Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

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.

Mr. Whipple and Senator Larry Craig...

An advertising icon has passed...and is noted on any number of queer blogs (JMG to start) because of the queer subtext of the character. Mr. Whipple was undeniably queer, a Franklin Pangborn of fussiness who was hated roundly as annoying by not only the general public, but by his own creators at Benton and Bowles, as told in the classic on how to create good adveritising "Hey Whipple, Squeeze This:"

"I was assigned to assassinate Mr. Whipple. Some of New York's best hit teams before me had tried and failed. The agency that created him was determined to kill him."

Nevertheless, the campaign ran for 21 years because "Charmin may not have been popular advertising, but it was number one in sales." Which goes back to a discussion yesterday on JMG about the advertising for British Tourism in Belgium. But I digress....so what's the connection between Whipple and Senator Craig? The analysis is right there in the NY Times obituary:

"In hundreds of maligned but effective television commercials, running from 1964 to 1985, the punch line was the Mr. Whipple himself secretly squeezed the product..."

Just like a closeted Republican with homosexual desires, Whipple told other people what not to do, then guiltily did it himself. And got caught again and again. It's a pattern we are all familiar with, though many people close there eyes to it and live in denial. Culturally Whipple blows the whistle: we all know.

On another note, the nature of a "queer" ad spokesman selling soft toilet paper has the less than conscious communication that who better to tell you what's good to put against your butthole than a gay man? 

Of course, the actor who played Whipple was straight. But the character? We all know. It's the open secret out there for all to see on Capitol HIll.

Frank Rich, advertising and the death of American democracy.

This weekend I saw what I think must be the most offensive and depressing advertising I have ever seen. It is a campaign that takes Milton Friedman’s “freedom of choice” to its lowest logical level by conflating democracy with the ability to determine the next flavor and package for a soft drink. At a time when young people (of all nationalities) are dying in Iraq for the faux freedom that the Bush regime proclaims, the makers of Mountain Dew have co-opted the storyline of V to sell more caffeinated sugar water on their website.

Shortly after seeing this appalling poster on the streets of New York, streets that are not filled with thousands of people protesting the outrage of our elected officials shredding the Bill of Rights, I found myself on the subway reading Frank Rich’s Sunday column in the Times. He wrote:

“In the six years of compromising our principles since 9/11, our democracy has so steadily been defined down that it now can resemble the supposedly aspiring democracies we’ve propped up in places like Islamabad. Time has taken its toll. We’ve become inured to democracy-lite.

…the executive branch has subverted the rule of law in often secretive increments. The results amount to a quiet coup…

…More Machiavellian still, Mr. Bush has constantly told the world he’s championing democracy even as he strangles it.”

So what does this have to do with the Dewmocracy campaign? In the way that Bush has subverted our values and numbed us to the subtle fascism that is overtaking our instituions, this advertising campaign makes a mockery of our values, turning the idea of government by the people into something as insignificant as choosing a new soft drink flavor. This is the democracy we have left. Aisles of endless choices of orange juice (pulp, more pulp, calcium, low acid, anti-oxidant, fiber, omega-3, organic, Vitamin D —— can I just get some orange juice here?). And no real debate or choice of ideas. Or candidates. Dewmocracy defines democracy down just as Bush’s Orwellian language does.

And no wonder we mock democracy. Because we know our leaders have made a mockery of it. I don’t know whether the people behind this campaign are clueless and valueless, or satirists of the highest order. I doubt it is the latter. Certainly when popular culture — and advertising — ridicules the bedrock rights on which our society was founded we are near the death of those values. As an advertising executive I am ashamed of my industry. And as an American, I mourn for my country.

Underwear Advertising You Won't See In Gay Magazines

We are supposed to be witty — that's one stereotype of gay men. A legacy from St. Oscar, or Paul Lynde. However one would never know this looking at ads in gay men's magazines. Advertisers in this venue must believe that all we're interested in are hot bodies, since the underwear ads are all about hot bodies. And why not? Except in advertising the point is to stand out, be remembered, promise a benefit. And in a gay magazine, one hot body after another is just too much of a good thing. And I'm never going to look like the guy in any of those ads. Hell, I don't expect to go out with anyone who looks like those guys.

Which brings me to this print ad for McAlson boxer shorts. This ad did not appear in any gay magazines to my knowledge. And of course, in a straight men's magazine, homo-erotic ads for underwear don't make much sense. Though amazingly, with the "metrosexualization" of today's men, there are many such ads to be found there. Still, this ad for McAlson is visually witty and promises a benefit it can deliver. Which is more than the ads for 2x(ist) can do.

Unfortunately this ad doesn't convince me to change from my underwear of choice (which is indeed one of those brands that advertises in the gay magazines and websites) because I much prefer the feel of briefs and hate the feel of boxers.

Monday Morning Curmudgeon: Metro/AM New York in the Subway

I hate the free papers in the morning. Notice I don't dignify them by calling them newspapers. Let's be clear about one thing, they are just  waste paper that blows across subway platforms, stairwells and sidewalks. They create fire hazards on the tracks, and slip hazards on the stairs.

The hawkers block subway entrances on the street, and some even stand in the stairwells, blocking people from efficiently going in or out. The narrow stairways are bad enough on a good day, but on rainy days, with wet papers on the ground, people trying to open umbrellas, and some guy in an orange vest blocking your way as he thrusts an excuse for advertising at you — it's simply offensive. Except it is worse than that.  Their piles of papers and wire racks create a hazard — they're a disaster waiting to happen should there be some reason to evacuate a station quickly (not like there aren't a dozen reasons to claim there's a disaster waiting to happen). Except that this dangerous blocking of the entrances at rush hour must be illegal.

Call your councilperson to complain. Write your newspaper. Write the fish wrap they give out at the subways. It's an outrage!

Poisoned Toys from China: The Week in Paranoia

I was an early subscriber to National Lampoon when it came out in 1970. It had many of my favorite artists from the science fiction world — Vaughn Bodé and Gahan Wilson among them. Every issue had a theme, and #5 was Paranoia, with a great Wilson cover. But that's not what interests me today. No. The centerfold of this issue was a Paranoid's Map of The World, complete with every hateful stereotype imaginable, made howlingly funny in its democratic fashion of tarring the whole world with this brush.

However, besides people as a source of paranoid fantasy, there was nature, and for that matter, the products people make. You will notice in this detail blown up from the map, one of the dangers from China is poisoned toys. Paranoia? Or prescience?

This very same map shows melting polar ice caps and mideast jihadists. No. This was not a paranoid fantasy. It was National Lampoon's secret message to the future, coded, as Nostradamus had to do because no one would believe it.

Sex and the City, Sutras in the City

Form and emptiness. Last night I came across the form of Sarah Jessica Parker (accompanied by Cynthia Nixon) filming a scene from the Sex and the City film on the south side of Bryant Park. She was in quite a wedding gown. Carrying a heavy bouquet of roses. As Chris Noth got out of the black limo, she raced towards him and slapped him across the face with the blooms, sending petals scattering across the pavement. What's a marriage without a little drama? The scattered petals only remind me of the meaning ascribed to cherry blossoms, that all beauty fades and dies. In fact everything changes. Anicca as the Buddha was wont to say. Which brings us to the sutras and emptiness (though often sex in this city can leave one with a feeling of emptiness quite different from the Buddhist concept).

Today at Radio City Music Hall the Dalai Lama took the day to teach an obscure and highly technical sutra, the Diamond Cutter's Sutra by Nagarjuna. Because I wasn't there for the start last night, I didn't have a text to follow along with the teaching. However, the man next to me was in the same boat, and he had a solution. He took out his iPhone and surfed the web until he could call up the text, and there it was on screen.

In the lobby, where I always feel a ping of attachment since my maternal grandfather was a glazier and helped hang the glass and mirrors in that great hall, I was amused to see a mural I'd seen many time with a new context. The art deco mural on the grand stairway up to the balcony shows a monk looking up towards a mountain height (just as those seekers with balcony seats had to climb the stairs) to reach a temple.

This is life in New York City. High and low. In every moment. Whether you're a queer jewish buddhist or experiencing existence in some other way.