Sexist?

Amongst several complaints about advertisements that were not upheld by the Broadcasting Standards Complaints Authority was one against the Lindauer ad in which men are bawling their eyes out because, as we find out at the end of the ad, their womenfolk are off partying together, drinking Lindauer.

Yes, of course it's ridiculous, and it's so over the top that it goes beyond offensive and into the realms of idiotic. For me it doesn't do the job properly - you remember the ad, certainly, but as for what product it relates to...does anyone know?   Too many ads are fun to watch but fail to promote their product in any way.

The complainant had said: 'I've had enough of sexism against men in the media. This ad isn't even attempting to be humorous. It just shows men in emotional distress, then mocks them. It's sick.' The complainant said also that if the genders had been reversed in the ad, there would have been an outcry. Yup.

I certainly think there are too many ads in which men are shown to be idiots, especially in relation to all-wise women, but for me this one just doesn't even go there. It's stupid and as an ad, ineffective.

Anyway, whether you think the ad's good or not the interesting response from the BSCA was there were precedents to show the level of acceptance of offensiveness could vary depending on gender.  

This is an interesting comment. Viewers are prepared to accept men being treated offensively to a higher level than they'll accept women being treated offensively, in ads. Now, there could be an element of sexism here, although I suspect that most ads in which men are portrayed as idiots are actually made by men. The TV program QI discussed this in an episode that was shown yesterday, in fact. In terms of stand-up comedians, women are much less appreciated than men - by women. Woman will laugh at men when something funny happens to them or when they make a joke. They'll laugh much less when something funny happens to a woman, or when a woman comedian tells a joke. Women comedians have a hard time gaining acceptance with audiences because women are seen to be less funny by women. This is curious, isn't it? Yet, the comedians on the QI last night were sure of their facts in regard to this. Even the one woman amongst the group agreed, and made a very good spontaneous joke about what happens to women comedians...something about them being corralled up and sent off to some place in England that's not regarded very highly.

Of course there are women comedians who've made it big time: French and Saunders are an extremely popular duo, and also very popular separately. Phyllis Diller was a terrific comedian, who could wow any audience, and if you go to Google you can find plenty of results by typing in female comedians. The interesting thing about this group, however, is that many of them don't seem to be terribly well known, or at least they're not well known to me. Maybe I don't move in the right circles, or maybe they don't impact NZ audiences so much.

Smiling Christ

Today, while in the City Cathedral in Luxembourg, we came across part of the travelling exhibition called Der Pilgerweg des Lächelnden Christus - or in a rough translation, The Pilgrimage of the Laughing/Smiling Christ. This is an exhibition organised across several countries in Europe with participation by a wide number of artists. The paintings and sculptures we saw were only some in the exhibition, and were quite a mixed bag. All of them show that interest in Christ as a subject for art has by no means diminished in the 21st century, and many of the works are quite striking.
You can see all the pictures on a gallery here. Check out the paintings by Johannes Wickert - they’re at the bottom of the gallery’s range. These are ones we saw, and they have a wonderful warmth about them. I tried to find out something about Wickert, but all the entries are coming up in German at the moment. (For some reason, since we’ve been in Luxembourg, both Google and Blogger come up in German, which is fun, but sometimes requires a bit of sorting out.)

June 2012: Since I wrote this back in 2007, the two links to the Laughing Christ have both broken.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find replacement ones, so if you want to see more of Wickert's work, go to his gallery pages.  

Playing

Last year I took a small but important role in a full-length play for the first time in four decades. This year I landed myself a bigger part, that of Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, the second of C S Lewis’ Narnia stories to be dramatised by our church.

It’s no surprise that we use the word ‘play’ for things associated with at least two of the arts: theatre and music. Being Uncle Andrew was like having the opportunity as a sixty-year-old to return to childhood, and to remember again how much fun it is to play – in what might be called a ‘controlled environment.’ Uncle Andrew’s a spoilt child, self-centred; a two-year old in adult’s clothing. I could put on his garb without suffering any consequences for his bad behaviour.
I loved performing for the audiences (physically exhausting, yet also energising), but I enjoyed the rehearsals even more. They were a return to that time of your life when you laugh without restraint.

At the rehearsals there wasn’t the pressure to get everything right. Certainly we did lots of serious hard work, making sure things went smoothly, fitting in with each other. But I don’t think I’ve laughed so much in ages as I did during the rehearsals themselves - and even more during the tea breaks. For some reason Lewis’ nonsense line, ‘Womfle pomy shompf’ (uttered by Uncle Andrew when his top hat is pushed down over his head) brought us all near to hysteria. (Though it never raised an out-loud laugh during the performances.)

There were the ‘deplorable’ words – or lack of them - and the attempts of the actress playing Jadis to find something explosive but incomprehensible that would do for a ‘spell’ to bring Aunt Letitia to her knees. And the same actress’ refusal to admit that in spite of her character saying she could see through walls and into the minds of men, she was not only singularly unsuccessful at this at any time, but remarkably dense about what the inept humans were up to.

Nor could she take her task seriously when she had to grasp Uncle Andrew’s chin, twisting it this way and that while she inspected his face for signs of a ‘real’ magician. Equally, as Uncle Andrew, I wasted long minutes of one rehearsal because I couldn’t burst in on Aunt Letitia and inquire ‘what on earth’ she was doing with the mattress, without collapsing in a heap. Those actors’ moments of madness you see at the end of movies don’t only happen to movie stars.

The boy playing Digory delighted in holding the fake guinea-pig (named Russell by the cast) like he was a wet sock, or giving him a goal kick into the stalls. Russell suffered much during the show, getting a nightly short sharp shift from Polly, who had to make sure he ‘vanished’ off the stage.

Digory also had a couple of ‘deplorable’ words. In one scene, the word ‘wondering’ always came out as ‘I should think a person would go on wandering all his life…’ It was rather like the mispronunciation of the TV3 sports newsreader (Clint Brown) who always calls the Warriors, the 'Worriers.' (And well he might!) Digory was equally unable to get his tongue around the line, ‘In an asylum, do you mean?’ Only the producer’s desire to keep to Lewis’ original text as far as possible kept her from substituting, ‘In a madhouse…’