Italy's culture minister, the Historical Heritage and Fine Arts Board curator, and the director of Florence’s Accademia Gallery (where "David" is currently on display) have all denounced the ad, and ArmaLite has been issued a legal notice to retract the image because the statue is considered government property and can't be used commercially without the proper rights and fees.
But as the author, David Kiefaber, points out, would Italy have been so upset if the ad hadn't been for a big American gun? (Note also the difference in cultural sensitivities, as the America company censors David's penis.)
Here are a couple of other examples of Michelangelo's David in advertising:
So it turns out there's this company that makes "zombie" targets for gun enthusiasts. They have clown zombies, nazi zombies, "terrorist" zombies, dog zombies and even a green zombie named "Rocky" that has Barack Obama's ears.
The Zombie virus does not discriminate and neither does Zombie Industries. We take preparation for the Zombie Apocalypse seriously, which is why we strive to have all groups of undead monsters represented in our product selection. In addition to the Ex Girlfriend Zombie, we currently sell 15 male zombies, 5 animal zombies & 2 aliens… to discriminate against Women by not having them represented in our product selection would be just plain sexist.
Each of the zombie targets has a story. Here is the story of "The Ex":
Be warned, hell hath no fury like a woman scorned but a man scorned is nothing to mess with! A young gent from Louisiana, we’ll call him Andre` to protect his identity, was deeply committed to his one true love and her to him, or so he thought. While partying with her friends during one particular Mardi Gras, she took several suitors over the course of the festivities. Andre` felt something odd indeed, so he paid a visit to his great aunt, Marie, who helped him see the truth. With a few eggs, candles lit and kiss upon his forehead, her voodoo curse was set in motion. Late each night while lying in bed, a smile would appear across his face, for a slight breeze would travel through a cracked window bringing with it, a faint whiff of decay and a unnatural cry of regret.
That's right. In this narrative, a man kills a woman for cheating on him. Then he has her turned into a zombie. Which you, bro, are now invited to blow to bits.
Despite the game-like zombie theme, it is notable that the single human female representation has been created specifically as a target of violent male anger towards a woman's ownership of her own sexuality.
"The Ex" is also portrayed in a highly sexual way, with what seems to be a bare lower torso and busting out chest.
Policymic writes, "Every day, at least three women are killed by an intimate partner in the US alone. Let's make sure those numbers go down, not up. Let's make sure companies like Zombies Industries know that we're not buying it."
Some people, however, are buying it. And this is what's most troubling.
From the product reviews:
This Zombie Bitch is awesome, reminds me of a girl I knew in High School, My LMT LM308MWS should put a stop to the undead bring them on !!! Later Party till you drop Corvette forever !!!!! - Ralph Cox ( Big Money Grip)
I love that this target looks like Britney Spears and it bleeds when I shot it. - Bryan
And from YouTube:
It may just be me, but I think that people who are willing to pay $100 to shoot a cheap sex doll to bits while fantasizing about killing women who rejected them (and people who think that's totally cool) have some very serious problems.
Oh, and Zombie Industries was selling this shit at the National Rifle Association convention in Houston last weekend. Surprised?
Alexa was from Louisiana and was always drawn to the occult. She had a wicked mean streak in her and was known for her nasty disposition, especially if she had been drinking. She also happened to be in love with a young man, but there was a slight problem.. he was married to another women. When he told her that he loved his wife and could never be unfaithful to her, Alexa became enraged. She decided to seek the help of a local tarot card & palm reader who also dabbled in Voodoo. When she told the Voodoo Witch of her plan to break up a loving a marriage.. the witch refused to help her. That’s when Alexa lost her cool for the last time and crossed the wrong person. She let out a slew of insults directed at the witch and told her she would get her way one way or another. That’s when the Voodoo Witch cast a spell of her own. Alexa never knew what hit her and before she reached her home that evening she joined the ranks of the Undead!
It's more of an admission of guilt than anything else...
That's right, rifles for little kids. In a gun-loving culture, I'm sure there are arguments for teaching "gun safety" to children as soon as possible.
But that wasn't the case for an unnamed 5-year-old boy in Cumberland County, Kentucky. He accidentally shot and killed his 2-year-old sister while playing with his .22 calibre "My First Rifle" that had been left loaded and accessible in the house:
[Cumberland County Coroner Gary White] said the children's mother was at home when the shooting occurred, and the gun was a gift the boy received last year.
"It's a Crickett," he said. "It's a little rifle for a kid. ...The little boy's used to shooting the little gun."
White said the gun was kept in a corner, and the family did not realize a shell had been left in it.
He said the shooting will be ruled accidental.
"Just one of those crazy accidents," White said.
As a parent myself, I empathize deeply with the family who lost a little girl. But this was no "crazy accident". This company encourages really young children not just to learn how to use a gun, but also to see it as a fun, destructive, and lethal plaything.
I understand hunting. I understand the sport of shooting. I just don't think marketing guns to children as if they are toys is right.
Of course the company talks about responsibility. Their kids' guns have safety locks, and they sell books that are supposed to be about responsible gun use.
In that one, one of the bears does not come out of the hunt well, but his skin keeps Little Jake toasty through the next winter, and the little fella feasts on bear sausages while hunkered down under the rug.
But it's not all chest-beating and swagger. After Little Jake bags the bruin, he spends a contemplative moment thinking of what his warm rug has cost the bear, and thanks the animal for his sacrifice. He does a similar thing after he kills the King of the Forest, Bambi's father.
"It's all about casting hunting in a positive light," Jacobs said. "Kids today are only hearing one side. Hunting and firearms are part of our American tradition. All it will take is for the hunting tradition to skip one generation, and I'm afraid that will be it. We will lose it."
However, if you head on over to the company's YouTube channel, they have favourited a video featuring an 11-year-old girl who "defends her home from three armed burglars" using one of their products. Somehow, she survived. Giving kids and parents the false hope that arming their children will keep them safe is hardly responsible gun stewardship.
The other problem with the marketing is that, no matter how much companies like this and the NRA talk about responsibility, the American Journal of Public Health reported that unsafe storage of firearms in American homes with children is a serious problem:
Respondents from 35% of the homes with children younger than 18 years (representing more than 22 million children in more than 11 million homes) reported having at least 1 firearm. Among homes with children and firearms, 43% had at least 1 unlocked firearm (i.e., not in a locked place and not locked with a trigger lock or other locking mechanism). Overall, 9% kept firearms unlocked and loaded, and 4% kept them unlocked, unloaded, and stored with ammunition; thus, a total of 13% of the homes with children and firearms--1.4 million homes with 2.6 million children--stored firearms in a manner most accessible to children.
Fortunately, according to the Centres for Disease Control (via CNN) deaths like the one in Kentucky are statistically rare:
703 children under the age of 15 died in accidental firearms deaths between 2001 and 2010, the latest year for which the agency's statistics on fatalities are available. During the same period, 7,766 children under the age of 14 suffered accidental firearms injuries -- about one injury for every million children.
Of course, that's still 703 dead kids as a result of playing with guns.
As an urban, left wing Canadian, it's hard for me to understand the American obsession with guns. I am also aware that this is a very serious cultural divide. I'm just now reading the book The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined by fellow Canadian Steven Pinker, and he takes a Hobbesian view of the matter. While Western Europe and many English colonies (like Canada), he observes, had strong law-and-order states before they had democracy, the United States gave (some) citizens the vote when much of the land was still in a state of armed uprising.
That said, I don't personally want the liberty to arm my 8-year-old son with his very own unlocked, loaded, and unsupervised .22 calibre rifle and fill his head with dreams of vigilante justice.
The submission on Ads of The World says "JWT, Gurgaon, India" but I have to give the J. Walter Thompson Company the benefit of my skepticism. The campaign is courting controversy in such a ham-fisted and immature way.
Above, the Vancouver Stanley Cup Riot (mistakenly labelled "Football Riot") stands in for what Charles Mackay coined as "the madness of crowds". As an ad concept, it's tenuous at best, contrasting the idea of "individual travel plans" against mob mentality.
But the creative team of Bobby Pawar, Priti Kapur, Sayantan Choudhury, Sumeer Mathur
and Sumonto Ghosh didn't stop there.
They decided to go after American anti-abortionists:
Dog fights:
Toddlers in Tiaras:
Gun obsession:
And racism:
Pretty ballsy social commentary, but what does it have to do with selling travel? All I get out of it is that Indian tourists should avoid North America at all costs. (Interestingly, Chariot India "journeys of discovery to India, Nepal and Bhutan, in South Asia," so maybe that was the idea all along.)
To me, this is another example of belief in the stupid old adage that there's "no such thing as bad publicity". There is... for brands. It's the creative teams and agencies that really benefit from these "edgy" campaigns, as the ad community congratulates them for convincing someone else to pay for another self-serving attempt at notoriety.
I wasn't going to do any more blogging today, but WHAT IN HOLY HELL IS WRONG WITH SOME PEOPLE?!?
The Sandy Hook massacre last month ripped apart an already bipolar American gun culture. The President is responding to public demand for tighter gun control, meanwhile advocates of unrestricted civilian access to guns want to turn schools into paramilitary fortresses.
I'm on the gun-control side, but there's no point in me wading into an argument that is already using up tons of bandwidth. Instead, let's look again at just how awful that NRA ad is.
First of all, it's moronic. A couple of years ago, my son attended the same Ottawa public school as our Prime Minister's daughter. The whole time she attended in that capacity, there were armed RCMP guards discreetly positioned at the school. Of course there were. These children, through no fault of their own, are targets for a multitude of crazy, angry, and politically-motivated baddies.
But there's a deeper stench to this ad. As the Daily Beast's David Frum noted:
Generally speaking, a president's family should not be subject to political criticism. That rule was honorably upheld in the case of the Bush daughters, who grew into fine young people, and the rule should be same for the Obama daughters - especially if it's true, as has been widely reported, that this first family has faced a unique degree of threat.
This was grievous enough to warrant an official White House response by spokesman Jay Carney, “Most Americans agree that a president's children should not be used as pawns in a political fight. But to go so far as to make the safety of the president's children the subject of an attack ad is repugnant and cowardly.”
The US gun "debate" is just getting uglier and uglier.
Via Buzzfeed comes Page 5 of The Stamford Advocate, in which a gun show ad appears next to a story about Sandy Hook Elementary School reopening after last year's horrible shooting rampage that killed 20 children and 6 adults.
These mistakes happen, and nobody would dare suggest that anyone in the community would purposely place this ad right there. It's more of an issue of quality control, or rather lack of it, in today's mainstream media.
But accidental or not, I was just served up this ad by the homepage of the online edition:
The ad is actually for an arts exhibition. But once again, a chilling combination of images.
Business Insider posted a collection of ads that paint a picture of American gun culture, past a present. What particularly struck me was this series of 1960s Christmas ads.
Firms selling bullet-proof children's gear - including Disney Princess and Avengers backpacks lined with Kevlar-type sheeting - are reporting a massive surge in sales in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre.
Salt Lake City-based Amendment II is among several firms being accused of callously cashing-in on the tragedy in which 26 people were gunned down including 23 children.
The firm is currently promoting a range of $300 bulletproof backpacks, alongside body armour in children's sizes, and say they have sold as many in a week as they usually sell in three months
Last Friday's mass-killing was devastating to parents everywhere. But the idea that you can somehow armour (or even arm) your children against a similar attack is preposterous. And deeply, deeply sad.
Selling this stuff, on the other hand, is appalling.
At the moment, the site of the online retailer, "Amendment II" is unresponsive.
This is most certainly part of the problem. As Salon reports, Bushmaster Firearms (yes, that Bushmaster) has been promoting its AR15- and M16- type rifles by providing a "man card" to its fans.
Proof of Your Manhood – The Man Card ... Do you have what it takes?
Inspired by the overwhelming response to Bushmaster’s “Consider Your Man Card Reissued” sweepstakes, today Bushmaster Firearms announces the latest part in the series; the Man Card online promotion.
To become a card-carrying man, visitors of bushmaster.com will have to prove they’re a man by answering a series of manhood questions. Upon successful completion, they will be issued a temporary Man Card to proudly display to friends and family. The Man Card is valid for one year.
Visitors can also call into question or even revoke the Man Card of friends they feel have betrayed their manhood. The man in question will then have to defend himself, and their Man Card, by answering a series of questions geared towards proving indeed, they are worthy of retaining their card.
Bushmaster invites you to visit www.bushmaster.com/mancard to earn your Man Card and have some fun. If you decide to revoke the Man Card of a friend or two along the way, that is entirely up to you.
The man card quiz link is no longer active, but Salon gives a synopsis:
Most of the quiz questions are pretty predictable and harmless, if dumb — Do you eat tofu? Can you change a tire? Have you ever watched figured skating “on purpose”? — but others are more challenging. One question gives you four possible options of how to respond if a car full of the rival team’s fans cuts you off on the way to the championship game. The correct answer, it turns out, is to commit arson: “Skip the game, find the other car in the parking lot, and render it unrecognizable with a conflagration of shoe polish and empty food containers.”
Somewhat ironically, it was not the male Newtown mass murderer who owned the Bushmaster he allegedly used to kill his innocent victims. The gun belonged to his mother.
Nonetheless, I find the easy sexism and dumb machismo of this brand extremely troubling. Equating agression, violence and lack of empathy with masculinity, and positioning a military-grade assault weapon as an essential part of that role, is both a reflection — and a reinforcement — of the American gun culture. And while this culture may not specifically cause killers to kill, it gives them the means to do so very efficiently while also providing a fantasy of violent power to the otherwise powerless.
On a side note, I think the Bushmaster company is in the process of changing its web site:
Hopefully, they'll tone down the bullshit. Who am I kidding? I hope their products, and all like them, are eventually prohibited to civilian ownership.
"Discount Gun Sales is proud to team up with the Susan B. Koman Foundation to offer the Walther P-22 Hope Edition in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness Month. A portion of each P-22 Hope Edition will be donated to the Seattle Branch of the Susan G. Komen Foundation.
The P-22 Hope Edition has an exclusive DuraCoat Pink slide in recognition of Breast Cancer Awareness month. Utilizing the same reliable controls and firing mechanism that has made the Walther P-22 America’s top selling handgun, the Hope Edition will be a limited production pistol offered exclusively through Discount Gun Sales."
“If you are a socialist liberal and/or voted for the current campaigner-in-chief, please do not take this class,” Mr. Keller said in the ad. “You’ve already proven that you cannot make a knowledgeable and prudent decision as required under the law. Also, if you are a non-Christian Arab or Muslim, I will not teach you the class. Once again, with no shame, I am Crockett Keller.”
For some people, this kind of hate speech would be the kiss of death. But to this Texas gun instructor, it's just common sense:
“Why would I teach people who have sworn the annihilation of the United States and who can lie, cheat, steal and murder Americans in order to further Islam?” Mr. Keller said. “Why would I arm someone like that? Why would I enable them to carry a weapon legally? I don’t want to be a part of that. I’m sorry those flight instructors didn’t have the same hindsight to know that these guys were up to no good, and they shouldn’t be teaching them, and they should have refused.”
Where's his head? I think it's up under his gun...
The Texas Department of Public Safety is investigating if this warrants him losing his licence due to breaking anti-discrimination statutes.
