Before you read this entry, take the time to watch this advert which was recently banned by the Advertising Standards Authority.
The sky is falling cried Chicken Little and all the animals in the tale were swept into mass hysteria. A few weeks ago the Advertising Standards Authority Declared the same thing; the heavens are falling and an advert was banned to prevent this imminent Armageddon.
In case you have not been up to date with all the hullabaloo, which in itself testifies to your extreme luck, Axe released an ad which featured female angels falling from heaven seemingly unable to resist the charms of a man who had sprayed a new brand of Axe deodorant. A South African viewer complained that the ad featured angels behaving in a manner incompatible with his belief, ASA ruled in his favour, stating:
And that was that. Or should have been that except that I took the time to watch the advert on Youtube (along with five hundred thousand other curious people) and the first thought that came to my mind was Chicken Little.
You see, there is a slight problem with the ruling given by the ASA, besides the lack of humour on their part. There is the ever slight issue that the Bible documents in detail: angels have fallen from heaven before. The beginning of Genesis chapter 6 describes angels who not only were enamoured by the beauty of the daughters of Eve, that not only did they fall from heaven, they beget children who became giants. I dare the ASA to take the issue to the Vatican and get them to remove the offending passages for being incompatible with ‘Christian’ belief. And lest we forget Lucifer, that most famous of retrenched angels, fell from heaven to earth.
And that is exactly where my problem lies, this temptation to fall into the trap of labelling every little thing in the world as good or bad, black or white, safe for work or not safe for work, ANC or DA, us or them. Two little neat categories into which we like to squeeze the world as if it fits. Osama Bin Laden was Muslim therefore Muslims are bad and must be stopped and searched at airports. Whites once colonised Africa so they must all be bad. Christianity is good therefore it is all good. This is not only an inaccurate, simplistic, small minded view but a dangerous one as well. Intolerance has roots in a lack of understanding, in a failure to appreciate the view of the other, to refuse to leave the confines of one’s comfort zone, to label every “other” as bad.
It is a dangerous mind-set that fails to appreciate the complexity, the variety, the sheer stunning range of human beings. That fails to appreciate that the everyday is rooted both in the simple and the complex, that fails to reach out to the ‘other’ and prefers to sit, solidly rooted in its ignorance, refusing to accept that even angels can fall, that the portrait of the world we choose to see is often not the whole story.
The sky is falling cried Chicken Little and all the animals in the tale were swept into mass hysteria. A few weeks ago the Advertising Standards Authority Declared the same thing; the heavens are falling and an advert was banned to prevent this imminent Armageddon.
In case you have not been up to date with all the hullabaloo, which in itself testifies to your extreme luck, Axe released an ad which featured female angels falling from heaven seemingly unable to resist the charms of a man who had sprayed a new brand of Axe deodorant. A South African viewer complained that the ad featured angels behaving in a manner incompatible with his belief, ASA ruled in his favour, stating:
The problem is not so much that angels are used in the commercial, but rather that the angels are seen to forfeit, or perhaps forego their heavenly status for mortal desires…
And that was that. Or should have been that except that I took the time to watch the advert on Youtube (along with five hundred thousand other curious people) and the first thought that came to my mind was Chicken Little.
You see, there is a slight problem with the ruling given by the ASA, besides the lack of humour on their part. There is the ever slight issue that the Bible documents in detail: angels have fallen from heaven before. The beginning of Genesis chapter 6 describes angels who not only were enamoured by the beauty of the daughters of Eve, that not only did they fall from heaven, they beget children who became giants. I dare the ASA to take the issue to the Vatican and get them to remove the offending passages for being incompatible with ‘Christian’ belief. And lest we forget Lucifer, that most famous of retrenched angels, fell from heaven to earth.
And that is exactly where my problem lies, this temptation to fall into the trap of labelling every little thing in the world as good or bad, black or white, safe for work or not safe for work, ANC or DA, us or them. Two little neat categories into which we like to squeeze the world as if it fits. Osama Bin Laden was Muslim therefore Muslims are bad and must be stopped and searched at airports. Whites once colonised Africa so they must all be bad. Christianity is good therefore it is all good. This is not only an inaccurate, simplistic, small minded view but a dangerous one as well. Intolerance has roots in a lack of understanding, in a failure to appreciate the view of the other, to refuse to leave the confines of one’s comfort zone, to label every “other” as bad.
It is a dangerous mind-set that fails to appreciate the complexity, the variety, the sheer stunning range of human beings. That fails to appreciate that the everyday is rooted both in the simple and the complex, that fails to reach out to the ‘other’ and prefers to sit, solidly rooted in its ignorance, refusing to accept that even angels can fall, that the portrait of the world we choose to see is often not the whole story.
