it is no longer acceptable to make fun of anyone in advertising other than straight, white men," says Chris Staples, a partner at Vancouver agency Rethink.
Female empowerment is another factor. Historically, ads have depicted women as either "housewives or whores," says Janet Kestin, co-creative director at Ogilvy & Mather in Toronto. The female character in ads was often "draped over the hood of a car or on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor."
Now, it's men's turn to be stereotyped -- as hopeless cooks, sports addicts and unromantic husbands. "Men are the new women," Ms. Kestin explains.
That doesn't make it right, critics say.
"I'm very disappointed in the way men are portrayed in ads. We're either buffoons, or the object of aggression," says Gene Colosimo, a director with Fathers Are Capable Too, a fathers' rights group.
He's not the only one troubled by this trend.
Gord Walter of Markham, Ont., was so upset about the Canadian Egg Marketing Agency's omelette ad, and another spot in which the man forgets to turn on the stove, that he sent an e-mail to the agency.
"If women had been portrayed as being such idiots the ad would (have) been yanked immediately due to the uproar of righteous indignation," he wrote.
The agency said that it was only trying to show that eggs are a "simple and
versatile meal solution." It wasn't trying to offend anyone.
Ads aimed at women may be especially likely to upset men, because they often point out male imperfections. Take the current Special K ad from Kellogg Canada called "Pass the Lotion." It stars a pasty guy with a bulging gut who asks his wife to rub suntan lotion on his back. The message is a healthy one: If guys don't obsess about their bodies, women shouldn't either.
But while most of the feedback from viewers has been positive, even that ad has drawn some flack. Some viewers "are not comfortable with the way we're laughing at the man in the ad," says Mark Childs, vice-president of marketing at Kellogg Canada in Toronto.
Should men be more accepting of this good-natured ribbing? Taxi, a Toronto agency, found out just how sensitive some men can be.
A few years ago, it created an ad for Salon Selectives hair products, called "Customized Boyfriend," in which a young woman imagined her guy turning into a hunk with washboard abs. As she was enjoying her fantasy, her boyfriend belched and suddenly reverted to his dumpy, out-of-shape self.
"We got some letters. In fact, I got excrement sent to me twice in an envelope," says Taxi president Paul Lavoie. "Obviously there are a couple of people out there who take it too literally."
Everybody needs to lighten up, says Judy John, senior vice-president and chief creative officer at Leo Burnett in Toronto, which created the Special K ad. "We're all taking ourselves too seriously. We are so politically correct now that we can't laugh at ourselves at all."
Mr. Staples of Rethink agrees. The way things are going, he worries that advertising will become so sanitized and so completely inoffensive that nobody will pay attention to it anymore. That would be a shame, he says.

[blackice]

I think the ad agentcies disagree with you. Now you and I have a great sense of humor But...I like the Aussie commercial "bugger"