Ratings..

After reading up on certain films that have been banned, its got me thinking about the similarities and differences between films and advertising.

The argument is that a film could "promote" something e.g. "Clockwork Orange" promotes "Ultra-violence" yet when it was banned this just encouraged people to want to see it. Therefore banning a film has an opposite effect.

Advertising on the other hand, we all argue cannot physically force someone to do something, for example if we were advertising a new chainsaw that was strong enough to cut through a skull, this does NOT mean that people would automatically go out and buy a chainsaw and start hacking people's heads off. Yet it would mean we were "promoting" violence, hence the ad would get banned. Similar to films, this technique is often used in advertising e.g. Benetton Ads, we all know about although they have been banned! Weird.

So as we would not want to be advertising rape or murder, do we as designers have an upper hand on the directors and writers of films who do in some ways "promote" these things. Should these people be more responsible about the power of persuasion and promotion that they have on a large audience?