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July 17, 2007

A Homer-Run for Advertising

A brief-clad, donut-weilding, 55-meter-tall Homer Simpson is strutting his stuff on a British hillside next to the Cerne Abbas giant, an enormous, well-endowed, club-weilding figure carved into the bedrock, and the Brits are not pleased. Fortunately, Homer was painted onto the grass with water-based biodegradable paint. We know this because, unlike the artists behind crop circles, in this case we know who did it: the publicity team behind the new Simpsons movie, which is premiering next week in the UK.

Historians tend to believe the carving at Cerne Abbas is a depiction of Hercules (probably because he holds a club) that was created in the second century AD. The giant is a well-known pagan fertility symbol. Pagans, who feel the Simpsons ad is disrespectful, are pledging to perform "rain magic" in hopes of bringing sufficient rain to wash Homer away.

The press is having a great time with the story. The Syndey Herald titles its article, "Homer-erotic mischief riles pagans," and a satire news service in the UK refers to "Homer Erectus." Personally, I think it's pretty darned funny and the pagans ought to lighten up. But then, I love advertising.

This is not the first time the Cerne Abbas giant has been involved in artistic controversy. Last year, Unilever hired Flightpath Media to paint a giant advertisement for deodorant on a field near Burstow, in Surrey, England, right in an airport flight path. The image depicted two nude women dancing around the giant. After much controversy, the company washed the design away. Now the same advertising agency has painted a new racy ad for a private lap dance company on the field showing a naked stripper doing a pole dance.

Oregon has its own little controversy going on over a nude painted on a hillside near Newport, though in this case it is purely for art's sake. Samuel Clemens has painted a 140 foot long, 55 foot high reclining nude portrait of his wife on a hillside along Highway 20 a few miles east of Toledo. Last year, he got a good deal of national attention for his much-tamer painting of the Mona Lisa on the same hillside. The controversy part has been the excessive number of people who park along the shoulder to look at the paintings, creating a traffic hazard on the winding stretch of highway. Funny that the nudity aspect doesn't bother anyone when it isn't advertising a product, but is just for "art's sake."

Posted by Becky at July 17, 2007 11:06 AM