My head hurts...
...because I've just found myself agreeing with Dr. Clive Hamilton. Head of the back-to-the-bronze-age thinktank The Australia Institute, he is a frequent butt of these pages, but today he has an op-ed in the Age, over which I find myself nodding in broad agreement. His basic point is, why do we seem to have no comeback against offensive advertising, his prime example being the fcuk brandname? Here in Melbourne, the biggest single piece of advertising in the city is a fcuk hoarding; I should be grateful that it's out in the desolate West, and you really only see it when you're taking the road to or from the airport.
Decent people have to suffer in silence, knowing that if a complaint were ever raised, some sniggering gel-headed 'creative' called Adam or Brett would respond: "if you're offended by it, hey, that's your problem". Some time ago, a young woman in England, attending a country fair, was arrested for the crime of wearing a t-shirt which said "Bollocks to Blair". Presumably, if it had said "fcuk" that would have been OK.
So good on Dr. Clive for speaking up on this matter. Advertising of this kind inevitably suffers from the law of diminishing returns, but the rest of us have to live with the grimy mess left behind - the high-tide mark of a sewer overflow, that you never quite completely wash away. In my own neighbourhood, the epitome of decent, old-school middle-class Melbourne, our main shopping strip is now overlooked by a huge billboard for a brothel (in another, less salubrious suburb), which screams "Got the urge? Do it now!" Sometimes I feel like I'm in Biffworld.
On another matter of decency, I note that today's Age also has an article about Indonesian displeasure over Australia's decision to grant asylum to a number of Papuans: a cartoon has been published, which shows Howard and Downer as two copulating dogs (in a padded room somewhere, Michael Leunig is probably muttering 'I wish I'd thought of that'). In the public interest, the Age has of course reproduced this cartoon - although the printing is so bad you can barely make it out. Now if only I could think of some other cartoons that might be considered too offensive to publish in the Age...
...because I've just found myself agreeing with Dr. Clive Hamilton. Head of the back-to-the-bronze-age thinktank The Australia Institute, he is a frequent butt of these pages, but today he has an op-ed in the Age, over which I find myself nodding in broad agreement. His basic point is, why do we seem to have no comeback against offensive advertising, his prime example being the fcuk brandname? Here in Melbourne, the biggest single piece of advertising in the city is a fcuk hoarding; I should be grateful that it's out in the desolate West, and you really only see it when you're taking the road to or from the airport.
Decent people have to suffer in silence, knowing that if a complaint were ever raised, some sniggering gel-headed 'creative' called Adam or Brett would respond: "if you're offended by it, hey, that's your problem". Some time ago, a young woman in England, attending a country fair, was arrested for the crime of wearing a t-shirt which said "Bollocks to Blair". Presumably, if it had said "fcuk" that would have been OK.
So good on Dr. Clive for speaking up on this matter. Advertising of this kind inevitably suffers from the law of diminishing returns, but the rest of us have to live with the grimy mess left behind - the high-tide mark of a sewer overflow, that you never quite completely wash away. In my own neighbourhood, the epitome of decent, old-school middle-class Melbourne, our main shopping strip is now overlooked by a huge billboard for a brothel (in another, less salubrious suburb), which screams "Got the urge? Do it now!" Sometimes I feel like I'm in Biffworld.
On another matter of decency, I note that today's Age also has an article about Indonesian displeasure over Australia's decision to grant asylum to a number of Papuans: a cartoon has been published, which shows Howard and Downer as two copulating dogs (in a padded room somewhere, Michael Leunig is probably muttering 'I wish I'd thought of that'). In the public interest, the Age has of course reproduced this cartoon - although the printing is so bad you can barely make it out. Now if only I could think of some other cartoons that might be considered too offensive to publish in the Age...
posted by cuckoo at
10:18 AM
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