Trigger warning: People eating meat
Reader Gregory Z. sent me a link to this promotional ad for Australian lamb, which is relevant not only because it’s food (I consider lamb the perfect meat to accompany a good Bordeaux), but because it features a host of deities from around the world, as well as an atheist! For reasons that will be clear, this ad could never be made in the U.S.
But even in Australia the ad caused some outrage, and, as the news story below notes, it was finally pulled (watch only the first 25 and last ten seconds; the rest is the full ad):
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After reading the post in my email account, it took so long for it to appear here that I’ll call this the Second Coming of the Lamb of Gods.
This will be one of my all-time favorite religious satires.
No Muhammad? As one tweeter wrote. “Is lamb a phobia?”
That simple, and easily understood, absence puts the lie to several bushels of Islamic apologetics.
Oh man I wish I’d thought of that!
Of course, he didn’t show up. He cannot be depicted.
Daycare. Picking up his wife.
Quite a sly joke.
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It would have been! Alas, it’s not what’s in the ad.
The invitations said ‘+ 1’. That’s why he wasn’t there.
Seriously, I once produced a song for a trendy-loooking wide-boy Muslim guy in Brum, England, to show off the opportunities & diversity in Brummie education. So we wrote a techno-Bhangra 10-minute sub-Nusrat-Fateh-Ali-Khan Muezzin overture.
Q successful, it worked: Brum City Council was happy. So was our patron, the Karachi cowboy.
He invited us white musicians to his house for an Asian meal. Yes, please!
Fantastic food, cooked by his hijabbed wife (regarding whom he was later jailed for wife-beating) and which the white-boy pop combo ate in his dining-room that no female member of his 3-generation house could enter. In fact none of his female generation dared speak to us in their own house.
Our Svengali made one exception in his testosterone dining-room: our pianist was spectacularly talented and contributed several themes to the overture. But she was a she. She, an Estonian, and therefore a bit odd, could eat in the male-only dining room.
The most awkward evening of my life.
Eh? Not in the ad? I got the reference immediately. And burst out laughing.
cr
Me too – very sly.
I love it that the featured Jesus doesn’t look middle-eastern at all.
The ad is very clever with plenty of references but the one with L. Ron Hubbard most people other than older Aussies like me might not get.
Many years ago (more than 30 perhaps) there was an ad here in Oz for lamb where a young woman is called by a radio station and told she had won dinner with Tom Cruise but when told the date was that evening she says ‘I can’t tonight, mum’s doing a lamb roast’.
That line became a popular catch phrase for when you didn’t want to do something.
Cool reference.
For the non-ancient aussies, I thought the first joke (“he’s everywhere..just kidding, he’s working”) was the best. The rest was only okay. But three thumbs up for going there!
It’s clear though that the film makers understand there is one religion that must not, cannot, will not be mocked.
Nah. They still got him with, “day care pick up.” Y’know, for one of his wives?
Ach, you beat me to it.
It’s still a sly joke, though.
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I’m almost tempted to start a go-fund-me to run this in the U.S. But I’m guessing no station would accept it.
Lamb is not that popular in America
That’s why advertising
Yep, advertising turned chicken wings from near-throwaway parts to more-valuable-than-breast.
I found this ad funny but paradoxal: if you’re in presence of undisputable gods and goddesses how can you be a-theist? Even if neither of them is her personal god, it would be difficult for her to deny their existence or their divinity.
In her case, she could be deist (or multi-theist) even if she avows no religion.
Actually, if you can personally observe the evidence of higher power, you aren’t a believer because you’ve simply accepted testable evidence rather than took it on faith, so you could still qualify as an atheist.
It’s the same dilemma for atheists in comic book universes where you have Norse gods and various deities running around. You couldn’t be the same *kind* of atheist you are in our resolutely god-free universe, but you could still doubt their claims to absolute divinity. After all, in the world of the commercial, the main claim of the monotheist gods are obviously false.
She doesn’t _have_ no religion, she _is_ “no religion. She’s a anthropomorphic personification just like the rest of them.
Anthropomorhic personification? You’re a Pratchett fan I assume?
(My household god appears to be Anoia, Goddess of Things Stuck in Drawers. I didn’t choose her, she manifestly chose me 😦
cr
I assume Mohammed was picking up his wife at the daycare?
OK. Now I feel really slow.
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Haha it’s OK. Nobody else read mine either and now every is getting credit for my joke! 😛
I don’t know the Japanese one. I imagine the “more followers than anyone” thing is a joke I’m not getting. Anyone know?
More followers on social media than other gods have in “real life”.
(And Amaterasu, presumably.)
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And a Jedi! Code for “no religion” in a previous British census.
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Oh, and shouldn’t the trigger warning be, “Elephant-God eating meat”?
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That’s the most fun I’ve had in months. My respect and admiration for Aussieland is over the top.
I usually hide under the table when it comes to Aussie humour, but that’s good!
Why do the politically-correct knee-jerkers always have precedence over normal people? This ad is so Australian: we have no reverence for anything and take the mickey out of anyone who stands still. Always been that way. How do a few idiots get enough clout to have the ad removed? The sooner religion disappears, the better for the whole world. I really get sick of this s**t.
I think that’s the most remarkable ad I’ve seen in my entire life (and I’m pushing 60). As others have noted, the one possible flaw is the atheist who doesn’t believe in gods even though they’re right there in front of her. And they don’t seem to be frauds–we see Jesus perform a miracle. Maybe they wanted to mock atheists a little too, and that’s OK.
I don’t know whether other Canadian readers would agree, but I can’t imagine that ad being shown on Canadian TV either.
No, CBC would never allow it and others wouldn’t take the risk. But we’d all laugh about it. Plus, atheists got a good ribbing in that.
Well, they maybe right in front of her, but it is not as if they are real, or should I actually say only ‘as if’?
Didn’t get the bit with the peas. Or the eggplant line.
Moses parting the “peas”
I’m still not getting the eggplant.
From a website about memes …
“The Eggplant Emoji, often referred to as the aubergine, is an ideogram depicting a narrow, oblong species of Japanese eggplant, often used in online and text message conversations to represent male genitalia or as a sexual innuendo. While the emoji set is standard worldwide, this association is generally confined to the United States.”
Great: funny and very clever.
I’m sure there are still jokes I’m missing.
That is an incredibly subtle and intelligent ad. Never seen anything like it.
Indeed. Do the creators think many viewers will get the jokes?
Certainly an equal-offence ad. Took the piss out of everybody. I approve. It was almost guaranteed to attract strong objections from some quarter or other. Though if Ganesh is a vegetarian, that was a bad mistake, since the point of the ad is ‘lamb suits everybody’ – they surely could have found some other non-vegetarian Hindu deity.
The obligatory (and non-satirical) reference to the product almost made it fall flat for me, though.
cr
But then they couldn’t have done the elephant-in-the-room gag, could they?
Good point, but they would have just had to find a different gag to suit whatever other Hindu deity they used. Kali, maybe. I doubt she was a vegetarian.
cr
Reblogged this on The Logical Place.
Wonderful!
And the spot has Aliens and a Jedi, too. May the Force be with u! 🙂