For decades, yes decades now, the progressive, the non-bigoted, the non-fundamentally religious and the compassionate have been advocating for services and support for people living with HIV/AIDS as well as educational campaigns that present truthful information.
The regressive/conservative, bigoted, fundamentally religious and patronizing view is that the disease is a scourge sent from heaven and that it’s gawd’s punishment for enjoying unmarried and/or non-breeding sex.
Thus it’s probably not difficult to guess on which side of the divide might be found the minds who created this particular advertisement for a public campaign.
"In the highly-sexualised clip … a couple undress and begin to make love in a dimly-lit bedroom.
But what appears to be a typical, if steamy, advert for perfume or underwear takes a macabre twist when the camera pans to man's face at the moment of climax - revealing him to be Adolf Hitler.
The commercial has been released to coincide with 2009 World Aids Day, but established HIV/Aids charities have distanced themselves from its message, saying that it could make life more difficult for sufferers."
It’s unfortunate that the group decided to produce an erotically-charged advertisement, which could have effectively communicated a sex-positive and responsible message for condom use, in such a repulsive way.
Such an approach, known to those familiar with B.F.Skinner’s research on psychological imprinting and the dubious results obtained from using negative reinforcement aka punishment, reminds me of the last act in the film A Clockwork Orange.
3 comments:
Hey Alison, perhaps the woman should have had "Pol-and" tattooed on her butt cheeks to make the point.
As you aptly said, wtf?
Y'now, I'm not sure I agree with your take on this. AIDS is a scourge, if neither from heaven nor from underground CIA laboratories. It's worthy of being afraid of. It's killing millions, and yet people of all sexes and orientations continue to spin the wheel and take a chance.
I think that, on rare occasions, Godwinning is permissible. If we were playing that "If you were..." parlour game and someone asked "If Hitler were a disease, what disease would he be?" I'd answer "AIDS" right off the bat.
The ad was meant to get attention, and it obviously did. It was aimed, not at those who have contracted the disease, but at those who are at risk of doing so. Seriously, where's the harm?
Sigh. It is so difficult to get consensus these days on who would be a universally acceptable embodiment of evil.
Pol Pot might fit the parameters, but he's not as iconic or as familiar.
Personally, I don't think showing a woman fucking Hitler is an effective social marketing tool but then I may not be the target audience for that particular advertisement, that is a 20-something German heterosexual female.
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