In a highly publicized move, the UK organization Women's Aid recently released this powerful spot starring Keira Knightly. I don't know too many people who haven't at least heard about this, but most of us here in the States haven't seen it.
Now, it looks like most people in the UK won't be seeing it either. The Independent reports that advertising censors are calling the ad "too violent", and have banned it from TV until certain scenes are cut, namely the scenes that show Knightly getting beat up (which is the entire point of the ad). The UK, which does not bat an eyelash at showing nudity in commercials, now seems to feel that a woman's body is only worth looking at as a sex object to sell products, and cannot be shown being abused to raise awareness of domestic violence.
Yes, the ad is difficult to watch.
It's supposed to be.
Please watch the video, show your support for organizations like Women's Aid and The National Domestic Violence Hotline here in the US, and write a letter to protest the censorship of this ad: Clearcast Advertisement Approval.
5 comments:
Yowza. Sometimes a PSA comes close enough to actually shock people out of complacency. The trouble seems to be that we like our complacency. There was a PSA in Britain in early 2007 which depicted a little girl who had been hit by a car. The voice over was her saying that if you hit her at 35 mph she would likely die but if you hit her at 25 mph hour she was more likely to live. As the scene moved on she slid across the road and her broken bones and bleeding bounds seemed to reverse though in a distressing and difficult to watch manner. It was hard to watch but I think, just like this, it made us think about exactly what the film makers wished for us to think about.
Let us reward them for their success.
Even though the States do embrace violent content, I can imagine the heads of the networks would never stick their neck out for it. Now if it hawked beer or something, I'm sure they would be all over it for being cutting edge, etc.
Thank you for this post, and a warm welcome to SiTS - Em
I intend to write a letter to Clearcast to protest the censoring of the commercial, and I hope others will join me.
wow. it's that selective sensoring that has made the world the way it is. We don't want to offend anyone in ways that will really make someone think about what they are doing, but offending someone by showing nudity doesn't bother them.
Thanks for posting this.
Just dropping in to welcome you to the SITStahood.
You have to understand the possible reasoning behind the censorship of this in the UK...their movie rating system, for example, is based upon the level of violence, not sex, unlike here in the USA. We tend to give highly violent films/shows PG-13 ratings, while nudity grants it an R. That's the reverse there. I'm not saying the impact of a commercial like this can't be powerful, just pointing out some reasoning. (And personally, I took a little too much pleasure in seeing Kiera Knightley being kicked...but then I don't like her much!)
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