Writer Bob
Garfield takes issue with intolerance being used as
marketing.
Clad in bright
yellow short shorts, a speed-walker swishes down the
sidewalk. Suddenly Mr. T drives up in a truck and
machine-guns the walker with a Snickers bar, calling
him a "disgrace to the man race," then implores
viewers to “get some nuts!” This is the latest
questionable commercial created by Omnicom Group
advertising agencies. You may know their work: They
were behind the 2007 Super Bowl Snickers spot that
showed two men freaking out after accidentally kissing --
and attacking each other with wrenches in an
alternative online version. And in a Dodge ad from
another Omnicom agency, a macho man snidely calls a male
Tinker Bell–like character a “silly
little fairy,” only to have the pixie turn him
into a sweater-clad metrosexual -- a silly little fairy in
his own right.
After seeing the
Mr. T commercial, Advertising Age columnist Bob
Garfield fired off an open letter on AdAge.com to
Omnicom CEO John Wren. Garfield called the company’s
latest spot a "cartoonish recapitulation" of Matthew
Shepard’s murder. Wren didn’t respond
(he also declined to speak with The Advocate), but
Snickers’ parent company pulled the ad less
than a week after Garfield’s essay ran. We caught up
with Garfield, a straight man who also works as a media
critic for National Public Radio.
What compelled you to write the letter?
I’ve taken a very tough stand against the Omnicom
agency that created the fairy commercial. And I raised
my eyebrows about the first Snickers commercial,
mainly on the grounds of stupidity; it was not so much
homophobic as about homophobia. That was before I realized
there was a wrench attack in the online version. The
Mr. T ad was the last straw.
What’s been the response?
I’ve gotten support from the gay community, with
a few writing, "I’m gay, but I think
it’s hilarious," which makes me think of the
character in the film Ship of Fools who thought he was
immune to the Holocaust because he was well-regarded.
If some American gay men think it’s innocuous,
God bless ’em, but I think they’re wrong.
Does advertising reflect cultural attitudes or
create them?
It’s more of a mirror. It not only has a
responsibility for decorum, but you’d think
advertising could at least not resemble hate speech. Some
said I overstated the case when I compared the Mr. T ad to
Matthew Shepard. On the contrary, it is a direct
parallel -- it depicts doing violence against a person
deemed insufficiently masculine.
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