An ad from the streaming platform BINGE has been discontinued on the grounds of depicting violence, according to Australia's advertising complaints handling body Ad Standards.
The advertisement was produced internally by Foxtel. Creative agency, Thinkerbell, contributed to the concept and creative development. Mindshare was the media agency.
The ad - displayed in the cinema and on free to air tv - is a montage of various scenes from BINGE's tv series.
The three-second scene flagged by the complaints depicts a woman kicking a man in the testicles from the television series Upright.
Various text message bubbles are superimposed over the scene reading “That’s gonna hurt”, “Loved Milly in House of The Dragon – she is badass”, “Upright be back!!” and “Well deserved!!”, among others.
The complaints submitted to Ad Standards include:
"This is encouraging female violence against men. If it were a man kicking a women it would not be allowed. It is unacceptable that this type of violence has been passed for use in Australia. It is clearly gender biased.
"And the violence is not at all justified, and seems to suggest that women kicking men, and destroying their chances of having children is in some way ok, cause she felt like it."
Another said:
"This is a blatant display of the glorification of gendered-based violence. Never would you see the opposite occur for a television advertisement, where a man did the same for a woman, especially glorified in a way that is promoting violence and sexism. There was no provocation shown by the male.
"This was seen by my 6 year old child, who now believes this sort of behaviour is acceptable, and this translated into action approximately 2 hours after seeing this."
In response, Foxtel said:
"If Ad Standards determined that the advertisement depicted “violence”, Foxtel’s view is that the scenes are justifiable in the context of the product being advertised, namely the availability of the television series, Upright, on Binge.
"The visual representations within the advertisement are from the television series and are a necessary and accurate indicator of the characters in the series and the themes and relationships that are explored."
However, the Ad Standards Panel considered that the kick was gratuitous and not necessary as there were plenty of other moments from the show which could have been used.
Overall, the panel considered that the violent scene was not justifiable in the promotion of a streaming service, which could have used other non-violent scenes to promote its shows. And breached AANA Code of Ethics\2.3.
Foxtel discontinued the display of the advertisement in mid-January.
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