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Ad Depicting Nude Couple Having Sex Not Pornographic: UK Advertising Standards Authority

By Hilary White

November 5, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - According to the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), a newspaper ad for a film depicting a nude man and woman having sex and bearing the caption, "contains strong real sex, bloody violence and self-mutilation," is not pornographic and presents no threat to the values or sensibilities of the community. 

The ASA's ruling comes in response to seven complaints they received after the ads appeared where children might easily see them.

The photo is part of an advertisement for the film "Antichrist," and appeared in three of Britain's largest circulation newspapers: the Guardian, the Times and the Independent. Antichrist is a horror film, starring Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourg, that revolves around the psychological after effects of the accidental death of an infant. The Lars Von Trier film has been slammed for what reviewers have labeled its extremely and pointlessly graphic content throughout the entertainment industry.
 
CNN's Tom Charity called the film an "atrocity," saying it is "a wrenching psychodrama for two-thirds of its running time before collapsing into a steaming heap of deranged sadism and supernatural symbolism in the outrageous third act."

USA Today's Claudia Puig said that Antichrist "should have been deep-666'd" and called it "bleak and self-indulgent." "Under the guise of a meditation on marriage, parenthood and anguish, Antichrist is actually a particularly misogynistic torture-porn film," Puig wrote.

Nevertheless, the ads for it - which show a nude man from the buttocks up lying on top of a nude woman, clearly in the act of copulation - are "not offensive," said the ASA, which went on to assure the public that it is "unlikely to cause sexual excitement."

The ASA ruling continued, "If children did see the ad, it was not considered particularly explicit. The dream-like context, introduced by the hands protruding from the tree, had the effect of making the image of the naked couple seem removed from reality."

The ASA's history of opposing traditional moral values is extensive.

In 2002 the agency decided to ban an ad by the UK Life League in Christian publications, saying that the use of the terms "teenage sex clinics" and "death mills" was "offensive, especially because children and people of varying sexual orientations might see the advertisement." However, this year, the ASA announced a proposal to change the rules to allow abortionists to advertise on television.  

To contact the ASA:

To contact the Advertising Standards Authority:
Mid City Place,
71 High Holborn,
London,
WC1V 6QT, UK
Phone 020 7492 2222
Textphone 020 7242 8159
Fax 020 7242 3696
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
UK Ad Authority Bans Pro-Life Ads in Religious Publications
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2002/jan/02010905.html

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