So I was really, really pleased to find out a few weeks ago that I am not the only one who is mad about this ad campaign and who is blogging about it. I discovered a wonderful blog called The Hand Mirror (thanks Nikki).
The women on that blog were equally ouraged by this atrocious ad and started writing letters to ALAC and ASA asking for answers and for the ad to be pulled. They of course got basically the brush off from ALAC. The subject raised a lot of discourse on the site and many women came forward to share thier stories.
They started a Facebook group about it, which I encourage you to join.
The latest movement on the subject was that bFM did a whole show on it on their show The Wire. Which I thought was brilliant...
If you want to follow the whole saga HERE is a link that takes you to most of The Hand Mirrors posts about the "Lisa" ad, including links to the bFM podcasts of The Wire which are well worth listening to. Also from that link, they have link to other blogs in the NZ feminist blogsphere that have written on the subject. Check them out...
NOW, here is an interesting development. I was watching an old video tape today. I think it was from around 1997 (there was an ad for Men in Black ;)) and on those old video tapes are old ads. Well one of the first ones I spotted was an ALAC ad. Can you see where I am going with this??
The ad starts with a pair of teenage girls entering a typical wild teen party. They drink, they dance, they flirt, the action start to follow one girl in particular who is shown drinking more and more. She and a young man fall drunkenly into a bedroom, she ends up on the bed, the boy gets on top of her, she tries to fight him off but passes out...the ad shows the boy unzipping her dress at that point the ad pauses then rewinds to a shot of the girl having a drink and the words "Where's that drink taking you?" are emblazoned across the screen.
So again, 10 years earlier ALAC has already done this - created an advertising campaing that single-handedly blames the victim, alienates rape/sexual-assualt victims, and is bloody-mindedly sexist.
I can't seem to find this ad online anywhere or reference to it anywhere on ALAC's site. But after viewing it I remembered it and the other ones in the series (oh there is always a series).
No wonder rape/sexual assault is the most underreported crime in the country with messages like that being bandied about. Who wants to walk into the police station or hospital and here "You were drunk! You were asking for it!!" ?
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4 comments:
Charlotte, I remember this ad vividly - and it was even more disturbing than the Lisa one. The message was so clearly, 'If you get raped it's because you're a dumbarse'. God only knows what effect it had on it's young target audience.
i'm pretty sure i know *one* of the effects. The effect being that girls like me and girls I know blamed themselves for unwanted sexual encounters while drunk. It was never the buys fault. It was *our* fault. Something we had to live with and bear. Where is the education of our young people on how to respect and protect themselves? Where are the messages aimed towards boys that rape is NOT ACCEPTABLE under any circumstance? That that "easy root" you had the other night at that party has actually scarred another persons soul??
This "rape culture" we live in is really making me mad!!
Rape is not acceptable but I was once in a situation where I was date raped because I was too drunk to escape and I know for a fact that if I hadn't drunk as much as I did I would have sensed danger a hell of a lot earlier and escaped the situation. Nobody should have to go through rape but I almost think it's like leaving a bike unlocked - you can't always trust that people are decent.
Sorry you had to go through that. Let me just say that being drunk is not an open invitation to rapists. You can't compare a bike being unlocked to being drunk and being raped.
The onus of the crime is entirely on the rapist, not the victim.
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