I was watching the late evening news on Channel 10 the other night, and right at the end, in the slot reserved for the cute, funny story / video clip, they showed this ad for Last.fm.
Now, date rape, sexual harassment and abuse are never funny. But what got me was the way in which presenter Guy Zoher decided to introduce the clip: “Here’s an ad that the Second Broadcasting Authority would never approve,” he says.
“Good on Channel 10; good on the Second Broadcasting Authority!” you might be thinking to yourself, “good on them for pointing out that this is no laughing matter, despite the 26,000 plus hits this has on YouTube.” You might even be thinking to yourself that Channel 10 might really, actually be the quality alternative to Channel 2 that it purports to be and that it’s a good thing that they got a stay of execution in their drawn-out battle over their franchise.
But (I bet you knew I was working myself up to a big but), unfortunately the sad truth is that the Second Broadcasting Authority – the body responsible for monitoring the content on Israel’s two commercial TV stations and on the commercial, regional radio stations – probably would have approved a similar ad.
Let’s take a look at the kind of stuff they have approved in the past: The various ads for Fox clothing, including the Bar Raphaeli-Noam-From-Survivor one; those really high-brow Tapuzina ads such as this one or this one; and numerous risqué ads for Castro clothing (after all, it’s “Designed for Desire”) like this and this. Just what is it about the big breasts / white T-shirt / hose pipe combo that gets those creative juices flowing?
I’m not letting Channel 10 off the hook, either. This is the same station that played promos for their latest season of Survivor showing the female contestants mud wrestling and pulling off each other’s bikinis back to back with promos for an exposé on Israel’s porn industry without the slightest hint of irony!
Now, of course, sex sells. Any 5-year-old knows that. But that’s precisely my problem. Perhaps becoming a parent has turned me into a prude, but I think there’s something very wrong when TV programmes, ads and promos as sexually explicit as some of the above are shown at all hours of the day. I remember when I was growing up that there was such a thing as a watershed where you couldn’t say certain words or show certain parts of the body before a certain hour. I also don’t really want to hear Lily Allen croon “F**k you, f**k you very, very much” on the radio as I drive my daughter to nursery, however sweetly she sings it. And am I the only one not amused by pre-teens using ‘f***ing’ as an adjective in every sentence?
I’m all too aware of the fact that Israel is not a “normal country” in the sense that children here are often exposed to death, violence, war and terror attacks from a very young age. So how’s a bit of tit and ass gonna hurt them, or some profanities (especially if they’re in a foreign language)? But on the other hand, don’t we actually have an even bigger responsibility to let them be kids for as long as possible?
Looking at Emma, I can’t get over how quickly two years have gone. And it makes me very sad to think that the day she says her first four-letter word isn’t that far off…
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