Is there anything more polite than advertising?

Posted by John Mescall on April 1, 2011

I’m just putting it out there, but is anyone else surprised that we’re still not allowed to say fuck in ads? Bitch seems ok, shit is borderline, and the c-word is obviously off the radar for some time yet. But fuck is still strictly forbidden.

It’s a little surprising, given the general degradation of traditional standards in modern society. Language is an interesting barometer of standards: not that long ago, a guy in a subservient relationship was hen-pecked. Now he’s pussy-whipped.

Ask a hundred people what Arnie’s most famous line was, and I suspect just as many people will hit you with ‘fuck you, arsehole’ as ‘I’ll be back’.

And, of course, our good friend the internet has meant that quaint traditions such as ratings and standards and adults-only are a thing of the past. If it exists, it’s available to everyone. All the time.

You can say fuck on the ABC: I’ve heard it more than once. And that’s the kind of taxpayer-funded bastion of decency that still screens stuff like Midsomer Murders and at least purports to be some kind of arbiter of decency.

Sportspeople can mouth fuck all they want on the field (and if there’s an easier word to lipread, I haven’t found it) for our kiddies to pick up on. But KFC can’t run ads imploring people to fuck themselves up on the new triple-fillet quadruple cheese nacho burger.

But advertising has always been held to a far higher standard than other media. You can swear in movies, you can show ultraviolence and dangerous driving on TV, and nudity is everywhere.

Except in ads, because that’s not allowed. Which is an interesting thought for all those who believe advertising is responsible for some general lowering of standards in our society. Because by any objective analysis, advertising imagery is the most wholesome stuff in popular culture.

Music, movies, books, TV, internet… that’s where all the bad stuff is. By comparison, TV ads look like some weird throwback to the 1950’s, with wholesome nuclear families doing wholesome things that bare little resemblance to the chaos and sometimes-ugliness of real life.

People are very wary of censorship, unless it’s to do with advertising. Then they’re all for it. Which is why I can get Government funding for a movie script that contains the word fuck 112 times, the c-word 32 times, has 19 gruesome murders and more tits than a milking yard. And yet if I’m an advertiser, all hell would break loose if I attempted anything of the sort in my own self-funded work.

Not that I’m necessarily advocating a free-for-all. It’s more that I’m genuinely surprised that Australian advertising is still being kept on such a tight moral leash when every other form of popular culture has been allowed to plumb the depths at will.

In most other respects, advertising is an accurate reflection of the national mood and psyche. It has to be, because relevance and empathy are critical to the success of any campaign. Yet here we are, in a strange place of conflicting standards:

Where content genuinely reflects the social and moral mores of the nation, and where advertising is a highly-sanitised version thereof. It’s always struck me as more than a little weird that the ads on TV are held to much higher standards of accountability than the content they’re interrupting.

And as a final point, if someone could explain to me why cigarette advertising is banned, yet influential magazines aimed at young women/teenage girls can still show models smoking, that’d be great. Because I think we all know editorial has a far greater chance of influencing behaviour than an advertisement ever would.