Let’s tell kids that rape = a pick-up strategy?

Trigger warning: violence against women, physical assault and rape. Graphic and portrayed as something positive and possibly humorous.

Forget the run-of-the-mill sexist ads for a while, as harmful as they are. Here’s a truly horrifying one, so much that I cannot believe it’s been approved anywhere.

The internet silence around it is really surprising too. I couldn’t find it uploaded anywhere (which means I had to record it from the tv with my cell phone, hence the low quality of the clip), and I couldn’t find any blog post or discussion about it either. The only related discussion I found was about how to cancel the advertised service, and it didn’t mention the ad itself at all. There are several popular Polish blogs that criticize commercials, but apparently none of them has ever mentioned it. Maybe because they write from the artistic standpoint, not the feminist one.

The ad, embedded:

And direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I91oiX8Vm0

Translated transcript:

10000 BC
[A skinny and conventionally “hot” cartoon cavewoman stands looking at the viewer. A huge and conventionally ugly caveman comes up behind her and suddenly hits her hard over the head with a bludgeon. She loses consciousness and he drags her to his hut, which starts moving and we hear sounds of him raping her. Well, we’re supposed to interpret them as sounds of “them having sex”, and find it awesome.]
2010
Voice-over: Thousands years have passed and the method still works. Hit* your chosen one with a love text.
[We see the 2010 versions of them, the girls is now a conventionally hot blonde wearing a pink top and a mini skirt, and the guy is wearing regular clothes and his hair are less messy than in the caveman version. She stands looking at the viewer and he comes up behind her. He takes out a cell phone, looking as if he’s about to hit her, but instead he shows it to her, she turns around, sees the text on the phone and little hearts start flying around.]
Voice-over: We’ll send you the best texts that will sweep her off her feet. Text “start serce”** to 55028. We’ll start for you, but you’ll have to finish on your own.
[They hold hands, the guy looks very awkward and the girl leads him somewhere. Cut to their silhouettes in a window, starting to kiss.]
Voice-over: Text “start serce” to 55028. It works the way a bludgeon did ages ago.

*There isn’t even any double meaning for “hit” here. The word they used, “przywal” means “physically hit”. Of course it becomes figurative here, because you cannot physically hit with a text, but it has no double meaning the way “hit” can have in English.
**”Serce” means “heart”.

So, which one is the worst message here? “Rape = a pick-up strategy”? Or – “If she’s unconscious and you have sex with her, it’s not rape when she seems to enjoy it?” Or – “Man on woman physical assault and rape is just funny cartoon violence and has nothing to do with real life”? Or “Man on woman physical assault and rape is something enjoyable for the woman?” Or the simple one – “You’re entitled to women’s bodies”? Or maybe one of the many other messages that you can extract from the overall WTF you’re feeling, even if this amount of WTF is quite difficult to unpack.

The ad is being broadcast on popular Polish music channels for teens and tweens (think MTV, but a bit more music oriented). I don’t remember if it is the Polish version of MTV, possibly it is, but for now I know for sure that it is on 4Fun.TV (where I recorded it from) and on at least one more similar channel. I’m almost positive the other channel is VIVA, but I’ll have to confirm it. Which won’t be difficult, because the ad is being broadcast all day long (and all evening long, and possibly all night long), at least once every two hours, usually about two times per hour. I know because I had to record it several times before I learned how to catch the beginning – start recording when any given song ends, there are good odds that the commercial that appears will be this one.

The service is provided by WapSter. I didn’t find any ad for this service on their main page, either it’s too flashy too find anything, or you have to have an account to see all there is to see. There is no doubt that the service is WapSter’s though, because it is mentioned in their official Terms of Service (Ctrl+F for start serce) linked from the main page. Note that the ToS lists this service as available for everyone, not only for people aged 18+. Not that rape would be in any way okay for adults, but the fact that this commercial is meant for all ages somehow makes it even worse.

The company that runs WapSter is CT Creative Team, also linked from the main page and mentioned in ToS. Contact them here.

(Cross-posted from my blog.)