Skip to main content

Would you like fries with your hypocracy?


I have watched both episodes of the American television show Californication that have screened so far. I quite like it. David Duchovney does a good job of being a dissolute post-modern brat who makes the kind of arbitrary decisions that could only be described as amoral. Not immoral because, in my book, sexual activity isn't a moral issue unless it involves criminally indecent behaviour. Regular sexual connection between adults (over the age of consent) is just sex. Sex is good.

The widely reported withdrawal of advertisers responding to pressure from self-appointed morality custodians such as 'Family First' (a curious blanket term for neo-conservatism) is just plain weird. The funniest aspect of the whole scenario is that Burger King, the amoral purveyors of heart-choking food and drink (which I am quite fond of); who also promote their goods with nubile women in bikinis have joined the stampede. I can understand the government's Ministry of Economic Development (sounds positively Soviet when you say it out loud) getting cold feet - though I would have thought population growth was a part of Economic Development and most members of the population are the product of copulation - an inconvenient truth. Most of us wouldn't be who we are today without it.

Well, I am simply going to have to boycott advertisers who boycott the shows I like. It's only fair. So, look out Finish Dishwashing Liquid, Cadbury, and Flight Centre. And as for prudish, hypocritical Burger King…will you put some clothes on (check out the degenerate BK Mansion website).

Perhaps we should lobby for health warnings on chocolate bars, heavy taxes on polluting air travel and mandatory images of congestive heart disease on the menu board at BK's fine establishments.

Pre-Order season 1 of Californication and watch it without interruption from irritating advertisers

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Addict-o-matic

A cool resource for you to try. Aggregates search topics from a number of sources. Thanks to Brand DNA (again) for the heads-up.

Johnny Bunko competiton

The Great Johnny Bunko Challenge from DHP on Vimeo . There's a young chap in Indiana, one Alec Quig , who has written to me about creating a career based on a polymathic degree, from which he has recently graduated. He's an interesting young man and his concerns about going forward in life are the anxieties we all face at crossroads in our lives when we are forced to make choices. Dan Pink's latest book The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You'll Ever Need might help: "From a New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Washington Post bestselling author comes a first-of-its- kind career guide for a new generation of job seekers.There's never been a career guide like it.the fully illustrated story (ingeniously told in Manga form) of a young Everyman just out of college who lands his first job. Johnny Bunko is new to parachute company Boggs Corp., and he stumbles through his early days as a working stiff until a crisis prompts him to find a new job. St

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer