Absolut Mango Vodka ad on Wilshire Boulevard
I like taking iPhone shots of the billboards on Wilshire Boulevard, and on June 22 I saw this on the wall of a really tall building. The colors were intriguing, and I considered it artistic. The fact that it was an ad for Absolut Vodka and that the round thing was a mango representing a new flavor didn’t register in my mind at the time. I completely overlooked the bottle and the copy.
I usually enjoy reading Steve Lopez (for those outside LA, he was played by Robert Downey Jr. in The Soloist starring Jamie Foxx…), but today his article made me realize yet again how different my view of the world is from the mindset of most people who call LA home.
The title of the piece was: It’s funny what passes for offensive these days. At first, I went, yeah… why would anyone be offended by this? But it turns out he was contrasting the fact that this ad is still up whilst another ad nearby was taken down. The ad was torn down because of a complaint about the statement “You Can’t Trust Mercury Insurance.”
I won’t go into the details (read the article to get the whole story) because it just makes my mind go through contortions. From what I understand, the bigger point is that the Mercury Insurance billboard should not have been taken down. But gosh, the emphasis on this ad being reminiscent of a vagina…
One of the directions in which my mind spun was to an incident when I was about 12 or 13. I was bored during class recess so I absent-mindedly started drawing a spider on a piece of paper in front of me. A boy saw my drawing and then gave me a look, and all of a sudden it dawned on me that the way I had drawn it called to mind a vagina. He showed it to another boy and asked, What does this look like to you?
If he hadn’t given me that look, the fact that the drawing looked like a vagina would not have occured to me. I would not even remember drawing it.
Many incidents that would have meant nothing or would not have been a big deal are often made significant this way. That’s why monks are sequestered from the world. To keep their minds pure and focused and undistracted by inconsequential noise.