Well now this is getting ridiculous.
As you probably know, we’ve been covering the dumb GEICO commercial where a girl tries to woo a creepy talking pig as though the whole thing was a matter of national security. In the initial post, we asked a number of increasingly stupid questions about the ad, including a bunch about whether or not it was implying that the girl liked to have sex with pigs. (Ex. “Wait, are they, like, going steady?,” “Is it okay to have sex with a pig if the pig is human enough to talk and drive a car?,” and “Even if it is, couldn’t this girl probably do better than a pig with a crappy, broken down car?”) We treated the entire situation with exactly the amount of serious analysis it warranted, which is to say “none.”
But naturally, because this is how things work now, a concerned group of parents has come along four weeks later to protest the ad, and GEICO, because they say it “promotes bestiality.”
“It was just a pretty sleazy type of commercial because the girl [in the commercial] was really disappointed when she realized they wouldn’t be able to pass the time alone together,” said [One Million Moms director Monica] Cole.
I love that she says “pass the time alone together.” She can’t even bring herself to say “have sex” or “have adult relations” in a conversation with another adult that she is only having because she is upset about the implication of sex or adult relations. And “passing the time alone together” is a terrible euphemism here because that’s also what they’re doing even after sex is off the table. They’re sitting in a car, together, just the two of them, waiting for the tow truck. We’re one sentence in and it’s somehow gotten more confusing than the ad itself, which, if you remember, was about a talking pig who can drive a car and has a human girlfriend.
“Kids are drawn to animals. That’s normal. Animals are cute. That’s why movies have animals that play the lead roles and the main parts,” said Cole. “And it may be over their heads in terms of understanding the meaning behind it, but there’s a big concern when kids are being desensitized to this kind of thing.”
FACT: I have seen Space Jam — a movie that sexualizes the hell out of a cartoon female bunny rabbit — something like 50 times, and I have never tried to have sex with a rabbit. Not even once. I rest my case.
Cole says this isn’t the first time GEICO hasn’t taken bestiality seriously. “A bridesmaid was flirting with the gecko in a different commercial, so this is just becoming a norm for GEICO it seems,” Cole said.
You know, if you really think about it, both of the commercials they’re talking about feature potential consensual relationships between humans and talking animals. So even if I give them the benefit of the doubt here, and it is KILLING ME to do so, the lesson of these ads is “Only have sex with animals if they tell you it’s okay by using actual words like humans.” I think we’ll be okay.
“We let them [GEICO] know that our subscribers are concerned about the commercial and that we would like them to pull it immediately,” said Cole. “We have thousands of moms contact them as well so there is strength in numbers.”
Relevant.
[H/t Gawker]
