A friend sent me this ad for IKEA yesterday. It’s hilarious, beautifully put together, and running on TV in Europe which, for American readers, must be hard to imagine.
Why?
Whereas the people who made this ad saw a funny situation which hinges on a child’s naïveté and imagination, making for the kind of anecdote parents would tell at dinner parties till the end of time; in the US it’s increasingly taboo to acknowledge children exist in a world that includes the sex which created them.
If this ad is un-broadcastable in the US on the basis of content, movies which show pre-pubescent girls in swimsuits are indecent, and toddlers should be prevented from running around naked on public beaches. A totally logical chain of thought if you’re a pedophile, totally bizarre if not. When are we going to accept sexuality as normal, vital and healthy and when are we going to stop people who think like sexual predators from setting standards of acceptability?
Popularity: 60% [?]
That vibrator is the exact same model as the one I used at the intro of KITKAST!!! I’ve used it elsewhere too, of course…
LOL. The trusty FX9-360. I doubt many people have had as much fun with it as the kid in the ad though…
The hypocrisy of American society when it comes to sex seems to be comming to some kind of apex. At least I hope it is an apex, because I would hate to think of it getting any worse. I marvel that conservitive groups can block the .xxx domain, at the same time Girls Gone Wild is advertised on cable.
Lets say it now and say it clearly. Sex is not the enemy:
http://www.retromodernist.com/?p=13 (no this isn’t an evil linkspam-y ad)
Yeah, what Quinn said. I’ve had this convo with a few people over the past couple of years, and it all boils down to the US being ass-backward when it comes to societal behavior and responses. Like the whole Janet Jackson tit thing at the Super Bowl – it wouldn’t have even raised an eyebrow in most European countries, and yet it was treated over here like it was Armageddon, with dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria, and idiots asking the eternal question, “What about the children?!?!?” We’re so freaking silly over here.
I see your point Chris. Hopefully the hysteria will die down as the current wave of conservatism (inevitably) goes out of fashion again.
I know people this has happened to and I laughed as hard watching this as I did when they were telling their tales of horror (I live in the US below the Waffle House Line). The kid laughing as it runs around the floor is great. Thank you very much for sharing with the unenlightened Americans Sam.
When asked the unavoidable question (what is this mommy), the answer is simple … It’s a foot massager (the point will fit very well between your toes).
I will defiantly agree that we have some really messed up attitudes toward sex and teaching our kids about sex in the US.
I love the US as much as I love the ad FrwyTCat. Hearing such wisdom from below the Waffle House Line is particularly heartening. The kid’s giggles really sell it. Kudos to IKEA for making ad people actually want to watch. Genius IMHO.
hehehe this happened to My Husband and I, had friends over who had a daughter. Put her in Our room to watch cartoons while parents socialized in the living room with wine. Upon finding that she had ferreted out My realistic looking vibrating dildo … I thinking on My feet told her it was a Barbie Rocket… ( maybe that was the wine talking ) to this day we laugh and when the girl in question turns of age I have her parents permission to break it to her that it was not a barbie rocket it was actually a vibrating dildo… hehehe
funny shit. posted link to you at r8r.org.
Mim – and there I was thinking this was an entirely fictional situation…
I don’t know about vibrators, but when I was little I used to play with my mom’s diapraghm. I just thought it was this funny rubber mini-Frisbee thing.
Still, if I’d known what it was, I’d just have been grossed out and slightly confused. Not molestation-level traumatized.
I need a bumper sticker: “Sex doesn’t hurt kids–hurting kids hurts kids.”
(I know a lot of pedophiles don’t think of their actions as hurtful, but hopefully you get my drift anyway.)
Holly, that’s so funny. I used to play with your mom’s diaphram too. Who’dve thunk it?
You’re right about the bumper sticker. It’s crazy that five year olds play Halo but might be harmed by a pair of nipples or knowledge of sexual plasure between adults.
It’s funny, I’ve been trackbacking on many of your articles since April 2005, but none of the trackbacks worked until you got WordPress. Good change…
Kitka – actually Wordpress is worse at trackback that MT. They show up as comments and all sorts of weird stuff. Now I’m in WP it’s easier as we’re both speaking the same language. For some reason a lot of your comments are flagged as spam. Your host needs a spanking.
I’m european, my wife is american. First time I realised americans had a fucked up attitude to sex was when we were spending time with my parents. My mum was watching some outtakes shows and there was a fair bit of uncensored nudity and my wife was shocked that TV was allowed to show uncensored nudity. The we went to the beach, and my wife was getting freaked out by the toplessness there.
After that I noticed that americans do have a rather unhealthy attitude to sex, even sex-ed in the US is messed up. In general america seems to be heading back to victorian times. I wonder how much longer it will be before they start marketing covers for chairs and pianos so that people won’t be distracted by the legs?
Yes, it is a fact that Europe has more liberal views towards the subjects of sex and sexuality. But, this leads one to wonder, why? America has traditionally been known as “The Land of the Free.” Traditionally it was: when up until very recently Europe was dictated by totalitarian regimes (utmost right-wing), America was a democratic republic. It is only natural for after such an atrocity to end (that is the Third Reicht and Fascismo, etc.)that people adopt completely opposite views. It has thus come down to that Europe is simply more liberal in terms of most cultural aspects.
The best example I can think of is Spain. Spain was under a dictatorship (Franco) up until the nineteen seventies. It is the Western European country with the most recent history of such leadership. As soon as Franco [finally] died, Spain was considered far less culturally advanced than the rest of the Western world. However, it took them little time to pivot in the complete opposite direction from which they’d come. For a while now, Spain has been considered the most culturally and socially unrepressed country in Europe (with the exception of maybe Holland). Amongst other things, you will find what Americans refer to as “hardcore porn” broadcast on all public networks. (In Italy we always joke about how it should be offered a dual-citizenship so that we could go to Spain and party freely).
Anyways, I realize that this was a very wordy and elaborate comment for such a discussion board, but I do believe that you should give my theory some thought if you really want to understand the concept rather than bitch about its curiosity.
Pia,
You make some excellent points. Europe wasn’t universally far-right. The UK has always been a centerist country (even when slavery was rampant there was never slavery within the UK) and France suffered under Monarchy that was more oppressive than right-wing. The US has moved further and further right. Previous Republican Presidents would now be considered on the extreme left of the Republican party and Democrats would be a politically hard-right party in Europe. The US is one of the only countries on Earth (along with Iran, Pakistan, Nigeria and a few others I forget, less than ten in total and none who are admirable) which executes children. The US is still debating the principle of safe/medical abortion and now imprisons more people per-capita than South Africa did under Apartheid (no country has ever had a greater prison population). Additionally, it’s a country where the state hasn’t made a childs right to medical care a basic right.
It’s an amazing wonderful place with some very, very serious problems. It’s relationship with porn mirrors that.
I agree largely with Sam and Pia– perhaps Pia’s thesis about totalitarianism is a scaled-up version of the one about children who are given Catholic educations going off the rails once they have their first taste of freedom, having never been offered such social balance as those who went to co-ed schools? (Given Europe is largely Catholic).
I think the main difference between Europe and America is that our laid-back attitude to sex is compensated for by being uptight about violence– although cussing and nudity is commonplace on TV screens in the UK, people here get whipped up into hysterics over violent imagery that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in the US (slasher films caused a gigantic furore in the 80s which informed British censorship policy for nearly two decades).