ViacomCBS, Bruises - Girl

Members:

2001 Television Report A Problem

A series of violent sounds, including screams, smacks and crying, as a young battered woman sits on the floor with a broken lip and nose.

Finally, an angry voice asks, "You like it like that, don't you dyke?"

The closing caption says, "Take a stand against discrimination."

It is never made clear whether the person is actually gay or not, just that the violence itself with the hate speech counts as discrimination.

The ad is part of a series in partnership between MTV and GLSEN, the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network, which represents youth, teachers and administrators in K-12 schools.

MTV has set the gold standard among all advertisers for the most ads that refer to the community, more than 17 since 1996, in addition to carrying numerous gay ads from other companies and running its own supportive gay-inclusive programming.

Company

ViacomCBS

Brand

MTV/Take A Stand Against Discrimination/GLSEN

Industry

Media Outlets: Broadcasters-Publishers-Online-Games-Music

Media Outlet

Television

Country

United States

Region

North America

Agency

Public Interest Productions/Radical Media

AdRespect Themes

User Comments

Cece Benjamin

It's a terribly graphic ad and very hard to watch, but it definitely gets the message across.

Ricky

I think it's good the shock value of this commercial shows what it's like to be for 30 seconds in the life of a gay person and seeing what damage it does and how much it hurts. I think the world needs to see the pain it's caused to so many gay and lesbian people. A lot of homophobic incidents are smoothed over and people who ARE homophobic YET not violent contribute .. but they've never seen the violence they themselves have caused indirectly from their attitudes and opinions. This commercial shoves the image of the beat up lesbian down the throats of all viewers, and in doing so.. hopefully homophobic people will realize and change their ways, AND people who are gay-supportive will find a fire within them to stand up even stronger. We all need inspiration, and what else generates inspiration like an image like this?

FDK

I did not like this ad at all. To me, the anti-discrimination message at the end looked like it was tacked on as an after-thought, a pathetic attempt to say "Oh, uh, you see... We're AGAINST this sort of thing. Yeah, that's it. We're against it. We show this to... Yeah, that's it, to discourage anti-lesbian violence! Not to encourage it, no, not at all! (Psst, do you think they're buying our cover story?)"

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