Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Homophobia & Advertising: Bob Garfield's Column

Ad Age columnist Bob Garfield sent an open letter in his column to the CEO of one of the top agency holding companies, accusing the network of homophobia in several campaigns. He wrote:

"Stop the dehumanizing stereotypes. Stop the jokey violence. There is no place in advertising for cruelty. Pull the campaign. Do it now."

Strong language. And I have to say, the Snickers campaign, which was roundly pilloried when it broke during the Super Bowl (a ritual of homo erotic masculinity that requires homophobic expression to distract us from the obvious), continues to be abhorrent. It glorifies homophobic violence, and Garfield says of the newest addition to the campaign that:

"your commercial is just a cartoonish recapitulation of {Matthew Shepard's] brutal murder"

Strong words. It is heartening to see heterosexual columnists take offense and speak up. Of course, to pin this on the CEO of the holding company seems a little too much. The CEO of the offending agencies? Sure. They are responsible. And bringing to the attention of the holding company isn't a bad thing. Pressure from the outside to an agency is one thing. Pressure from the holding company — that's serious.

Perhaps even more fascinating are the reader comments — there are lots. If you're interested in reading real opinions from people in the ad biz on the subject of homophobia in media, this is a goldmine of information.

But let's stop for a minute to analyze just what is going on in this new Snicker's spot. First we see a blond man with soft features speed walking down a suburban street. The camera cuts to a rear view and rests for a few precious TV seconds on his wiggling butt.

Next, a vehicle with Mr. T. crashes through a house and follows the walker while Mr. T harangues him for being a "disgrace to the man race." Visually we see the machine gun from the POV of the shooter (very video game, because of course this is targeted at insecure teen boys and young men who need to be reassured about their masculinity — after all, there is nothing more masculine than playing with a computer right?) pointed directly at aforesaid butt.

Uhhhh, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But in this case? Not. Just more subconscious homosexual desire expressed in violence.

But this is where Garfield is dead on the money — the spot makes a violent response to inner desires that are unacceptable, acceptable. And that's unacceptable. One commenter points out that regardless of the agency, the clients bought off on this. So as much as I may love chocolate, Mars doesn't get any of my money. And I'm sure GLAAD will consider some action around this:

Yep, that's pretty damn bad. So while the holding company Mr. Garfield accuses does in fact treat its gay employees very well, this is seriously uncool. There are different opinions in the business classically about our influence.

One of my heroes, Bill Bernbach, one said:

"All of us who professionally use the mass media are the shapers of society. We can vulgarize that society. We can brutalize it. Or we can help lift it onto a higher level."

David Ogilvy, who believed that humor in advertising was a mistake, said:

"Advertising reflects the mores of society, but it does not influence them."

The truth lies somewhere in between. Nevertheless, I hold with Bernbach.

 

The Interrobang: Americans Are Torturing Prisoners At Gitmo?!?!

No, the interrobang is not a new style of violent interrogation akin to waterboarding. It is a punctuation mark created by a real Mad Man, advertising executive Martin K. Speckter in 1962. A combination of the question mark and exclamation point, it is used at the end of a sentence to convey astonishment, disbelief or to ask a rhetorical question.

The word itself comes from a combination of the printer’s jargon for the question mark “the interrogation point” and the exclamation point — the “bang.” Unfortunately, the use of an interrobang at the end of the question in the headline is appropriate, since the fact that we are torturing prisoners is astonishing, unbelievable, and unfortunately true as Jane Mayer's appalling book, “The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals,” proves beyond a doubt. Perhaps we will read a headline that ends with an interrobang someday that says "Bush Administration Officials Arrested For War Crimes!?"

Speckter's new punctuation mark never caught on, even though Specter used it in ads his agency created for accounts like The Wall Street Journal. Seems much more appropriate to use for a tabloid though.

It actually appeared on a typewriter (not however the Hermes model used by Douglas Adams that is currently up for auction) in the 60s. It was on a Remington that I’d like to add to my collection of Empires, Royals, Olivettis, Hammonds, Olivers, Smiths and Franklins. (Yes, I am afflicted with the collecting bug, and as a writer, typewriters speak to me.

And typographers include it with some fonts. It’s even available on many computers. On a Mac, four different versions can be found in the wingdings 2 font. Simply hit the ` ~ key, the ] } key, the 6 ^ key, or the - _ key and you'll be able to add this unusual punctuation to your documents.

I have to say, I don’t like the use of it in advertising. It’s kind of cheap, like the star burst, which is hated by creatives and loved by clients everywhere. In fact, a rather amusing ad was posted today to adsoftheworld by an agency in Columbia that addressed just this issue of the star burst. You can see it below — it adds to my collection of print ads that use a toilet as the location of the action.

However, I do think the interrobang works well in comic books, and one typographer has created a variation of the interrobang for the Fritz font that I like very much, seen at right. And I do think the more traditional(!) interrobang works well in a tabloid. Both are less formal venues. Which brings me to this venue: while the interrobang exists in some Unicode fonts, I can’t seem to be able to use it here except as a graphic. Too bad.

Then there is the symbol that appears almost entirely on the web: the copyright question mark. I have yet to determine its proper use though. Unlike copyleft, which offers up the usage of the material for non-profit use with proper attribution, I assume the copyright question mark is used when a web publisher uses material of uncertain copyright status, and wishes to make that known.

So what would a copyright interrobang mean?

Male Pornographic Advertising in Singapore?

Ogilvy & Mather in Singapore has created a campaign for Lorgan’s — a furniture store specializing in retro styles from the last century: 1930s through 70s. The store’s website is great fun, and I love love love their Sputnik lamp (we had one over our dining room table around 1965! But it’s the ad campaign — and Singapore — that needs discussion. Visually they show all the goods Lorgan’s sells, and all the ads focus on the 60s. A time that has a reputation for free love. That was really the 70s in the U.S. but let’s not quibble. The people in the ads aren’t there — as in Japanese pornography the shapes are missing, but the empty space they leave leaves little to the imagination. You can see the others, which are all heterosexual couplings (and threesomes) at Adsoftheworld.

What interests me though is the graphic (in both senses of the word) representation of man-on-man action in the ad above. Singapore is not exactly known as a permissive society. While not as conservative as the Islamic law in Malaysia, Singapore is hardly Thailand. Homosexual acts are still illegal there (though rarely prosecuted). And there are public decency laws. I would hazard a guess that certainly the ad above violates section 377 of the penal code, which states:

Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.

On top of that, Singapore has rather harsh laws around the possession of pornography. Remember, this is the city/state that enforced a sentence of caning for a teen aged boy, Michael Fay, just a few years ago for graffiti painting.

So the question is, are these ads really running or is this just spec work posted to the adsoftheworld site to garner attention for O&M Singapore? This is not an unknown strategy for an agency that wishes to up their creative reputation. However, as we saw at Cannes last month, entering work for a client that never ran (or for that matter that the client never saw) can get you in a lot of trouble. In the credits for the ad, they say it was published in April. Is there anyone in Singapore who can verify this?

To rephrase Rosser Reeves: Anybody can be creative, but can you sell it to the client. And then, of course, does it sell to consumers? That’s why I don’t like to see lots of public service spec work in portfolios. If you can’t do a compelling ad for starving children you don’t belong in the business. The real question is, can you do a compelling ad for Tide?

I hope O&M did the Lorgan’s site. It was terrific. I want a Sputnik lamp again!!! I won't say what I might want in any of the print ads however. Of course, my previous post about Chinese army ballet dancers might give you an idea.

The Heinz Mayo Advertising Controversy

Queer activists around the world are up in arms about the craven response to criticism by Heinz in Britain. Seems they ran a TV spot with two men kissing, and there were some complaints. However, the activists are missing the point. No one cares about two men kissing in Britain. The real issue is that a Brit is kissing a blue collar, lower class deli worker. Love between the classes? That's unacceptable. Horrifying. Everyone knows that if a British man wants to have a homosexual relationship with someone of the lower classes he has to go to Germany (see Auden, Isherwood), Sri Lanka (see Clarke) or the US (Isherwood again).

Those Pervy Canadians...

I really don't know what to make of this print ad for Bolt Detergent from Canada. It certainly is attention getting, and nowadays it's really hard to stop people. The message is short, relevant to the visual and memorable. But, eeewwww. I mean, in the "bathroom" version of the campaign above, it looks like a middle aged man has his face buried in the underwear of a pre-pubescent boy — like Underoos! This is disturbing.

The "basement" execution in this campaign (right) looks to be consciously reminiscent of the Calvin Klein ads that were art directed to resemble bad 70s porn. A the fun house mirror of advertising that is self-referential.

These somewhat pervy ads hardly seem to be in keeping with the brand character of a detergent. But then, I"m unfamiliar with Bolt. And who knows, maybe now that the Kids in The Hall have retired from sketch comedy they've gone into advertising. I wonder where  these ads ran...in a humor magazine, okay. But in whatever Canada's version of Good Housekeeping is, I don't think so.

This is one of those times I really would liked to have been in the room when the agency presented the work to the client. Then again, who knows, perhaps they've been published on the web at different ad sites for April Fool's Day. Only the folks up at Leo Burnett Canada know for sure.

By the way, there's a photo making it's way around the web virally that also seems to be some inspiration for this campaign. Though here, the man has his face in the underwear while the other man is still in them. This weirdly homo-erotic wrestling photo will most likely never be used in advertising for the WWE.

TheLast Generation — CBS sets phaser to stun and fires Star Trek web site staff

Informationweek reports that CBS has fired the entire production staff at StarTrek.com, a site which has operated for the past 13 years, housing news, features, images and video related to the original Star Trek series — not to mention the numerous movies, sequels and prequels it generated.

While I haven’t been a fan for years, I am really surprised to hear this. True, I don’t know the business case for keeping the site up — honestly half the time I can’t see the profitability model for most sites — but I know that Trekkies are a very dedicated bunch. And there is advertising on the site — not to mention promotions and sales for Star Trek ringtones.

Back in 1967 when NBC announced they were canceling the original show, tens of thousands of fans wrote in and saved it (I was one of them — a member of Vulcanian Enterprises, the NY Star Trek fan club and we generated a lot of letters). Next season NBC tried to cancel it again and the same thing happened.

The fan base is so devoted that they have become worthy of anthropological study. After all, this is a franchise that has been going strong now for 40 years. Over at Boing Boing they note that the show ihas become the subject of academic study — with a group of religious studies professors in Canada, Britain and the United States contributing essays to a scholarly book entitled Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture. I would have never guessed back when I was 16 and going to my first SF Worldcon.

So will an email writing campaign save startrek.com? As a gay man angry with our invisibility on the show, I have to say at this point I don’t really care.

The Dubai Rape Case, Islamic Law, Homosexuality and Advertising in the U.A.E.

The New York Times reported today that a Dubai court sentenced two men on Wednesday to 15 years in prison for the rape of a French-Swiss teenager. Originally authorities in Dubai threatened to blame — and prosecute the victim, by threatening to bring him up on charges of criminal acts — homosexual sex, which to reiterate was rape and thus quite clearly not consensual. What is the punishment for homosexual sex in the U.A.E.? It varies. People found guilty could be, and have been, subject to public lashings, jailed, or treated with male hormones. So what does this have to do with advertising you might wonder?

I present for your consideration the print ad below. It ran in Dubai and was created by an agency in Dubai for an energy drink called Shoot Up. It creates a visual pun using the symbol for the Olympics to suggest a level of sexual performance that is generally only seen in porn films. It is first and foremost (of course) about the man being able to be with 4 women. However in this visual the women are also coupled with each other. In a society that is so clearly both repressed and repressive one could ask whether this strikes a blow for freedom or whether it is just another expression of patriarchy. In any case, it betrays a certain schizophrenia evident in many societies where traditional cultures jostle with 21st Century global capitalism. Will the art director and copywriter be subject to public lashing for this work? I doubt it. The cultural clashes and shifts represented in the unfortunate rape case in this ad are at the fault line not only in the Mid East, but in the West (women are still often blamed in cases of sexual violence while Western media utilizes sex and violence to sell). I have my own ideas about how all this relates, but I am curious to know what any readers might think of this juxtaposition and what it says.

Conde Nast is destroying the planet

I subscribe to a number of CN pubs. Five I can think of off hand -- The New Yorker, Wired, CN Traveler, Vanity Fair and CN Portfolio. That's a lot of paper, but I like the writing and am happy to support good writing, political analysis and get information on things I like. But remember, I am in direct marketing.  And mailing lists — and mail merge/purge — are basics in this business. Imagine my surprise and dismay when I received in the last month each one of these magazines with the same supplement — Movies Rock. Each with the cover customized to say: A special supplement to...insert magazine name here.

In other words, I got the same magazine five times. That's a whole lot of wasted paper. And this isn't the first time CN has done this with a supplement. Do you think that they could somehow get the technology together to know that I subscribe to all these mags and don't need the same supplement five times?

And when you consider how many people are at least dual subscribers, well, Conde Nast has clearly cut down a swath of the Amazon today to overly promote bad Bill Murray vehicles all in the name of advertising. Kinda sucks. So Mr. Newhouse, get your IT people on the line today and figure it out. This is pretty basic stuff you know. And you're pissing people off.

Debu-Sen: Gay Sumo Advertising Take 3

Okay, this is beginning to become an interestingly odd phenomenon. This is the third ad in the last year to feature sumo wrestlers in either a gay context or in cross-gender costume. Clearly there is some fetishization going on out there in the world. All the more interesting to me is that on a daily basis, about 5% of my daily hits are from people on search engines looking up the term "gay sumo." What's up with that? If you haven't seen the previous ads, you can find them here and here.

Not one to argue with reality, and since I have found yet another ad that plays with the image of sumo wrestlers and sexuality/cross-gender costume, I present this print ad for Swatch watches. You will note that the branding and product are particularly subtle in this ad, as opposed to the image itself. What it means however, I can not say. Either from a cultural/sexual fascination with these Japanese athletes or from a conceptual reason for their use in this ad. Perhaps it was explained or discussed at the recent awards given out by the Commercial Closet, which cited this ad in its nominees for the year.

Waiting for Battlestar Galactica...and Razor

So Razor, a side story in the BSG saga will be broadcast on Friday after a long hiatus. When I got hooked on BSG it had been a long time since I had been so captured by a television show that I had to be home to see it when it was on cause I just couldn't wait. It had been a long time since I was hooked by a science fiction TV show (and we're going back to the original season of Star Trek). So when I read the review in today's Time Out for Razor I was filled with trepidation:

Caine press-ganged civilians and had disobedient officers executed in front of the crew, while her prisoners were subject to institutionalized rape and torture. Caine, we learn here, is a lesbian...but she isn't judged for her sexuality — Razor definitively proves that BSG is set in a society where sexual preference is a nonissue.

Well. I am relieved. Ahem. Sorry, but when the only queer character in 3 years of episodes is evil, well, maybe the world of the colonies doesn't judge sexuality, but television viewers in 21st Century America do. And based on what I read in Time Out, Caine is yet another version of the evil queer stereotype. I await the broadcast Friday with teeth gritted.