Cheap commercials don’t make for safer sex
Posted on: October 18, 2010
ManGrit would have been stimulating than 'force'
This brand, not in my knowledge, had been around in the market long enough to gain enough recognition to finally launch a steamy ad on television. Despite their best efforts, the ad still lacked the cinematographic class akin to the (in)famous Kamasutra ad of long ago, which many marvelled for its sensual appeal and most condemned for making their sets fume.
Manforce. The very name repels me. And this is almost the last straw of my frustration with the depiction of ‘safe sex’ by the Indian media for the mass. I don’t know why are people still scratching their heads over how and why there as many cases of rape and abuse in this country as no other? With an advertisement that gives him poetic license and contraceptive ads showing pregnancy as entirely a woman’s headache, the Indian lay man is roaring to go at her. Its, anyway, ironical how a means of ‘protection’ can be tagged as ‘force’.
The contraceptive ads are only more parochial than the fairness cream ones. Even for married couples, sex is deemed as “Kal raat, bhool ho gayi” (We made a mistake last night). There are some, including those low budget Doordarshan kinds, that are shot with more sensitivity especially suited to the Indian mass and without the judgmental hint.
Strangely, though, I haven’t heard a single social cause raising its voice against the messages (overt and the covertly hypnotic) that these advertisements are sending out. I don’t deny that many of these ads are only replicating what is said on ground by almost everyone. However, there should be a sense of corporate ethics to not encourage those views that they do to make their product more homely but to revolutionize on rotten myths. The Govt. should play a moral police here, where it actually requires to, by not giving such product labels and ad concepts the clean chit. The greatest of contentions I have is with the Indian media, with all their liberty and opinion, are less into sensitizing and more into sensationalizing.
Sex and/or sexuality is too pertinent an issue in this country to be hushed or taken for granted or worse, hoaxely depicted. Existent rates and vile incidents of abuse, population accomodation, an impending AIDS epidemic, gendered violence are not humanitarian issues anymore but emergencies of survival, both physical and psychological. Its a clear cut choice of restoring maladaptive traditions at the cost of restoring humanity.
Reposted from theunpopularantagonist.blogspot.com
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