Please understand that I’m no crazy animal rights chick. Also understand that I have a pretty wide and varied and sick sense of humor.
I love animals though, and I think they’re sweet. I think we should be nice to them. Especially sweet li’l pups. (fat OR skinny:D).
So I’m frankly a little bit shocked at the latest round of ads on television from Pemmican Beef Jerky. I’ve noted in the three different ads now in heavy rotation (mostly on ESPN and cable channels) that we witness TWO ‘humorous’ deaths of dogs as part of the ad. One dog is killed when it’s thrown from the back of a pick up truck (a very real possibility since I never cease to see idiots letting their dogs hang out in the back of trucks) and one is killed when a set of moose antlers falls on top of it, complete with a squeal of pain.
All of this is to illustrate the sheer ‘loser’ quality of the beef jerky eater, which can only be remedied by eating more beef jerky (i.e., I lost my house, my job, my girlfriend, and now my dog is dead).
Hollywood is known (most notably, I think in Independence Day) for NOT LETTING THE DOG GET KILLED, and I think the shock of seeing two of them killed in these commercials keeps it from being funny at all. It’s sick. It’s sadistic. It makes me wonder who laughs at dog deaths, and why would I want them patronizing my product? I mean, beef jerky is gross enough.
The ad agency whose site it is on is North Castle Partners. They apparently specialize in juvenile ads. They have a Contact Us button. I’d think I’ll contact them and tell them their ad sucks. And may they meet their deaths by being impaled on some antlers so we can all laugh at them.
Another commercial that pisses me off: the one for Sea World where they use “The Wind” by Cat Stevens.
It pisses me off when the media commodifies items that used to have some meaning, and that now are reduced to meaningless slogan things.
The Peace Sign. Used to mean something. People rallied behind it, it set them apart. People got riled up over it. Now it’s advertisement for a cell phone company.
Sheesh! They don’t show anything, jarbaby. So antlers falls on a dog. So what? A) it’s make believe and B) you don’t even SEE it. It’s implied. I can’t believe someone as smart as you is making a big deal out of an implication.
And the second commercial, the one with the dog flying off the back of the pickup truck - tell me you don’t seriously think that was a real dog. Not only is is computer-fabricated, they intentionally slow the thing down so overreacting people can tell it’s not a real dog. And yet you still assume it is, apparently.
This thread’s a joke, right? Cause you can’t be serious. You’re not as gullible as you’re acting here.
I haven’t seen the Pemmican commercials, so I’ll withhold judgment.
I will say, though, that I find the Mike’s Hard Lemonade commercials rather distasteful. They’re sort of “extreme slapstick,” wherein people suffer major injuries but don’t notice. In the first one, a guy falls off a construction site onto a pile of debris and gets impaled on a four-foot piece of rebar. He stands there with the metal sticking in his chest and out his back.
You can sort of see what they’re going for, but in my opinion they missed.
I don’t think it matters if you see it or if it’s implied. If you look at the ad company’s website and the market they say they are aiming for, the whole thing is just a bad idea. We have a lot of very smart and literate young 'uns on this board, but there are a hell of a lot of not so smart young 'uns in the world who would, and do, think absolutely nothing about torturing an animal. They seem to have no understanding at all of the fact that any other creature can feel pain and fear too (though of course there’s also plenty of not-so-young 'uns who are unable to grasp this concept as well). I am sorry to say I’ve seen it first-hand, and people like that don’t need to see ads like the Pemmican ones, because it just reinforces that lack of understanding. How many people would think it was funny if it was implied that a baby was flung off the back of a truck (don’t answer that, not sure I really want to know)? Animals are just as helpless and dependent on our benevolence.
Jarbaby will have to speak for herself, of course, and I am sure she will when she’s ready to :D, but I am thinking from her OP that she is probably worried about what the not so smart segment of our society will get out of ads like that.
Remember that a few years back there were some zoos in various places that featured an exhibit called “Dinamation.” It was a re-creation of what life must have been like back in the time when dinosaurs lived, with animatronic robots as the dinosaurs. I shit you not, there were actually people who went back to the gates of the zoos and wanted their money back because they thought the dinosaurs they were going to see were REAL! If you want cites, I’ll try to dig 'em up for you if you don’t believe me. With people that stupid around, I wouldn’t take any chances.
Oh yeah, and then there’s the national park rangers that have visitors ask 'em what time they let the animals out …
O where have you gone, Andrea Dworkin? Give me a break. So now we’re going to be upset over implied things, too? Funny, I don’t see anyone getting all frazzled over the 7-UP commercial, which features a dog actually getting hit by a full soda can. You want to make the argument that impressionable young minds are watching these things and that we somehow must protect them from that, fine. Make it for the commercials that actually show violence. Personally, I see plenty of violence as it is without making some up on my own.
Wrong. It matters a lot if it’s implied or shown. For one thing, this ad is obviously meant to be taken as a joke. If they had shown the actual act, then the joke would have been on them. I think one would call that act “overdoing it”. But this was subtle. If you want to believe an actual dog got hurt, that’s your inference.
Wow, you’re right, there are. So I guess we should clean up absolutely everything in the world, and make sure the little darlings never, ever, ever get a hint of a thought of an idea of anything remotely negative, right? According to your logic, we shouldn’t even imply negative things, because some dumbass kid might think torturing dogs is a good idea. This is the same kind of finger-pointing logic that beset Beavis and Butt-head not that long ago. Now, B and B was far more obvious than this innocuous ad, and the reason it was is that the creators of that series were attempting to shock its audience. Do you honestly see that here?
And your point is what? We should protect the stupid people? Wouldn’t that kind of be like pandering to the ignorant? Look, the fact that those people thought those dinosaurs were real is a testament to the dedication of the exhibit workers, not some demented plan to scare the beejezus out of people.
If you’re going to attack a commercial (or anything, for that matter) because you feel it is harmful to others, you need to at least consider the source and what the possible intent was. There’s a definite line between intending to be humorous and intending to incite riotous behavior.
The only thing obnoxious about those “Mike’s Hard Lemonade” commercials is that the directing/editing is atrocious. I mean, the one where the guy gets his hand bitten off has just soooo much dead air, it’s obnoxious. I mean, c’mon, guys, are they shocked by the greivous wound or not?
Of course, those commercials don’t feature any animals getting hurt, so they couldn’t possibly be offensive…
The most offensive commercial I’ve seen recently (ever, maybe) is the one with footage of Martin Luther King, Jr. edited to look like no one is there to listen. The voiceover associates this with not having a cell phone. How fucking crass is that, and why the hell did King’s family agree to this anyway? This makes me far more sick than any inane jokes about rebar or antlers.
I think perhaps I didn’t make myself clear enough, because I don’t understand parts of your response to me. It sounds like you took some of the things I said in a way I didn’t mean them to be understood.
It’s not the kids that need protecting. It’s the critters. It’s not me or you or mostly anyone else on this board who would think the acts in that commercial are real. The point I was attempting to make is that some people do believe some things are real when most of us wouldn’t think for a second that they are. And hey, if they can do it on TV and everything comes out just fine, it must be OK in real life too.
I’m not stupid enough myself to think that scads of folks are now going to go out and think it’s funny to do bad things to critters IRL on the basis of some dumb ad. But I’m a bit sensitive to this issue because just one case, just one, is too much for me. It’s based on my background and you have to excuse me if things like this make me nuts. Everyone’s got their buttons and animal abuse is way up there for me. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s actually shown, implied, done in a cartoonish manner, whatever.
Again, it’s not my inference I’m worried about.
This is beyond the scope of the topic and of course you know that’s ridiculous.
Yep. And I’ve already explained why above. I think your term “negative things” is a little too broad and not strong enough when it comes to this particular topic. I happen to think of hurting critters just because you can, or you think it might be funny to be a little more serious than a “negative thing.”
Uh, no. That we should protect the critters from the stupid people.
The people weren’t scared. They were angry and demanded their money back because they thought they were going to see real dinosaurs and were disappointed when they got to the exhibit and found out the “dinosaurs” were robots. I think you might have misread that part in my post. This is what I said:
“I shit you not, there were actually people who went back to the gates of the zoos and wanted their money back because they thought the dinosaurs they were going to see were REAL!”
The point of saying that whole thing is this: If there are people dumb enough to think that actual live dinosaurs exist and that they were going to see some, who knows what else they are capable of believing to be true/real. And OK to do, and etc.
My point is that SOME PEOPLE JUST DON’T GET IT. They think things are real when they are not.
For myself, I know the commercial is intended to be humorous. I’m not a sour old grape or someone who enjoys taking away anyone else’s fun. I just don’t find these ads to be funny. I think they’re stupid and juvenile, and the animal part bothers me a lot based on what I know and have seen about the issue. But hey, I don’t like the Three Stooges either. So sue me.
And I think that’s all I’ll be contributing to this discussion because going any further isn’t going to be constructive, it’ll just be a waste of time.
Dan, I have a problem. It’s called “I’m 28 Years Old And Have Not Yet Been Desensitized To Violence”. Pulp Fiction was not funny to me, it made me sick. I will not watch Natural Born Killers for this reason. I walked out of Hellraiser for this reason. People or animals being killed is never ever funny to me, for any reason.
The dog in the 7-up commercial isn’t dead. He’s growling at the end. And even that commercial isn’t funny to me.
I KNOW THAT THE DOGS ARE NOT REAL in the Pemmican ads. I’m an actress for chrissakes. I do not care that they killed animatronic dogs.
What makes me sick is that someone said “Wouldn’t it be funny, if we did this commercial where an sweet little innocent dog was thrown to its death from the back of a pick up!” “Yeah! That would be funny”
It’s not.
Maybe you’ve never had a pet die on you in an accident. Maybe you’ve never seen your best friend’s dog get hit by a car. I have. It’s not funny, even for a second.
I’m not calling for the banning of beef jerky, I’m not calling for censorship, I’m not calling for us to firebomb the Pemmican plant (but boy, I bet that would smell mesquite good!)…I’m just saying that once again I’m noticing the sad state of the world where killing innocent animals is funny.
I apologize, romans. I may very well have misinterpreted you.
I agree that that is a reasonable assertion, but it’s only plausible if the viewer has no ability to discern fiction and reality. Although it’s true that many people have this affliction or disorder, I would have to think that the vast majority of television viewers can tell the difference. Of course, with the recent proliferation of “reality-based” TV, the lines have become considerably blurred. I just think that if we assume the viewer can’t tell the difference and therefore might think he or she can do the same thing in real life as occured on the TV, then we’re in serious trouble. I’d rather think - and I could be wrong - that those people for whom reality and fiction are the same are in a very, very slight and inconsequential minority.
Readily understood. But these are commercials that are seen all over the country, perhaps even the world, and it’s simply not feasible to forsee every single consequence that could arise. As I said before, if the commercial in question had shown an overt act of inflicted pain on the animal, that would be one thing, and anyone - animal-rights people included - would be very understandably up in arms over it. But it wasn’t, and to me that’s a big deal.
If the antlers had fallen on a human, also off-screen, would you have had the same reaction? I would suspect not. Look, I’m not in favor of the abuse of animals at all. If this had been a tape in America’s Most Wanted, I would have said let’s nail the insensitive creep who did that. But it’s a commercial. It’s not reality. There’s a huge difference between the two, and I, quite frankly, cannot comprehend why one would get worked up over something that is obviously fictional.
If you mean that, by example, we should protect this dog and other dogs like it from ever having this happen again, I would be right with you - except that this didn’t happen. It was a commercial, not a documentary.
So? You can’t account for stupidity. Don’t you think we already pander to the lowest common denominator, especially in television? It’s rather ridiculous to safeguard every commercial from stupidity; it’s insane to safeguard it from potential stupidity. You may as well not watch it at all.
Your beliefs are certainly not your own, because I’m sure a lot of people didn’t find the ads funny. But I think a lot who didn’t find them funny just found them ineffectual; inoffensive, but not all that interesting, either.
I won’t “sue” you for not liking the Stooges, although I hear in some parts it’s a felony not to. But there’s an interesting example. Your bothered by the animal part of these commercials; are you just as upset over the obvious violence in the Stooges’ shorts? Probably not, because you can see the difference between reality and fiction. But do you think the Stooges shouldn’t be shown at all, because some dummy might think it’s ok to poke his friend’s eyes out?
A very reasonable attitude, I think. Many people feel the same way. If the ads killed/harmed a human or an animal just for laughs, I’d say to hell with them. But they didn’t actually do anything; they implied it. Moreover, it was done - to my eyes, not to everyone’s - in an obviously exaggerated way, not a realistic way.
Me either, and that’s because it’s a dumb commercial, not because the dog’s in pain. (Hey, he’s even wagging his tail at the end, if you look closely.)
Actually, that’s your opinion. Considering that it was the (not-real) dog’s own fault that he fell out, I did find it kind of amusing. And knowing it wasn’t a real dog made it ok. Now, if you think I’m a terrible person because I found that funny, then I’m sorry - I guess I’m a bad person.
Maybe you missed the thread in which I mentioned my dog was killed by another dog. But, you see, he was killed by a real dog. I know you know the difference, so why can’t you apply different standards to different things?
Yeah, except no dogs were killed.
But I’m with ya on the firebombing thing. I’ve never had the stuff, but I don’t particularly want to, either. (Had a Slim Jim once, didn’t like it.)
And here’s a thought - before these ads, had you heard of Pemmican? I sure hadn’t.
I saw a commercial again that I’d started a thread on a year ago. Thought it was dead and gone: but there was that damn Mercedes-Benz ad with film clips of old Mercedeses (“Mercedii?”). I mean, if your company was well-known for using slave labor from Nazi concentration camps and other war crimes, it really does not behoove you to make commercials INVITING us to ponder the company’s past.
Ah, fond memories . . . That previous thread had one of my proudest titles, “Oh, Lord—Won’t You Bite Me, Mercedes-Benz” . . .
But there’s an interesting example. Your bothered by the animal part of these commercials; are you just as upset over the obvious violence in the Stooges’ shorts? Probably not, because you can see the difference between reality and fiction. But do you think the Stooges shouldn’t be shown at all, because some dummy might think it’s ok to poke his friend’s eyes out?