That's somewhat surprising to me, actually. It seems like the envelope gets pushed so far, so fast these days that it actually surprises me when I see an example of limits being put on advertising.
But such is the case with sales promotions for a movie called "Captivity", which is your typical graphic violence, bondage, torture film that gets targeted to the 18-24 movie crowd. Some of their billboards were apparently so graphic, that they've been pulled by the movie's maker in order to comply with MPAA standards.
From the story in the Hollywood Reporter today:
The billboards, first posted March 13, feature four frames with captions above each one. "Abduction" shows Cuthbert with a gloved hand over her face; "Confinement" features the actress behind a chain-link fence with a bloody finger poking through; "Torture" depicts Cuthbert's face, covered in white gauze, with tubes shoved up her nose; and "Termination" shows her with her head thrown back, seemingly dead.
The ads appeared on 30 Los Angeles-area billboards and 1,400 New York taxi tops. After Dark is paying to have them removed -- and while some billboards in the Hollywood area were still visible Monday, others already had come down.
Maybe its because I'm now officially in the "over 40 club", but something about this news strikes me as good. Free speech is great, as is the right to express yourself through art in the form of a movie, but come on! There still have to be limits in what we accept in advertising, and what we use to make a sale.
OK, I'm done...now I'll go back to the rest home and complain about the food...
Comment Preview