Artists Unite Issue

June 6, 2006

lost my slut thang…

Filed under: WebLog — Peter Ferko @ 12:46 pm

…or, would you let your daughter do that?

I must be either an ex-catholic (like ex-smoker) or too old, but I find porno’s infiltration into the mainstream, dare I say it, fucked up. I was talking with Inwood artist Diana Schmertz last week about her paintings of lovers, which she said are about “intimacy” and in opposition to objectification of people. Hear hear.

As if it’s not enough to have 20 pages of the village voice calling me to cum find an escort, now I get to see ads everywhere from the idealistic American Apparel, who don’t use third world sweat shops, but LA sub-minimum wage shops to make their nice clothes. AA has long been running an ad campaign based on “fantasy” shoots with poloroids that looks strangely like, hmmm, oh yeah, teen porno shoots. Is that really the best fantasy we can come up with? God, are advertisers so low on ideas that we have to glorify an industry that blah blah, blah–do I really have to say this?!?

Someone come up with something life-affirming, would ya?

9 Responses to “lost my slut thang…”

Pat Says:
June 6th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
TouchÃ©, Peter. I wrote the company and I encourage others … http://www.americanapparel.net/feedback/ Their site is even more exploitative that your sample. Their knee-high tube socks really piss me off - the animation on the homepage. My subject title was “Artists against American Apparel advertising.”

Maybe google will pick up the meta tag information if we put in the same keywords and bring people here to see our protest: Buy T-Shirts Online - American Apparel - Panties, Bras, Shorts, Shirts and More “american apparel store, men’s, women’s, children’s, apparel, classic girl, standard american, classic baby, cotton, blank, t-shirts, panties, shorts, bikini bras, pants, shirts, american apparel,Â manufacturer, factory”
Gembeaux Says:
June 6th, 2006 at 10:11 pm
I’m feeling apologetic for some reason. I guess I always looked at AA advertising as Sears Catalog interpreted by some young photographer being wistful for bad 60’s advertising. I don’t find it offensive at all, and in fact find it rather bland. More over, how does one advertise intimate apparel without it being somewhat objectifying the human body? The vulnerable demographic that most advertisers are motivated by these days is relying on and exploiting the charge of unexplored libido by teens with lots of frustrated desire.
Peter Ferko Says:
June 6th, 2006 at 11:08 pm
Having just come off a rollercoaster ride of teen libido, bravado, and stupido, I can say that at least viewing a minimal sample, that catering to their desires is a bad idea. Teen pregnancy, teen drug use, teens getting into porno, etc., is the natural result. These ads, also however get seen by adults at bus stops and in the stores.

I hear you, though; but I think it’s a matter of degree, like in everything. In Italy, naked women pose next to spokesmen in auto ads. But the naked women are not teen girls. And face it, in Italy naked women and men are everywhere–so it’s less about porno, more about Italians’ healthy sexuality.

I am against censorship. But I keep hoping creatives in power will exercise responsibility regarding important issues AND artistic freedom. Instead, I see misogyny, glorified teen sexuality, gangsta values, violence–and ridicule of the opposite values. I know as adults we easily navigate such issues and come down in the right place: irony we see as irony; humor we see as humor; style we see as style. But I think we have abandoned good judgement and good taste as being un-hip and as a culture are erring on the side of bad taste and wrong messages; and I don’t know that the audience for such work always gets the irony, humor, and style.
Pat Says:
June 6th, 2006 at 11:19 pm
Gembeaux, so nice to see you here! You know I’d marry you in a minute if you swam in my dating pool, but … being an adult, I think it’s bland too, but I feel protective of kids and teenagers. And are tube socks intimate apparel? THOSE tube socks were, and ankles were not the focus. Yes, that is what the advertisers are exploiting, but it doesn’t make it right. I think it was well thought out and it wasn’t the young photographer’s decision. I’m not saying you don’t care about kids and teens, I know you do. Sex is not on girls mind as much as boys at that age, and they are being very objectified. Girls are more concerned about being liked and all that. Those images confuse girls, it’s not how they feel at that age, I imagine they see it has how they should feel to fit in.

So we’re seeing setting of it being a male’s world; 90% of the provocative poses are of girls. This is a lot like art museums. From the Guerrilla Girls site: “Ten years ago, we did a poster, â€˜Do women have to be naked to get into the Met Museum?â€™, highlighting the fact that 5% of the artists in the modern-art sections were women, but 85% of the nudes were female. We went back a year ago, and the numbers were 3% and 83%.”
Gembeaux Says:
June 7th, 2006 at 1:02 am
Peter, I really responded to the last paragraph of your last post. Accurate! And I certainly didn’t mean to come off as dismissing or endorsing the advertisers motives. Since I’m in the industry, I think it’s a forest for the trees situation. If only you could hear some of the concepts and shoots that I do, that actually happen! I am a participant in creating these ads. Not AA ads in particular, but for a few here and there, that definitely undermine the values I was brought up with. I was joking with my assistants that the whole line of products on a recent shoot was teaching young teenage girls how to be *$#&!’s. And this is for a major chain, that everyone says they love. I’ve also realized from writing this, my lack of understanding how this must affect a certain trajectory of how the public at large is willing to respond to adverising comfortably. I’m now fantasizing doing renegade ads that would parody AA. Having just got back from Ireland two weeks ago, I was particularly interested in the billboards that announced, “Just say no to ageism”. When I explored the billboard with locals it seems that American culture, once again, has spread it’s wings and created a youth based identity in a country resplendant with the most fabulous curmudgeons one can imagine.
Sky Pape Says:
June 7th, 2006 at 10:11 am
Here’s creativity applied for a very different kind of ad campaign, this time for Amnesty International. It does have a life-affirming message, but not exactly the delivery one would expect.
Peter Ferko Says:
June 7th, 2006 at 6:54 pm
And Gembeaux, mon ami, I think Adbusters is on the case as well. Please send us a clip of your parodies!!!

via Adbusters
Sky Pape Says:
June 7th, 2006 at 9:09 pm
In the NOT SAFE FOR WORK department (close your eyes, Pat), here’s a little parody of my own on Joe Camel, from the dusty archives of 16 years ago. (Much to my surprise, snapped up immediately by a collector!) Maybe I was just seeing things, but according to Urban Legends, I wasn’t the only one. (P.S. I used to smoke Marlboros.)
Artists Unite Issue » another cry to rally the artists! Says:
June 14th, 2006 at 9:45 pm
[...] Never judge a book by its cover (which I believe is a quote from Bo Diddley). Steven Van Zandt in an interview in the Onion concurs with me regarding artistic responsibility. Despite the questionable taste in headwear (Onion: You get up in the morning and pick out your bandana? SVZ: It’s part of my life, yeah. We don’t separate those things, we ’60’s guys. Being a rock ‘n roll star ain’t a part-time gig.[laughs]), SVZ has his head on straight regarding rock and roll: [...]

June 6, 2006

lost my slut thang…

9 Responses to “lost my slut thang…”

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