My favourite thing on TV at the moment is the “What Did You Want To Be?” advert for the new Ford Focus ST. It’s a hideous car, but I love the guy in the superhero costume. The way he takes to the air in response to a distressed scream is just superb. Watch it, then tell me it’s not the best superhero takeoff you’ve ever seen.

Update: The original site I linked to now requires paid membership to view the ad (yes, really), so watch it on YouTube instead. The quality isn’t as good, but it’s free.

“Massah” John Beyer, the Black and White Minstrels fan who likens himself to St Paul, told The Independent on Sunday,

Channel 4 is unquestionably pushing the boundaries and they are doing it quite deliberately. I guess that Channel 4 will be up there bidding for the television rights to 9 Songs along with all the other pornography channels. I just feel that Channel 4 is now beyond control, yet the regulator seems unable and unwilling to have anything to say about what Channel 4 is doing. I just don’t know what can be done to stop this collapse of standards.

Maybe he should join Christian Voice?

One of MMW’s regular Christian canticles, one “Dr Christopher Shell”, has responded to this story (as he does to most posts on the site), with the following lucid comment:

…it is a perfectly possible scenario that Channel 4 will be deaf to listeners and (in practice) simply do whatever they want. In this particular scenario, the radical approach is the natural and logical one.

Set aside the fact that Channel 4 are subject to the censors and regulators that govern all broadcast content, and can’t simply “do whatever they want”. More important is the idea that if a television channel is showing content that one might find offensive, and that the “natural and logical” response is surely to not watch? It is usually a fairly simple matter to change the channel, or turn off altogether; perhaps to do some soul-endangering activity like Aikido (I was informed many years ago that the “heathen” Eastern Arts open up ones soul to the Devil, despite Aikido being founded on the principles of love and harmony). I believe that what I watch on television is up to me, not to some arrogant, pompous, self important moral watchdog.

Channel 5 recently showed a series of programmes about plastic surgery, which I knew I would find disturbing and unpleasant. Rather than sit through them and subsequently write to Ofcom to vent my outrage, I exercised my rights as an individual and chose not to watch. Indeed the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4 show prime time soap operas that I find relentlessly depressing and upsetting (though Hollyoaks does have some hot girls in it), but as a thinking human being, I choose not to watch. I do not set out to stop anyone else from watching them simply because I find these programmes unpleasant, not even my wife.

I think it is about time the likes of John Beyer found more to fill their days, so they might have less time to sit and be outraged by the content of the television schedules. I’m sure some fresh air and a bit of physical activity would do them a world of good.

In fairness to the censors, one of my favourites, the Wrigleys “Dog Breath” ad, was withdrawn only after a large number of complaints from the viewing public. The ad takes the concept of post-lash “dog breath” to it’s literal conclusion, with very angry dog forcing itself out of the mouth of a clearly hung-over bloke. The visuals are extremely well executed, but surely it is obvious to any clear thinking person that the dog wasn’t actually forced out of a hole the size of a human mouth? It never ceases to amaze me that people are so easily offended, particularly when some cartoons contain far more disturbing imagery. Obviously, the production company (Arden Sutherland-Dodd) just did far too good a job. I do wonder though if the complaints would have been so loud is it had been a less well loved animal that was ejected from his mouth.

My other favourite from the banned list is the Volkswagen Passat “Bollocks” viral ad. It features a sweet little girl expressing her frustrations with a choice bit of English vernacular. On the Banned program, the makers of the ad claimed that the girl (or girls to be more accurate, since they used twins) in the ad was actually saying “Pollocks”, and was then dubbed. It’s fairly obvious that it would never have made it past the censors, even post water-shed, but it is (as with the Wrigleys ad) extremely well executed and, frankly, hilarious. Sorry folks, but swearing is just funny.