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In the wake of the election and the rising tour de force that the religious right has become in keeping boobies and swearwords off TV, the tolerance, compassion and compromise of the Liberal Blue States has developed a new trend in advertising keyed directly towards making money off them moral anal-retentives. I call it Christploitation, and you can expect to see a lot more of it in the next four years.
Maybe it's not a new thing, but the way it's being moved, presented, accounted for and depended upon today makes it new. Simply put, it's the mining of the moral indignance held by Americans for cheap publicity and free advertising.
In the media, attention and controversy is what sells. And what better way to accumulate attention and controversy than by making public that which is taboo, risque, or frowned upon. The eternal famewhore Paris Hilton based her entire career on it and Janet Jackson may have pushed it into the mainstream, but now advertisers and media moguls are stroking their chins thoughtfully at what easy and profitable controversy they can amass by a simple nipple slip, offbeat swearword, or, ohhhh I dunno......an interracial hug between a pro football player and a naked reality TV star before Monday Night Football.
Now, think about that for a sec. The producers, directors, and agencies working for MFN each make 6-figure incomes. They have been involved in broadcasting, advertising and market trends their entire lives. They are the best at what they do, and they are not stupid when it comes to careful and clever promo spots on TV. They did not just run up this scene willy-nilly. Oh hell no. There is no way advertising geniuses like that would been so oblivious to think that writing, producing, filming, and airing a skit like that would not offend the fundies. No. This was planned. This was timed. This was cold-calculated, premeditated, and carefully prepared and delivered specifically to offend the vocal moralizers. They had the apology already set to go as soon as the skit went to air. (because apologizing alleviates the blame, until they do it again next time--which they will).
Here, then, is the crux: the spot is guaranteeing free publicity and advertising for Monday Night Football simply for the controversy it's generating. And the beautiful part about what makes the skit so clever is that it's risque enough to offend the in-bed-before-9ers, but not obscene enough to evoke the wrath of the FCC. It straddles the perfect line of being controversial but legal. And even if the FCC does fine them, the fine isn't worth a tenth of what said controversy can generate. It's likely that ABC prepared themselves for it anyway; the FCC's fine was factored into the budget of producing the skit. All T.O. has to do is play dumb, and the station is laughing at how easy it is to push America's buttons. If the election has convinced these advertisers anything, it's that milking the moral values of middle America is a HUGELY profitable market now, and Christploitation is that which exactly caters to their offensitivities.
But it's not like we should be strangers to this kind of advertising technique. The internet even has a word for people who do this: "trolls", referring to crafty yucksters who deliberately drop offensive and knee-jerk opinions in chat rooms simply to evoke a response from others, like trolling for fish. After awhile, though, most people figure it out, and learn enough not to feed the trolls.
As the fiascos involving airing an unedited "Saving Private Ryan", the calculated boob-drop photo-op of Terra Reid and now Terrell Owens debut performance are any indication, it's going to take a mighty long while before the Christian Right ever figure out that the media is exploiting their outrage for cheap publicity. Until then, however, expect to see more Christploitated media tricks in Prime Time television. Personally, I can't wait to hear detailed accounts of what rough anal sex feels like in Will & Grace.
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