Maria McCloy
The management of national music chain Musica and the advertising agency Jupiter Drawing Room are surprised by the “extreme” reaction to a Valentine’s Day poster campaign that went up on Friday January 23 and was torn down by Monday January 26.
Four naked couples in loving embraces, each accompanied by appropriate words from a popular song, were responsible for working up the sweat. The elderly white heterosexual couple, white couple consisting of thin man and plump woman, a gay white couple and a black man and a white woman are now on view again — but with a red strip covering their bodies that declares: “Censored due to a lack of understanding.”
Musica managing director Derek Goosen said a “huge amount” of complaints had been received from around the country: they include over 600 angry phone calls and scores of letters. Many included threats to boycott stores and to draw up petitions on the matter. Goosen said complainants described the posters as “immoral” and “disgusting”, “vulgar” and capable of “enticing enticed people to rape and sex”. One church group said that the poster showing a gay couple was “unbiblical”. There were complaints about all four posters but the most controversial ones were those showing the gay and mixed-race couples.
These reactions reveal quite a bit about South African attitudes, even if the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) reports that we are “most sensitive” to advertisements containing violence. The ASA has not received a single complaint.
Jupiter Drawing Room creative director Ross Chowles points out that the posters showed neither genitals nor nipples. He says the agency was taken by surprise by the extreme reactions, which included verbal abuse of staff, threats of assault and the reaction of a police sergeant in Tygervallei who tore down the gay men poster.
Despite the outcry, Chowles maintains that a majority either liked the posters or were indifferent: “The people who are offended form about 10% of the population — and those 10% are making it difficult for us.”
Chowles admits the storm is not without its silver lining: “I’m elated because people will talk about it more than ever.” Last year the agency’s jeans ads for Sissy Boy in Elle magazine saw stores refusing to stock it.
The point of the advertisements, says Chowles, was to move away from cliched red hearts and flowers for Valentine’s Day, away from a mentality where the only people who are shown to be in love are white, beautiful, thin, heterosexual couples aged between 16 and 24.