Sunday 5 September 2010

Surely this can't be appropriate for bus stop advertising?

I just popped to the shop and drove past the bus stop I will be using for the next couple of weeks to take Phoebe to school. On the bill board bit of it is a huge picture of a blood splattered girl bent over backwards advertising a movie called The Last Exorcism.

My friend Annabel spotted them the other day and as we discussed it I remembered feeling similar when I saw adverts for Saw VI (or one of them at least) and the last Final Destination. How is it appropriate to have these images in full view of small children? Am I missing something in the logic of their advertising campaigns? Terrify small child = parent goes to see the movie?!

I have to be quite careful with what Phoebe watches as she is, like me, prone to over imagination and nightmares over basic things. She is quite easily frightened and very astute as to what is scary and, more importantly in my opinion, why it is scary. So for her to see images like the one I mentioned above every day is a little worrying. Still images are just as capable of scaring children as moving ones.

When did we get to a place in society where it is appropriate to put images of 18 movies out for all to see. I understand they need to advertise their movies, but surely they should use alternative channels available to them that are less likely to include small children in their demographic. Television after the watershed, the internet, film magazines... there are plenty of avenues available to them so why on earth put such images on buses and billboards. If they must advertise on them, surely there are more subtle ways of doing it? I am not even sure who to complain to about it!

Please tell me I am not being an old fuddy duddy about this!

2 comments:

JaneV said...

I totally agree with you Vix. Do I feel a campaign group developing?
And on the subject of adverts, there is one on the TV at the moment for a head lice lotion with really horrible looking head lice monsters. If I had seen that when I was a child it would have completely freaked me out.

l'optimiste said...

you're right - that's gross. You can get in touch first through the person who owns the advertising space [the number should be on there in small type somewhere] - they will be able to put you in touch with the advertiser. Can't hurt to speak to them about your concerns...
x