On Nicholson St in Carlton.
I love the heritage of some of these signs. They have an earnest artlessness that imparts a real sense of place and time. Artlessness isn’t something that goes much with marketing, where the awareness and associations tend to be managed to the nth degree. Even seeming artlessness is often highly staged, such as RACV’s Jason call centre ads or iinet’s BOB. I reckon there’s a case for preserving as much true, authentic artlessness as you can find in a heritage brand. Where people have become wary of agency schmick and having their psychology over-understood, artlessness is a refreshing reminder of a different meaning for consumer orientation.
When I saw this by the roadside in Izu, I thought, “Gee, that’s a kinda fastidiously sculptural, and large, piece of topiary for a roadside in the Middle of Nowhere. Those Japanese really do like sculpting their plants.”
Just saw an ad for Taiwan Tourism showing women picking tea in the fields. It’s almost certainly a tea plantation! Case dismissed.
I’ve been getting increasingly disturbed lately about just how rampant misogyny is. It started when a guy I was having dinner with suggested, I think with a fair degree of seriousness, that men were superior to women in every field of endeavour. I suggested they were certainly better at getting imprisoned for crime. (The rate in the US is about around 15 times more men than women in prison.)
More recently I was reading the most disturbing article in the June 2010 edition of The Monthly on “gendercide“. To be blunt, the issue’s what it sounds like: baby girls being killed one way or another, because they’re girls. The extent of it is breathtaking: according to economist Amartya Sen, in 1990, distortions in the reported gender imbalances of Asian countries suggested the number of missing girls/women was approximately 100 million. The article reports that the overall male:female birth rate in China from 2000 – 2005 was 123:100. Where couples are permitted to have a second or third child, the ratio can balloon as high as 275:100. Baby girls are routinely dumped: either left to die or, for the “lucky” ones, placed in overcrowded and abusive orphanages.
My final exhibit is Jon La Joie, whose astonishing complicit critique “Show Me Your Genitals” popped up in my Twitter feed this week. La Joie decodes misogyny and male insecurity perfectly – but I wonder how many of his adolescent audience take him completely literally, despite the obviously goofy dance moves, clothing, rhyme schemes and cinematography?
I’m interested in people’s thoughts about this. How does it affect you as a woman? Are there cultures that have moved away from this successfully? What are the ways we can change cultures so that women are, in every respect, first class citizens?
