The offendatrons are out again.
The Church of England has said it is “disappointed and bewildered” by the refusal of leading UK cinemas to show an advert featuring the Lord’s Prayer.
The Church called the decision “plain silly” and warned it could have a “chilling” effect on free speech.
Oh my word, here we go again. Given that offence taking is now a national sport, I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. They are right, it is chilling regarding free speech, but the offendatrons have eroded that already. Who, frankly, would be offended by an advert featuring the Lord’s Prayer? I don’t believe, but I am not offended by it. Not remotely.
The agency that handles adverts for the cinemas said it could offend those of “differing faiths and no faith”.
I see. So these twats are taking offence on my behalf… Although the “no faith” bit is a sop. What they really mean is “Muslims”. The irony being that Muslims aren’t offended either. Unless they are of the violent jihadi kind, in which case, the Lord’s Prayer is the least of our concerns.
However, the Digital Cinema Media (DCM) agency, which handles British film advertising for the major cinema chains, Odeon, Cineworld and Vue, refused to show the advert because it believed it would risk upsetting or offending audiences.
If anyone is upset or offended by something so innocuous, they need to be offended good and hard on a regular basis to give them some immunity.
I don’t think that it is about offence at all. IFAIK there is a long standing rule against showing adverts for religion or politics. So this ad would not be shown for that reason, the stuff about offence is a smoke screen. Looking that the clips that I’ve seen I would have thought that it would be mostly offensive to Christians, It certainly wouldn’t offend me.
Apparently the CofE was told that the ad had passed all the tests before being given approval which was then withdrawn. My money’s on some Muslim group having lobbied against it when it got wind.
Let us be frank: There is no god, Allah and Jehovah, inclusive.
‘The Church called the decision “plain silly” and warned it could have a “chilling” effect on free speech.’
The Church clearly doesn’t understand that the whole “Freedom of Speech” thing ONLY APPLIES TO GOVERNMENTS. It has no bearing whatsoever on private individuals or businesses, who are legally, morally, and ethically free to do whatever they bloody well please and have no obligation to provide The Church with a platform for its tedious bollocks.
The various approvals The Church talks about are completely separate from Digital Cinema Media, the company that distributes the ads to cinemas. If DCM have a long-standing policy against running ads promoting specific religions or political views, why should they make an exception now?
Christmas has become an annual consumerist festival primarily represented by some old bloke in a beard delivering presents from a reindeer-hauled sleigh. Despite the name of the festival*, and the creepy people ringing on doors and singing songs about their imaginary friend in exchange for money, it has precious little to do with anyone named “Christ”.
* (A festival pilfered wholesale by The Church from their pagan predecessors, with a bit of Mithraism thrown in. So it’s more than a little hypocritical of them to complain about capitalists following their example and stealing it away from them.)
Christ appears to have been hijacked from Mithras…
Given that the church has happily banned anything it doesn’t like wherever and whenever it has had the power to do so, I’m struggling to give a toss about their hypocritical whining now.
Why do we have to have any advertising in cinemas anyway? FFS you pay a cinema to see a film, not to be regaled with self-serving crapola which mostly comprises repeats of the ads on TV. OTOH many movies are also self-servinmg crapola but that’s another issue.