Fri, June 22, 2007
Animal Husbandry—12:29 AM
Colbert is fake mad about a new ad for Trojan condoms, which uses animatronic pigs to symbolize irresponsible sex partners. It's a cute ad, and Stan Winston worked on it.
Stephen refers to an excellent article in the New York Times about the commercial and the controversy it raises. It's a great evaluation of sexual double standards and a chilling reminder of how skittish we are about admitting to drugstore clerks that we sometimes have sex for reasons other than spawning more li'l soldiers. What's odd is the comment from Fox, explaining why they join CBS in refusing to air the spot:
“Contraceptive advertising must stress health-related uses rather than the prevention of pregnancy.”
Christ, can we please get the Pope's tongue out of this country's asshole for a minute and stop pretending that adults must be protected from even the idea of contraception? If a hypothetical viewer is going to boycott your network for the mere suggestion that someone somewhere is having safe sex to avoid pregnancy, that person is already going to have a list of reasons as long as his arm for boycotting every other advertiser – he's already a lost cause.
In actuality, the commercial stresses neither use. So, on top of this weird double standard (cited by Colbert, as well as many in the article) about how it's okay to sell cars or beer with sex, but you can't use sex to sell sex – there's also a willful interpretation of any message that doesn't explicitly say "you could transmit an STD" to mean "you could have a kid, which would serve to hamper your non-stop, responsibility-free fucking, you gorgeous hedonist, you." Meanwhile, how many times did Al Bundy talk about children being the ultimate sexually transmitted disease?
Also, I think everyone is overlooking the important fact here: pigs have 30-minute orgasms. Why haven't we been using pigs to sell condoms all along?
