Yesterday I wrote about a one-minute ad, “Prayer is for everyone,” that the Church of England wanted to show in British cinemas. The commercial agency that handles ads for UK movies refused, saying that their policy banned the showing of religious or political ads in theaters. I agreed, for reversing that policy would turn theaters into venues for religious proselytizing and political hoo-ha, which seems inappropriate and would surely be divisive. It might even drive patrons away from the movies, which is undoubtedly the motive behind the policy.
Surprisingly, in a piece at the Guardian, Richard Dawkins disagrees, for he wants the Anglican ads shown:
The [ad agency’s] decision prompted an angry response from the church, which warned of a chilling effect on free speech. Many expressed support for its position including Dawkins, the evolutionary biologist best known for excoriating religions.
He told the Guardian: “My immediate response was to tweet that it was a violation of freedom of speech. But I deleted it when respondents convinced me that it was a matter of commercial judgment on the part of the cinemas, not so much a free speech issue. I still strongly object to suppressing the ads on the grounds that they might ‘offend’ people. If anybody is ‘offended’ by something so trivial as a prayer, they deserve to be offended.”
Dawkins has been a long time advocate for free speech, arguing that protecting religious sensibilities is not a reason for censorship. And despite attracting controversy over his views on religion, the author of the God Delusion has previously described himself as a “cultural Anglican”.
So although Richard does understand that there is no “right” to have these ads shown in cinemas, he apparently feels that the ad should nevertheless be shown. And that means that he feels that the organization that banned the ads, Digital Cinema Media (DCM), should accept all ads, whatever religion or political ideology they espouse.
I disagree. The ads should be shown only if DCM had already allowed other religious and political ads. And that, of course, would open a can of worms. It’s not so much that I consider the ads should be banned because they’re offensive: rather, I think is that showing them in a place of entertainment is offensive. I don’t go to the movies and pay good money to hear Archbishop Welby tell me that prayer is really for me! It’s bad enough that, at least in the U.S. virtually all theaters show ads for food, soft drinks (Coke is a big offender) and other stuff, and that I have to sit through 15 minutes of that blather before I get to the movie. (This is why I usually go to the movies on campus, which has a big theater, comfortable seats, Dolby sound, good movies, and no ads.) But religious and political ads, which sell ideologies and worldviews rather than goods, are more invidious. After all, selling Coke isn’t divisive, but selling Toryism or Christianity is.
Why isn’t this like the “atheist bus campaign”, which was largely funded by Dawkins and the British Humanist Association? Because that was a matter of equity. A Christian organization had already been allowed to put its ads on buses, so it was only fair that atheist ads also be allowed. What a private organization decides to do with advertising is its own business so long as it doesn’t discriminate, and the DCA did not. But when a public organization already advertises Christianity on its buses (I presume London buses are run by the government, but I may be wrong), it’s illegal to discriminate against other faiths, or against no faith. I’m not sure about the legality of a cinema showing only Christian but not atheist ads, but it’s certainly unfair if it doesn’t. Best not to open that can of annelids.
The DCM made a proper commercial decision, and I agree with it. So do many British secularists:
But the church did not win universal backing with the National Secular Society describing it as a “perfectly reasonable decision” by a commercial organisation.
The society’s president Terry Sanderson, said: “The Church of England is arrogant to imagine it has an automatic right to foist its opinions upon a captive audience who have paid good money for a completely different experience.”
Despite the Guardian’s headline, nothing in Dawkins’s actual comments say he wants the cinemas to change the decision.
What he does say is that: “I still strongly object to suppressing the ads on the grounds that they might ‘offend’ people”.
And, I agree, those should not be grounds for rejecting the ad. However, there are other grounds — as PCC-E says — for not wanting the ad in cinemas.
That’s how I read it too. I don’t think you are disagreeing.
For clarification, I was disagreeing mainly with the Guardian’s piece, which suggested that Dawkins wants the ads shown. Maybe he does, but that’s not what his quoted words say!
Indeed, I don’t think we are disagreeing either.
Though you may disagree.
In the USA businesses can do most what they want. So occasionally a local ad for a church comes up on the screen. Bad enough that the price doesn’t obviate the need for commercials that plague our movies. Once you let them in…and since our ticket sales do not pay for the movie itself. It is the over priced popcorn et al that pays for them. A messed up situation I agree.
I think we do disagree, because the ad agency wants to reject the ads because political and religious ads can be offensive and divisive.
I agree that as there is no ‘right’ not to be offended, then to that extent Dawkins is correct to say that he would, therefore, have no objection to the advert being shown.
Conversely, a private company has the right to take into consideration possible ‘offence’ that maybe caused to its audience, in reaching a commercial decision.
I’ve seen religious ads in US theaters and frankly didn’t notice them standing out from the rest of the noise. So I think the theater’s fears are misplaced. Having said that, if they have a blanket policy against ideological group advertising, then disallowing the Anglican ad is perfectly consistent with their policy and I’m fine with that too.
I will even go as far to say that I bet Jerry has seen religious ads in theaters too, and just not noticed them. You get the occasional ad for some local church in the low-cost “billboard” type ads that occur early on in the ad cycle, sandwiched between the blurbs for 20% of Lasik and the ad telling you to visit Bob’s Family Diner out just five miles south of the theater on Rt 1.
The key words are “can be”. If they reject all religious ads, they don’t have to put themselves into the invidious position where they have to make a judgement about the offensiveness of any particular ad.
So, they might not actually think that the CofE ad itself would offend.
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The “atheist buses” were offensive and dismissive to some. Ads for McDonalds burgers may be offensive for some vegans. Reasonable people, be they atheists, vegans or whatnot, just ignore the ads for the products they are not interested in. Including prayer.
And as for equity, would you be more likely to accept the prayer ads in cinemas if they were preceded by an atheist ad campaign with the same messages like those on those buses? If not, would you regard as acceptable the atheist ads with messages like those on buses be shown in cinemas?
I am am atheist and would find the prayer ads in cinemas mildly annoying. But I would survive them. And unless they explicitly call for hatred or intolerance, I would allow them – primarily because I would never want to put myself in a position to ban ads that advertise my (secular, rational) set of values in the future. Lets not insist on turning cinemas into “safe spaces”.
The problem, as Jerry points out, is that allowing the CofE to deliver a christian prayer automatically necessitates allowing ANY religious organisation to deliver its own particular prayerful message – e.g. Satanist invocations, Scientology membership drives, revelations of to the angel Moroni to Joseph Smith, etc. etc. Now I would not object if this “open policy” were implemented but I’m sure the British public would howl in protest. Actually, thinking about it, I might quite enjoy a series of such differing ads in the advertising run up to a films – it would provide a certain amount of comic relief.
Of course it should be open. I live in the UK. CoE might officially be the state Church, but in practice there is very little deference to it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the primary purpose of not allowing the ad in the cinema was actually closer to the idea of not “triggering” non-Christians, especially Muslims. Jerry may want to re-think his disagreement with Dawkins if he considers the possibility that he actually supports the act of cowardice before Muslims…
However as we have seen allowing Christians to come in generally doesn’t mean Hindus and Scientologists are let in too. That well known, but little commented upon bias we have in this country.
He told the Guardian: “My immediate response was to tweet that it was a violation of freedom of speech. But I deleted it when respondents convinced me that it was a matter of commercial judgment on the part of the cinemas, not so much a free speech issue. I still strongly object to suppressing the ads on the grounds that they might ‘offend’ people. If anybody is ‘offended’ by something so trivial as a prayer, they deserve to be offended.”
Those sentiments I agree with. I don’t see a problem with his reasoning.
I’m really surprised that the commercial agency that handles ads for UK movies had the foresight of what a can of worms this would be in future, although I am sure they are losing a ton of business that could be coming their way.
Richard is right about not giving a damn about people getting “offended” and allowing the ads on basis of free speech. And I see your point as well. Thank goodness they refused the ads.
Here in India, movie theaters are notorious for showing obnoxious political ads. The political party of current PM Modi knocked movie-goers unconscious with their tireless campaigns during last year’s election season. I wish our theatre agencies had such sense.
I would suspect that they’ve already had a lot of push back from, for example, people like me who drag spotty-faced ushers back to the manager’s office to demand that they explain to me, through their manager, why the manager is going to have to refund me my ticket money because I refused to go to the seats in time to be offended by their adverts.
Ads which, I should point out,
as inseparable from the goods.
Believe me – cinemas know that they are on a very sticky wicket with ANY advertising in front of the audiences who PAY them to see MOVIES, not adverts.
“Liars For Jesus” get a pretty short shrift around here. “Liars for Mammon” (a.k.a. the entire advertising industry) would probably find it a pretty hard sell too if they were to appear in any large numbers.
(PCCE’s lightweight and topic-relevant advertising of his books in the sidebar is about the level of advertising that I tolerate before thinking “Is this worth it?”)
Just for what it’s worth, about once a week when I’m at home, I actually sit through presentations from a market research organisation specifically in order to see what adverts are in the development pipeline and to make it plain in the responses and effects the adverts have. They pay me money for my opinions, and I give them my opinions. I do not feel obliged to tell them how great I think their pretty crappy adverts are, but I do eel obliged to tell them if their chosen formats are simply not visible on my computers, and if I find the selling attempt to be revolting.
You mentioned this in the other thread on this ad, and I was surprised then, and more surprised now by this description of events, as I cannot remember a time in any of the UK cinemas I’ve gone to when I was barred from the screen because I was not in time to see all or any of the adverts.
Caveat: I’ve only been to one cinema in Scotland (the Odeon in Glasgow, to see Alien: Resurrection, coincidentally, just about this time of year, as I was there with my wife for our anniversary … wow, 18 years ago now) and was probably on time.
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You certainly know how to treat a lady ;).
The last time I was in the Odeon in Glasgow was to see the Beatles sharing top billing with Roy Orbison.
The first film we saw together was _Predator_ … (at Harrogate’s fabulous art-deco Odeon).
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I rest my case.
It has happened several times at the new-name-this-month multiplex down at Aberdeen beach.
Invariably spotty youths, who get a thorough-going telling off from me (because I absolutely HATE watching adverts) and probably a rocket from the manager too. I consider it providing them with an educational trauma.
The least thing movie theaters want or need is the kind of controversy that could piss off moviegoers. The adds are bad enough. Politics and religion definitely not. Now Science and History would be okay.
Ah! Didn’t know that. Thanks for the info, Aidan. I wish to see this push back from professionals in India as well.
Professionals in what? I get paid by advertising companies to sit through their crap in my time off from work – but it’s only a pittance. A couple of beers a week level.
But I figure, if I want the right to complain about crappy adverts, then I also need to make sure that the advertising industry knows exactly how their product is viewed.
Out of a field staff of about 60 running our in-house software, still between a quarter and a third of the bug reports sent in from the field to our developers have my name on the report. Most of our staff just bitch and moan, but won’t spend an hour filling in a bug report, getting screen shots, putting together replication data sets and documenting the bugs. And then my esteemed colleagues complain that my bugs get fixed while their don’t.
Rocket science it ain’t.
“…although I am sure they are losing a ton of business that could be coming their way.”
Really? Even though we’re always told that the English are only nominally religious and pay no attention to church effluvia?
Ah! My bad, Diane. I didn’t know English people are also nominally religious (which is a good thing). Well, I learned something new today. Thanks!
No foresight was necessary. They got a lot of complaints about the ads they showed during the Scottish Referendum. Plus there was also some disorder in some cinemas apparently.
http://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/scottish-independence-cinema-chains-ban-ads-1-3424615
I suspect they just didn’t want to have to deal with the volume of complaints in future because it costs them money and some of their staff probably had to it through fairly abusive phone calls.
The Christians have no cause for complaint since no ads espousing a religious point of view will be accepted, including the point of view that there is no god.
Now imagine this is happening in the USA and the adds were all Islamic? Regardless of the content, just imagine the furor over it by certainly hyper sensitive Islamaphobic groups.
Aha! I don’t follow news from UK much, otherwise would have noticed this. Thanks for the pointer, Jeremy!
It has been pointed out (@DavidAllenGreen on Tw***er, an English lawyer who has been involved in free speech issues) that the CofE was in effect censoring film releases, by supporting blasphemy laws, until 2008. A bit convoluted, but our classification board couldn’t put a rating on any film that could be deemed illegal.
And they’re complaining about a commercial decision? Not a good look.
I don’t think that the issue is about “offence” or free speech, simply about ego. The folks who sell the advertising space in cinemas don’t accept political or religious material as a matter of policy, and the CofE are throwing their toys out of their pram because they aren’t exempt.
I agree. It’s not a matter of whether the ads are offensive, it’s a matter of whether the theatres have a right to not show a class of ads if they choose.
Interesting point about the Church’s support of blasphemy laws before they were abolished too. So the religion is being hypocritical – par for the course.
The theatre group may be thinking they don’t want involved in religious arguments or to become a target for someone with an automatic weapon. And why should they?
This is Britain. Automatic weapons are not a concern here.
That: “[X] is arrogant to imagine it has an automatic right to foist its opinions upon a captive audience who have paid good money for a completely different experience” could be fruitfully applied to Coca Cola, the banks, car manufacturers and all other commercial advertisers.
On the other hand, I’m burning to see an ad from the RCC: “Convert from Hinduism or Islam to catholicism before January 1st and receive a crucifix AND for the first 100 callers an all-in weekend to the Vatican FOR FREE!”
Your cinema ticket is probably made cheaper by having the adverts.
I can’t tell if it is cheaper or not. They do not post the break down of costs. Or what something would cost without the ads present.
So, people go to the cinema to see the new Star Wars film and get two loads of nonsense about made-up religions for the price of one.
At least the C of E ad is a lot shorter.
One is concocted fiction, the other is serious.
As so many Britons said they were Jedis in the religion section of the last census, one would think such an ad before the new Star Wars film would be ‘religiously’ objectionable to them! I would not stomach it that is for sure. I think RD is being too moderate & ‘nice’!
I’m not too bothered by Star Wars mania, so I’m a Pastafarian, rather than Jedi.
Someone did explain why all the Star War films are in the wrong order. Apparently it’s because head of planning Yoda was!
I’d be a Sith-Jedi, that is part of both that both groups ignore the other part. No wonder they have so much war.
I’m rather enjoying the Church of England being on the other side of censorship.
The same with Life of Brian, it’s not really censorship, just being told to move on. The film still got played and still gets watched.
CofE can put stick their video somewhere else. If it’s good enough, in 2045 the Torquay cinema could play it for the comedy festival.
I actually re-watched Cleese and Palin’s p0wning of (who was it?) Muggeridge and the Bish of Unimportantville from the time – which programme I remember watching one Saturday evening, and the incandescent, vitriolic, savage, disembowellingly hilarious parody of it on the Monday’s “Not The Nine O’clock News”.
Oh man, was that a good weekend for watching the God Squad getting a kicking. One shouldn’t celebrate blood sports, but all the wounds that weekend were self-inflicted.
And did you know that Muggeridge used to be a”strident atheist” when he was the Editor of “Punch” ?
I knew he had a “distinguished past”, but to me at that time he was just a weird idiot God-Squaddy. “Punch,” eh? Certainly seen it and read it (in the optician’s waiting room, IIRC), don’t think I’ve ever brought a copy. Or been tempted to find a copy to buy.
‘Punch’ always seemed to the juvenile me to be some weird archaic publication, full of arcane and incomprehensible references. Looking back, I suppose it was the Victorian equivalent of Mad magazine.
I recall just one Punch joke:
Nervous passenger: Do these ships sink very often?
Steward (reassuringly): Only once, madam.
(Transliterates quite well to air travel, actually)
I do vaguely recall hearing of Muggers being an atheist. I guess brain-rot got him. He must have been an insufferably pompous one if the ‘Brian’ debate is anything to go by.
cr
Buckley liked Muggeridge so much he interviewed him several times over the years.
For those interested, you can find the whole program here.
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And there was a rather good docudrama, Holy Flying Circus recently (trailer).
And the Not the Nine O’Clock News parody.
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They’re both on Youtube of course (and my hard drive)
Saturday Night Sunday Morning debate
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J3JjXFilvzg
And here’s the NTNON version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=asUyK6JWt9U
“When two or three are gathered together in His name, then shall they perform the Dead Parrot Sketch”
cr
Umm, I see it’s been posted already. I really should scroll down before I hit ‘reply’, then I wouldn’t look so stupid.
🙁
cr
😁
And yes, I would like to put my head between them and go “Tha’s great, Jimmy!”
I am with you on this one. It’s a private firm and can determine what it shows or not. This is not like Television which is private but regulated, so much different. How could free speech come into play at a privately owned movie theater. The only regulators of movie theater is probably the censors and that is more of a self regulation.
I sure do not want to listen to prayers. I believe the British played g*d save the queen and that was about as close to religion as I could stand. At American military theaters they played the national anthem as well.
Richard Dawkins can surprise – in his latest book, Brief Candle in the Dark, he said that he did not mind saying the prayers as one of his duties of Sub-Warden at Oxford. To him they are just words and were meaningless. Not sure I could do that because they do mean something to many and it is a promotion of religion I think, to say the prayer. It’s like bowing your head while others pray – I would not do that either.
If I were subwarden at Oxford I would NOT say any prayers to smite infidels or any such thing.
I’d have to think about the rest.
In this case I agree with you, but I don’t see much difference in principle between public and private censorship. Imagine if there was only one ISP providing Internet access within the United States – actually the case in some parts – and they wanted to censor what people say online, backed up by the threat of being banned from accessing the Internet in the US. Is that okay because they’re private?
I think the harm of censorship increases with the power of the organization doing the censorship. The government has tremendous power that’s hard to escape from, but so do private companies that become pervasive and necessary parts of people’s lives.
Movie theaters don’t rise to that level, of course.
If I remember correctly, the cake shop in Denver who refused to bake a cake for a gay couple was also a private firm. And yet the court decided that they can’t refuse it: http://www.wsj.com/articles/court-rules-baker-cant-refuse-to-make-wedding-cake-for-gay-couple-1439506296
I find the refusal to make the cake for the gay couple despicable. But I also find smart people’s lack of consistency in their views and principles worrying.
It wasn’t a lack of consistency at all. The cases are distinguishable because the anti-gay bakers were refusing to provide a standard service that they give to other customers to a specific type of customer – i.e. a gay couple. In the “reverse” cases (scare quotes because they really aren’t mirror images), a conservative walked into a bakery and demanded inflammatory speech on a cake, and the baker replied that they don’t do inflammatory speech on cakes for anyone, regardless of cause.
Now, if the ‘liberal’ baker did write inflammatory speech on cakes for other people, then she could not have refused to do so for the conservative customer or a conservative cause. If you provide the service of writing “I hate war” in icing, you can’t refuse to write “I hate gays,” because that’s a content-based discrimination and thus illegal. But you can legally say that you don’t write hate messages, period – you can limit your service based on neutral criteria. She did. That’s the distinction conservatives have failed to grasp.
Well that is demagoguery, isn’t it? It all depends on how you define “standard service”. Somebody can argue that airing an ad (whose airing has been paid) before a movie is also “standard service”. Nobody would have objected if the cake shop refused to make a cake with a frosting-drawing or message that is universally considered obscene and in very poor taste. Just like it would be uncontroversial to refuse to ban a pornographic or graphically violent ad in cinema. But a prayer? Please people, don’t be wusses. You are just rationalising in favour of your preferences for how the world should be.
I’m sure I’m in the minority, but I think such discrimination should be allowed when it doesn’t create much of a burden, in order to support freedom of association, etc. For instance, if a city has 10 cake shops of comparable price and quality, it should be okay if one refuses service to gays or whatever. They’ll lose business, both from the people they discriminate against and the people who find the discrimination objectionable, but it doesn’t cause a real burden on gays given the nine other shops available. But if there are only one or two shops, they should have to accommodate everyone.
It’s similar to how in other contexts the government is supposed to find the least restrictive means of solving a problem.
That is the Right Wing Libertarian rant. There will be others to serve you and prosper. Yet blacks had to make their own business in order to get supplies and it still wasn’t enough. The infamous Rose Wood bombing in 1927 from an airplane was done by whites who it seems wanted them dead in the gutter.
So the whole point was that companies open for business cannot decide whose money they will take over something as trivial as skin color. it produces a bad business environment.
According to the Irish Times(http://bit.ly/1X9esG6), “the Church of England threatened legal action over the banning of the ad”.
Two points immediately arise from this:
1) This is not a blanket ban and certainly not an attack against freedom of speech. The CoE is free proselytize – just not via one particular cinema chain. That is fine by me as I don’t think indoctrination of children should be broadly supported – and by targeting Star Wars, this is DEFINITELY part of their intent.
2) 26 bishops of the Church of England sit in the House of Lords (The Lords Spiritual – http://bit.ly/1Oo0Tee). If the CoE is to claim discrimination on the issue, perhaps they should also campaign for a broad spectrum of religious advisors to the HoL? To this end, they could perhaps relinquish some of their 26 seats in the interests of democracy.
Regards,
C
You would have to abolish the House of Lords for it to have anything to do with democracy
This is true. But the longest journey begins with a single step.
🙂
I am amazed that an advertising agency had spent upwards of a hndred thousand pounds on filming this advert without having checked that they would be allowed to show it across the major cinema chains. All Ad agencies have “compliance” depts who chedk that the material they are producing dosen’t fall foul of the various rules and regulations of Televison, newspapers and presumably cinema outlets. The film was financed by a christian charity – what a waste of badley need money for charitable work.
From the reporting there is nothing to say that they weren’t told “this one won’t fly.”
It certainly wouldn’t be the first time that people have been ignored when telling their clients “don’t do that ; it’ll hurt.”
When I’m advising oil companies on where and how to drill wells, my obligation is to give them my best advice. And if they ignore it, then that is their money they are putting at risk. I’ve never walked off a job in such circumstances because there is no reason to walk off the job. Plus, if I’m still on the job, then I continue to be paid, and I’m in a position to mitigate some of the damned-fool consequences of the client’s actions. Which can kill people, including my colleagues and innocent third parties.
I’m sure that the ethics of advertising agencies are no less strict – particularly the bit about “continuing to be paid” ; I don’t expect life and death to normally be part of their purview.
“…without having checked that they would be allowed to show it across the major cinema chains. ”
Actually, the ad probably got watched a lot more from having been rejected. Brilliant strategy.
Some commenters on the other thread mentioned that doorpeople would try to stop them going in once the ‘official’ movie time had started, but maybe that’s in the UK; in the US, I have never had that problem. I often plan on walking into the theater 10-15 minutes later than the official show time because commercials in US theaters can be counted on to last 20 minutes like clockwork, and I’ve never ever had anyone try and stop me. How could they stop it? You’ve got people going to the bathroom, parents with kids who perennially run late, and sometimes long lines at the concession stands.
Honestly, the biggest barrier I’ve experienced to skipping the commercials and coming in right about when the movie starts is my own Type A conscience. If I don’t allow travel time to get me to the theater ‘on time’ or my butt isn’t in the seat at the time printed on the ticket, my internal sense of social propriety kicks in. But knowing that the movie won’t start for another 20 minutes I can usually fight off that urge, and arrive when the show is about to start rather than when the theater wants to show me commercials.
The important word in that part sentence is “try”.
I’ve never seen anyone try. I’ve never even gotten a glare from management for going in late.
Of course I typically go to multiplexes, so the ticket-taker is nowhere near the door to the various screening rooms. In multiplexes the only time they have people at the screening room doors is typically for opening/high attendance shows, for crowd management.
Usually it’s acne-ridden little oiks who think it’s important for their wonderful abilities to be shown off to the manager on their first night. And who’ve never had to deal with someone who is willing to disagree with them and tell them they’re wrong.
Sounds like a bit of a recent theme. I consider it part of their education, which is why I hand them over to the manager pointing out who pays whom in this part of the world. Poor bunnies.
My strategy as well.
Well, another way to look at it is that the ad may *annoy* many people (it certainly would annoy me), so it would be wise not to run in from purely business standpoint–you don’t want to annoy your customers…
(Admittedly, there’s a fine line between being annoyed and being offended…)
I would find an ad asking me to pray insulting.
An insult to my intelligence.
I stopped believing wishing for something could do anything when I was a child.
Speaking for myself, if I went to a movie and found myself being confronted with prayers on the screen I’d no longer patronize the theater. I expect that a lot of other patrons would respond similarly. It would be an astoundingly dumb thing for a theater to do.
and sub
One company has an essential monopoly in our city of about a million. You’d have to stop going to see movies entirely to avoid the ads.
Sounds like I’d need to move or maybe just rely on Netflix. 😉
It’s not just that this is a private agency. It’s that I’ve paid money to be in the theatre.
I’d be somewhat happier if the ad was on TV instead (or “the telly” as they say in England.)
Yes, on TV you can turn it off or change the channel. Once you are in the movie, you are stuck. Maybe this is a good idea. If they have any of these prayer or political commercials they should state it out front and you have a chance to avoid it.
At least in my part of the US (northeast), commercial + previews are almost exactly 20 minutes in duration. So walk into the theater at showtime + 12 minutes and enjoy the previews only. Or if you dislike previews, walk in at showtime +18 minutes.
Exactly! And ticket prices are already through the roof as it is!
Although TV and movies-in-theatres differ in many ways, and it would be slightly shifting the topic, I’m surprised no one has mentioned the vast difference, between the U.S., and Europe including Britain, on political adverts on TV.
I have only lived about 6 years of my life in Britain at times quite awhile ago. But (and Brits should correct me if I’m wrong), the only paid-for TV for political parties is, I think, a strictly controlled and distributed occasional 5-minute ‘Rhinoceros Party political broadcast’ (for example), possibly not even allowed on commercial TV, only BBC. And on the continent, it’s even stricter in most places, IIRC. (Unfortunately, Canada is more like the U.S., though we didn’t fall for the Conservatives half-lies too badly this time.)
Much of the this discussion—the law in different places, free speech, etc…, is relevant to that also. But there’s also the question of the terrible effect of big money on politics, and on, e.g., the positions of all but Trump (who has his own) among the clown circus, AKA Republican debates. I think much of that big money goes for TV. And I realize it’s presently out of the question (even constitutionally?) to change that in U.S. But at least Britain has largely avoided the 9/10-lies of Merd-dork, or what ever his name is, that Australian newpaper/Fauxnews owner, at least with respect to TV, if not ‘news’papers.
Sorry, should be an ‘e’ on the end of ‘Merd’.
In the run-up to the election the major TV channels have to run campaign ads for the major parties as part of their charter. Who is defined as a major party and what the various allowances are is a bit arcane but the channels themselves are supposed to be neutral.
Other than that, yes, political TV advertising is very strictly controlled. I’m not sure about newspapers & billboards but I think that it’s far less restricted, and ads can be placed at any time.
Too much obviously commercial politicking is seen as a bad thing in typical British fashion.
Ironically, I must ask, is nothing sacred? Christians invade my personal time preaching to me: coming to my home, accosting me in malls and on the street and in airports. Is it too much to ask to be away from their incessant babble when I go see a movie?
You said it!
It probably is too much to ask. Different people would prefer not to be exposed to different things, different advertisers would like to expose them to different things, and the only way for nobody to get offended/annoyed/affronted/”microagressioned” is not to show any ads before the shows (I am originally from Eastern Europe, and during the communist rule there were no ads in cinemas, nor were the movies on TV or TV shows interrupted by ads. There are many things from that time I would not want to go back to, but that one I wouldn’t mind. In a market economy, one should pay extra for it, of course, to compensate the cinema for the loss of advertising revenue.)
There wouldn’t be so much of an uproar if it was the British Nazi Party being denied by the cinema for the exact same reasons. Since the cinema is a private outlet, it can perfectly well practice its freedom of speech by not providing a platform for speech and kinds of speech that impact its ability to do business. If it was a public service provided by the state, then that would be a different story. The cinema has rights too.
I agree with both Jerry and Richard.
If a commercial organisation chooses not to show any kind of ad, then provided that it doesn’t constitute discrimination, that’s their choice.
If an advert offends me, then I have to acknowledge the fact that nobody has the right not to be offended. To protest against this ad on the grounds that it offends me is no different to a Muslim demanding that nobody draw Allah because it offends them.
The clause “provided that it doesn’t constitute discrimination” can be manipulated into meaning whatever anybody wants it to mean. I assume that you would like to exclude things like “refusing to bake a cake for a gay couple” from private business’s right to exercise “their choice”. But refusing the CoE ad can be presented as an act of discrimination compared to other advertisers. If an ad for prayer is refused, and an ad for yoga/meditation wellness movement isn’t, they can claim they are unfairly discriminated. Whenever you can manipulate arguments to support any conclusion you wish, somewhere in your chain of reasoning there is a step that does not rely on facts.
Right, but your example points to the solution. Its not illegal discrimination when a private company refuses to air an entire class or type of ad, regardless of vendor or content. So “no political ads” is okay, while “liberal political ads yes, conservative political ads no” is not okay. Likewise for religious organizations. A blanket ‘no’ on “come join our ideological group” ads is perfectly fine; what would be illegal would be to allow Catholics or Buddhists or the American Atheists to advertise their local branch but not allow Anglicans to do so.
So IMO the problem is not as hard as you make it out to be. Yes there will be some edge cases in some instances, but we are certainly not faced with the situation where such rules can be manipulated to mean anything and somehow the law is powerless to stop it/see through it. In most cases, it is pretty easy for the law to distinguish between the legal and illegal versions.
If there is an actual policy in place, which does not allow certain types of ads, fine. Then the service provider can point that this ad is agains their policy. The problem here is that there doesn’t seem to be a policy of that kind, which made the decision appear arbitrary.
And an ad for the yoga wellness centre may be argued have a purpose similar to an ad for another contemplative activity (prayer), so they should be classed together. And then the people who don’t like yoga might try to have the ad banned because of its flagrant “cultural appropriation”. Which would be silly. As is banning a CoE ad which, as far as religious ads go, is milder and less intrusive than any others I have seen.
Are you still talking about the CofE add?
It’s right there in Jerry’s first para.: “The commercial agency [DCM] that handles ads for UK movies refused, saying that their policy banned the showing of religious or political ads in theaters.”
So it’s not arbitrary at all…
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If there is such policy, there is no doubt that they had every right to refuse it. But this Jerry’s paragraph has led the discussion astray:
“So although Richard does understand that there is no “right” to have these ads shown in cinemas, he apparently feels that the ad should nevertheless be shown. And that means that he feels that the organization that banned the ads, Digital Cinema Media (DCM), should accept all ads, whatever religion or political ideology they espouse.”
The last sentence is a non sequitur. Dawkins was not complaining about the policy. He just said, in effect, that he wouldn’t mind if there was no such policy.
Which has just the consequence Jerry notes.
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On the fence;
Here are my first thoughts (realizing that later I may think that I was off base):
If DCM – that I presume is a private corporation – made a pure business decision to run or not run the add, then I think they get the benefit of the doubt. As Jerry pointed out, there are usually other venues to get the same entertainment.
If however, DCM decided to run an Anglican add and deny a Muslim, or Catholic, or Atheist add based on ideology, I think that would violate the principle of “public accommodation” (it’s a US term, but Locke and Montesquieu discussed it).
So, based on the information I have so far; I’m in the Dawkins’ camp. I haven’t seen the evidence to convince me that DCM made anything other than a business decision. Having said that, I’m all for religions attempting to get their message out through pop-culture (Kirk Cameron anyone?)
Like I said, ideologically, I’m on the fence. But, emotionally; please run it, I’m sure it’s a train wreck.
If confronted with such a message, I would take up the invitation “Let’s go out to the lobby…” and get some popcorn.
To clarify how these things work there are several layers going on here: CofE, their ad agency, DCM, and the cinemas.
DCM sells advertising space on the screen on behalf of the cinemas. This makes life a lot easier for the cinema chains as they then don’t have to worry about selecting ads, the agency does this for them. There’s a lot of chat about “target demographics” at this point which I’ll ignore, but the upshot is a reel of ads that gets played before the main feature. Clients pay DCM, DCM takes a cut and pays the cinema, everyone on that side is happy!
The CofE would have gone to A.N. Other agency (they probably have ad agencies on retainer, most big organizations do) and given them a brief for a 1 minute film. As part of this brief it would have been specified that a cinema ad was one of the deliverables. At this point, the agency should have known that DCM, who sells the ad space for several major UK cinema groups, doesn’t accept religious or political ads for screening, and the client/CofE informed. There are folks called Media Buyers in ad agencies, their entire job is placing adverts in media and will know of any restrictions if worth their cheque.
This means 1 of 2 things: either the agency that the CofE commissioned to make the ad screwed up by not knowing of DCM’s rules, or they did and the client over-ruled the agency.
A possible 3rd option is that the CofE runs most of the media buying in-house only using a 3rd party to create the film clip, in which case CofE’s own marketing dept is incompetent.
As someone who works for a major advertising agency I find this saga highly amusing.
A 4th option is that the agency/client realised that they would get more publicity for the campaign if the ad was banned and went for it anyway. That’s not an uncommon tactic.
You can’t switch channels or easily walk away if the ad comes on in a cinema. I suppose you could close your eyes, block your ears and sing “La la la” as loud as possible.
GDP
Reblogged this on Nina's Soap Bubble Box and commented:
the theatre makes it’s profit money from the concession stand, so the stuff on screen is the bait and switch product.
they are offering an evening of entertainment and I don’t want to see political or religious content in the line up of commercials and previous or disguised as “short films”
even if I agree with the political or religious content or not. it is not appropriate to potentially ruin your client’s experience of an evening away from their lifes, on dates or just escapism on their own.
it’s not about offending, it’s about undermining the every experience the theatre is selling.
frankly, on television, I am concerned that most advertising is not even for products, but are PR bits about companies themselves, usually in BIG oil.
so I’d like a better line drawn about TV commercials having to be ads and not propaganda.
“I still strongly object to suppressing the ads on the grounds that they might ‘offend’ people. If anybody is ‘offended’ by something so trivial as a prayer, they deserve to be offended.” – Dawkins
He has a point. It’s pretty much the same point as we all were making about the ‘offence culture’ on campus.
Circumstances alter cases (as the judge said), and the circumstances here are of overriding significance. In the context of cinema ads, the DCM is in the position of arbiter of what is shown, whether they like it or not. On balance, I think the DCM got it right, but if they went the other way and showed the ad, I as a customer would be annoyed for about a minute but I wouldn’t let it ruin my day.
cr
“(I presume London buses are run by the government, but I may be wrong),”
London buses are run by a number of companies under term contracts to Transport for London (TfL), a local government body.
Who controls advertising on them I don’t know.
cr
TfL owns the rights to advertise on London buses, so decides who gets to do that.
As with this case, they’re allowed to have policies saying “no religious ads/no political ads”, but wouldn’t be allowed to discriminate between otherwise acceptable ads solely on the grounds of religious or philosophical belief.
It’s not that long ago they stopped playing “G*d save the queen” after every movie. We can’t have religious tripe thrown at us in ads. If it was on TV we could switch it over, so Jerry is 100% correct. Richard Dawkins has lost it on this argument, can’t have captive audiences getting spoon fed dogma.
When I buy a ticket to a movie, I expect to see NO ads, of ANY kind!!
“The Church of England is arrogant to imagine it has an automatic right to foist its opinions upon a captive audience who have paid good money for a completely different experience.”
– got to disagree there; films have fictitious scripts (sometimes degrees of reality included), the material is often far-fetched, fanciful and only realised in the imagination; full of gratuitous violence…so far quite a similar experience 😛
Well we do technically have a kind of quasi-theocracy in the UK. The Church of England does get benefits that other religions don’t.
Personally I’m completely fine with that. It’s not something you could justify by recourse to some reasonable principle by any means. But it just empirically works well in the UK because the Anglican church is so nice and benign.
Dawkins has used the example of it being a vaccine against worse kinds of religion. That really is exactly what happens!
I wonder if there’s any possibility that continued distrust of Muslims by political conservatives could lead to the emergence of a more fundamentalist sect of the Church of England?
I agree with that.
Every now and then some organ of the church has a spasm of self-righteousness (as witness Muggers and the Bish in the Life of Brian controversy) but the kerfuffle usually subsides with the majority of the CofE adherents probably muttering ‘what are they goin’ on about?’ to themselves.
And decades later an Anglican church in Newcastle screened the movie (as a commenter mentioned in a previous thread).
cr
This is a letter to her bishop from a member of the CoE, this point is particularly interesting
‘Lastly, I have been deeply concerned today by the sight of some emails between DCM agency and Rev Arun Arora which give the impression that the Church of England was aware of the likelihood that the advertisement would not run as early as 3 August this year. If these are genuine, this gives the lie to its claim to have been ‘bewildered’ on 22 November, and the hypocrisy and cynicism is revolting.
http://kathleenjowitt.com/2015/11/25/open-letter-to-my-bishop/