What would Gary Larson say?

July 2, 2008 Update: We are getting a lot of hits on this post & I'm curious why. If anyone looking knows why I'd sure appreciate a comment!
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In response to the previous post, a few thoughts.

Check out the Children Now website. A friend of mine is (was?) the director of the Children in the Media program and they focused on this type of portrayal of children, as well as the violence images that are associated with/directed to children. The interesting and disturbing thing (aside from the very fact of this ad) is that ads like this are being aimed to younger and younger children. Advertisers are now marketing adult hygiene products to the 5-8 year old market segment (there's a 5-8 year old market segment!!!).

As for this ad, while it is disturbing, and it does legitimately bring up all of these issues, I do have to play devil's advocate just ever so briefly. When I was in college and was riled up by everything all the time and was taking lots of classes that focused on images such as this one and the damage they do to our society, one of the messages that was ingrained into my head was that nothing in advertising is a mistake. When a big firm spends $40 million on a national ad campaign, they don't leave anything to chance, and every is where it is for a very specific reason.

Well, now that I've been in and associated with the business for nigh on 20 years or more, and have worked with many firms and/or people from firms that are producing those very ads, I have to say that the same comments that are often made about our government in reference to massive cover ups of alien invasions can be applied equally to ad firms in this regard -- the powers that be just aren't as smart as we think they are.

None of this is to say that ads such as the Target ad are unintentionally exploitive, or that misogyny in advertising doesn't exist...they are and it does. What I intend by the above is to point out that there is not always an "actor" in the process of exploitation. Sometimes ads just accidentally look exploitive and that's just the fact.

As an illustration, let me reference a single panel Far Side comic from a decade or more ago. This comic garnered more negative/critical mail for Gary Larson than anything else he ever did. Why? Because people thought he was intentionally implying that the dog was "doing it" to the car. Uh uh. Mr. Larson just didn't see that when he drew it, nor did any of his editors. It was merely a dog dreaming of finally catching a car. Now, do we think that Gary Larsen secretly has thoughts of dogs mating with autos? Unlikely. Did he likely put that transmission case in an unfortunate position? Yeah. But, now that I've pointed it out, isn't it difficult to see anything else? Disgusting little dog! Sick man Gary Larson? I don't think so.