WHERE SUCCESSFUL ADVERTISING MEETS LGBT EQUALITY

Posttimees (Estonia newspaper), Parade

Members:

A large man is doing maintenance on the side of his apartment building when a variation of the Village People song "YMCA" begins to play. He looks down the street and sees three men walking up the sidewalk arm in arm (one with his hand in the back pocket of the leather daddy). They even have matching red scarves tied around their necks (the Village People wouldn't be caught dead in matching scarves), and loud patterned club shirts.

The maintenance man looks surprised and scowls at them and asks them where they've come from. The three of them laugh and tell him the parade, then walk away arm in arm. The maintenance man runs inside and gets a large red, former Soviet flag and begins waving it around and shouting "To the parade! Let's all go to the parade!" He looks up to a window and sees an older lady who is reading the newspaper and looks down at him unsurprised at his shouts of concern.

She looks at the camera and smiles and says something to the effect of "Young man, read the Postimees, then you know what's going on in the world." She holds the paper in front of her face and the cover story has an image of two gay men.

User Comments
Yves Moralex
Stereotypes of Village People and hideously dressed fags are the now-classic caricatures by hetero-metro-sexual capitalists who really don't have a clue or concern about the homosexual agenda, but will still use the United States to make their buck. Should I expect more from Estonia, when the United States corporate media complex swaggers in its unequal and stupid treatment of gay lifestyle?

Severin
Someone commented that Estonia is a homophobic country. That's true when you think of the older generation yet most of the young people I know (I live in Estonia) have no problem with gay sexuality. The old woman is one of EStonia's most honoured actors, Ita Ever. The heading in the newspaper reads "A gay parade takes place in Tallinn". This year's gay parade just took place (during the gay pride week). It's 2006 at the moment and this was the 3rd annual gay parade here, if I'm not mistaken. It seems to me that people have a very dramatic view of Estonia. Actually, when you walk around Tallinn it looks and has become quite modern. I can understand that the communist symbols in the ad might also lead the foreign viewer to think otherwise but Estonian commercials don't usually have guys running around with red flags.

You also mentioned the matching scarves which have a point. They look just like the scarves pioneer-children wore during the Soviet era and when the maintenance guy asks the three men where they're coming from, he addresses them as pioneers. The fact that the maintenance guy thinks that the three guys are pioneers is probably one of the reasons he's convinced he needs that red flag.

Bobby
While I usually don't like stereotypes, I admit that I liked this ad. Estonia is a homophobic country, a former Communist Republic, and this is a positive step--a non-judgemental attitude towards people, even stereotypical renditions of people. I also like the casting; I guess in Europe they know that not everyone is a skinny bulimic.

Calder Falk
I thought the ad was funny. I agree that the gay men in the ad are caricatures--and that can be offensive to some. Maybe I'm being a bit naive, but I think it's quite progressive for an ad from an Eastern European country. I know that often it can be difficult to define that fine line between acceptance of diversity and stereotyping, but I also don't want our community to become homogenized (no pun intended); I'd like to see many different expressions within the queer world and sometimes our own internalized homophobia may lead to problems with inclusion.