{"id":10493,"date":"2009-07-02T09:54:40","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T14:54:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=10493"},"modified":"2017-11-05T17:29:45","modified_gmt":"2017-11-05T22:29:45","slug":"waking-up-to-the-link-between-violence-and-sex","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2009\/07\/02\/waking-up-to-the-link-between-violence-and-sex\/","title":{"rendered":"Waking Up To The Link Between Violence And Sex"},"content":{"rendered":"

Animals Awake<\/a>, a Dutch organization for animals akin to PETA in the U.S., “takes a page from [their] playbook,” according to David at Adfreak<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0 This commercial, in which a stripper is brutally murdered in front of a live audience, is so shocking that my first I thought was that it was a parody. It’s not.<\/p>\n

Major major major trigger warning:<\/p>\n

[vimeo]http:\/\/vimeo.com\/5323112[\/vimeo]<\/p>\n

The critique, of course, is that Animals Awake is contributing to an atmosphere in which violence against women is ubiquitous (see Jezebel<\/a>, for example).\u00a0 But I actually think that this commercial works in that we are (I hope) genuinely horrified by the murder at the end.\u00a0 I don’t think it normalizes <\/em>violence against women like so many other ads\/media\/products do (see here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a> for examples).<\/p>\n

BUT it does normalize the connection between violence and sex.\u00a0 There is absolutely no reason why the person murdered in this ad had to a stripper.\u00a0 There is no reason to spend the first half of the commercial titillating us, only to have it suddenly turned into a horror show.\u00a0 There’s absolutely no connection.\u00a0 But because sex and violence are so frequently linked in the American imagination, it actually took me a few minutes of thinking about it to remember that.\u00a0 And I’m kind of horrified that, in my mind, sex and violence go together like peas and carrots.\u00a0 This ad only reinforces that connection.<\/p>\n

Sorry I made you watch it.<\/p>\n

More images of sexualized violence here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here <\/a>here, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a>, and here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Here’s another PSA<\/a>, this one from the U.K., with exactly the same idea.<\/p>\n

UPDATE:<\/span><\/strong> In the comments, jeffliveshere points out that the commercial is based on a pun:<\/p>\n

I agree that the sex and violence connection is unnecessary–but, to be clear, there is wordplay involved–“stripping fish” is apparently a technical term for removing the guts of fish…<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, so maybe there isn’t “absolutely no connection.” Even so?<\/p>\n

\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n

Lisa Wade is a\u00a0professor of sociology at Occidental College<\/a>. You can follow her on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Facebook<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Animals Awake, a Dutch organization for animals akin to PETA in the U.S., “takes a page from [their] playbook,” according to David at Adfreak.\u00a0\u00a0 This commercial, in which a stripper is brutally murdered in front of a live audience, is so shocking that my first I thought was that it was a parody. It’s not. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[155,55,2090,1789,23704,120,291,133],"class_list":["post-10493","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-animals","tag-gender","tag-gender-violence","tag-nation-the-netherlands","tag-public-service-announcements","tag-sex","tag-sex-work","tag-violence"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10493","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10493"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10493\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72113,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10493\/revisions\/72113"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10493"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10493"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10493"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}