India's got 999,999,999 problems but this ad ain't one of them. Image source: almost every news site on the Web yesterday. Maybe broadcast TV, too, but who watches that any more?
A recent ad not run in India by Ford's advertising agency has got the Web media in a furor.
Wait ... not run? That's right, Ford never ran the ad, the ads "somehow" got leaked to the media. So, at some point someone said, don't run this ad. So in essence all this furor is over something that did not happen. But in another respect, it's something that did happen ... that Ford has no responsibility for.
But what's wrong with the ad, you wonder? It looks like a goofy, funny play on damsel in distress themes as seen in SO MANY TV shows and movies and such, with former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi driving around with three bound, gagged women representing his political troubles (the hot, ball-gagged policewoman is especially nice, looks like an Alazar damsel) in the spacious trunk of his Ford.
The ad is arousing a furor because it comes on the tails of the infamous Delhi rape, in which a gang of young men attacked a young couple on a public bus, severely beating the husband and raping the wife to death. To. Death. They used something described as an "iron rod" to sodomize her. The horrific case aroused an international furor, and much of Indian society, especially female Indian society, was as furored as anyone else.
Apparently there is a huge rape culture problem in India, which I presciently covered before the Delhi rape. It's fueled by a large population of uneducated, poor, often illiterate young men who have little prospect of finding a decent place in Indian society (and by all accounts, you REALLY don't want to live in any of the indecent places in Indian society) and with little or no prospect of getting laid, as India has sadly absorbed the memes of sexual prudery from the Muslims and the Victorian Brits.
These Indian temple sculptures represent the distant past of Indian culture. Sadly, it's easy to understand how a culture which was once so vigorously, happily sex-positive as represented here, could turn into a rape-infested festival of prudery one billion strong. Image source: the Web.
India needs to deal directly with the social, political and other factors that made this rape happens, and the perpetrators (who have been found) need to experience the full extent of justice for their crimes. (I am anti-death penalty but some criminals do things so horrible that I can't be bothered to care about them, no matter what their fate. The New Delhi rapists fall into that category, for me.)
Maybe it's not a good idea to have a culture that ensures you will have a large population of young men (and women) that can't make money or get laid or get some basic respect in their culture. Four hour movies full of dancing and singing happy people might not be enough to make up for that, y'know?
But here's the thing. The ad images are fantasy imagery. Fun, lighthearted fantasy imagery. The Delhi rape was real life. They're not the same thing. They should not be conflated. Cartoon Silvio Berlusconi driving around with cartoon hotties bound and gagged in the trunk of his car is not about the Delhi rape, though to judge from the many, many pearl-clutching posts about it that I've read, you'd think that the Ford ad (which never ran) was virtually a CELEBRATION of the Delhi rape.
Come on, people, stay on the sane track. Reality, fantasy, two different things. Not the same! How many times do I have to tell you this?
There's also this ad showing Paris Hilton driving around with the Kardashians bound and gagged in the trunk of a nice Ford car, which ALSO did not run. There's even an ad with three men bound and gagged in the back of a car, which not only did not run, but did not get covered. Well, at least the media is getting something right. Image source: every damn news/celebrity website in existence.
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