Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

School bullying / Anti gay bullying and advertising:

I've been watching this Chrysler Town and Country commercial for months and every time I see it I am disturbed. It's clear the spot was directed so that the boy who jumps in his mother's van is running from a gang of boys who want to beat him up.

The voiceover suggests it's just a race home, though even in this challenge there is a note of menace.

You can see from the face of "Parker," the boy they are chasing, that he is running in fear.

What was the agency that made this thinking? It's bad enough that school teachers across the country turn a blind eye (or even participate) to bullying behavior. But for an ad agency, in this case, I believe it's Fallon since they're the agency of record for Chrysler, to run an ad which uses the situation to get attention (and entertain and sell) in the today's climate is irresponsible. Because while it's true this behavior is widespread, showing it in a commercial in this way normatizes it. Condones it, even as Parker manages to get away because of the hero product, and his clueless mom driving the Town and Country.

Chrysler should stop running this ad immediately. And both Chrysler and Fallon should be contributing serious money to organizations that combat the scourge of bullying and organizations that protect lgbt youth and youth at risk of bullying.

There has been enough written about this online for me to know now that I'm not the only person who sees this storyline. And some say that the voiceover track was changed from a more overt bullying situation. I wouldn't be surprised given the way the spot is directed. I would guess that the agency presented this to the client as an inexpensive fix to a bad mistake. Sorry guys, doesn't work. You ought to eat the cost, and reshoot a new spot. And pay for your mistake with support for bullied youth.

Take a look at the spot: do you see this the way I see it? And where the hell is GLAAD? After last week's awards to agencies for the good they do, why haven't they raised this as an issue?

 

Superbowl Exposed: The real reason they couldn't show a ManCrunch commercial...

Between the butt shots from below of the players, to the butt shots of the men in the Dockers Superbowl commercial, showing a spot for ManCrunch would expose just how truly homoerotic football is.

ManCrunch and Millions of Dollars of Free Advertising

Hey, I'm a gay man in the ad business. A single man, seriously looking to find a partner to settle down with. So I like to think I know what online dating services are out there — and whether they're any good or not. Except that last week I learned about ManCrunch — without them spending a dime on media advertising. That doesn't mean they weren't on the airwaves, or all over the net.

As just about all gay men who pay attention to media representation know, ManCrunch submitted a TV spot to CBS for the SuperBowl. They had to know it wouldn't be accepted. I doubt they even had the budget to run the spot even though the company claims they offered a cash payment. But the attendant media firestorm around the submission and turn down got the spot play on websites and cable TV comedy shows nationally.

This is a brilliant strategy of playing the media. And Reuters nails it in a story about ManCrunch and GoDaddy. Now if there were only a brilliant strategy to find a guy online for something serious. And believe me, I'm not looking for someone who wants to watch the Super Bowl with me. Unless it's to fast forward to the advertising.

Sunday Morning Cartoon: Tribute to Queer Cartoon Characters...

I may quibble with some of the choices, but this video montage in tribute to the queer characters in kid's TV shows and movies (and I would argue that some are not even for kids, really, but it's too much fun to argue) is just hilarious.

Is there money in advertising to the gay market? At least $1000

For all the talk about the gay market -- and by that I refer to the oft spoken of market of well to do and flush with disposable income gay male singles and couples -- there isn't really much advertising that speaks to this target with intelligence and respect. There isn't much that doesn't buy into demeaning objectification that we often take on ourselves. Well, I'm getting curmudgeonly, and I promised I'd only do that once today. Except that I need to note, as a queer copywriter/creative director, a contest that has been announced in Palm Springs by the Moxie Project to create advertising to attract lgbt tourism doesn't support the myth of gay men with money.

If all they can offer as a prize is $1000 for the best commercial, gay tourism in Palm Springs is in trouble. Well, maybe not, since it really doesn't need any advertising. Nevertheless, I am curious to see what kind of a brief they gave (and not the kind of brief that appears in the post below).

The Divine Feminine Meets 21st Century British Music Hall Rock & Roll Comedy

Easy now fuzzy little man peach, Old Greg is in the house. This is beyond description. If you've never seen The Might Boosh, or this particular episode, The Legend of Old Greg, you're in for a very wild ride that combines British music hall tradition comedy, rock & roll chaos comedy, the divine feminine and glitter rock plus funk and hallucinogenic insanity meeting the dark comedy of folktales. There, that was suitably incoherent. But I am not about to get into a scholarly deconstruction of something I love so much, it would only be vivisection, and Old Greg wouldn't like that at all. It's all here, and very very funny. I am only including parts 2-4. You can find it all on youtube of course, where you can also see a live version of the "hit single" from this episode, Love Games. Trust me, you want to see all three videos below. It will change your life forever.


Quick, make an assessment.

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.

Sunday Morning Cartoon: Our Road of No Return / Anime Yaoi

Yet another reason why I love Japan. When I lived there, there were a couple of TV shows with queer characters. There was Stop Hibari Kun, about the cross dressing son of a yakuza and his crush on another boy in school. And Patariro, about an odd little king and his chief spy, who loves another male spy. Cartoons all. This however isn't the kind of comedy that those were -- this is real romance. Enjoy.

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.