Holiday Havoc

A couple of weeks ago, at the bookstore, while looking for a birthday present for Dan, I realized that the store was playing Christmas music. Thanksgiving, which seems to be the unofficial earliest date possible that has been deemed safe to play Christmas music without customer rioting, was still six days in the future, but that wasn't what really surprised me.

What surprised me was the song.

They were playing one of my favorites, Fairytale of New York, originally by The Pogues with Kirsty MacColl. It was surprising because it's a bawdy song about spending Christmas in the drunk tank in NYC. Part of the song is sung between two characters who, while fighting each other, use some pretty nasty language. I waited, listening while I shopped, and when they got to the verse with the naughty words, I waited for them to be sung out over the bookstore...

I waited for it... and... they'd been replaced with non-naughty words that sort of rhymed with the originals.

Dammit.

They'd trashed the song.

When I caught up with Dan and the Supercat, I mentioned it to him, and he's heard it, too, noticing the clean version they'd played. I think we were both a bit miffed: someone had taken a perfectly indecent Pogues song and completely ruined it by tidying it up, ridding it of part of what made it good to start with. They aren't words I use in everyday conversation; they aren't nice or polite words at all - rather nasty, in fact. But they convey the mood of the besotted characters, so they belong in the song.

Worst of all, it was a bookstore. Grrrrrr. They deal in ideas, but for whatever reason, someone decided that we couldn't handle ideas, and scrubbed the song clean for us.

Phooey.

A teeny tiny itsy bitsy part of me thinks I should be happy that they played the song at all, but the bigger part of me thinks it should be played as written, as the composer intended, or not at all.

If it doesn't belong in a retail atmosphere (and it may not - I'm not sure it's something I want my small child to hear), don't play it at all. I can see plenty of good reasons not to play it - it's a song about drinking and has foul language; and that might have a deleterious effect on holiday shoppers. That makes perfect sense.

What doesn't make sense is playing a song known to have naughty words and an adult theme, then editing it to remove the parts that make the song unique.

Oddly, this has come up before, almost a year ago, when BBC Radio 1 played a censored version last Christmas(^), after years of playing the "regular" version. They said they were censoring it to "avoid offence". The scrubbed version lasted less than a day, Kirsty MacColl's mother (KM died as the result of a terrible accident a few years ago), and zillions of fans complained.

Anyway, here it is in all its uncensored glory:

The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl

At around the same time the BBC was censoring the Pogues last year, the fine folks who bring us The Venture Brothers(^) (probably my favorite TV show) released their annual holiday song to the world.

The Venture Brothers, is a definitely-not-for-children (mostly due to cartoon violence and adult situations) animated series on Adult Swim(^), what the Cartoon Network turns into late at night. It follows the adventures of a scientist (Dr. Thaddeus S. "Rusty" Venture), his bodyguard (Brock Sampson) and the doctor's two sons (Hank and Dean Venture) as they fight villainy, mostly found in the form of the Guild of Calamitous Intent, sort of a union for bad guys (with health/dental insurance and everything).

If it looks and sounds a lot like Jonny Quest, it's almost certainly no coincidence, The Venture Brothers seems to try to balance on the thin line between parody and an earnest homage to Jonny Quest.

Here's a clip from The Venture Brothers, with their arch enemies, The Monarch, and his wife, Dr. Girlfriend. Dr. Girlfriend is the one with the really _low voice.

So, as I said, every year around the holidays (since 2004, anyway), The Venture Brothers creators have released a Christmas song on their website. They haven't released one for this year yet, but I went looking yesterday, and found the songs from the previous four years(^).

The songs thus far have been:

The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend singing the Bing Crosby-David Bowie classic Peace On Earth/The Little Drummer Boy (2004)

The Monarch and Henchmen 21 & 24 singing Dolly Parton’s Hard Candy Christmas (2005)

Venture Aid (2006)

And, from 2007:

The Monarch and Dr. Girlfriend singing (you guessed it) Fairytale of New York. Since it was released around the time of the BBC controversy, I wonder if it was released in response to the censorship?

Regardless of why, it makes me happy to know that someone else gets it - in fact, that a lot of people get it. Not everything is for everyone at all times - some people may be offended, or the material may be inappropriate. But destroying original work is not the answer.

Namaste.

Goodbye Motrin. Hello, brand equivalent and non-insulting generics.

Tonight, after I got home from a lovely day out and about with my sweet husband (we had a blast - more on that later), reading through my RSS feed, I found an entry at Crunchy Domestic Goddess(^) that I found infuriating (not directed at CDG, of course).

Companies often try to capture the spirit of a particular group for monetary gain. This shouldn't shock us - it's how advertising works. Advertisers want you to associate their products with your problems. They want you to think that they understand and that they can help solve your problems. They try to use words and images that register with us, so that we'll think they are speaking our language.

Mothers are a group that is frequently targeted. This also shouldn't shock us - moms like me make a lot of the buying decisions for our homes, and persuading us to purchase something can result in huge profits.

It's far too late in the evening (early in the morning, actually) to debate the pros and cons of target marketing, but allow me to say this: when it doesn't work, it can result in the worst type of backlash.

Like the kind I am about to engage in:

All parents, regardless of where they live or what they believe, want what is best for their child. Good food, good health, and safe environment. Those are the basics.

Of course, we all want everything good for our children. We want them to love and feel loved; comfort and feel comforted. We want them to feel sympathy and empathy, to receive it when they need it, and to have the compassion to give it freely when they should.

We all want our children to grow up to be everything they were meant to be.

And while we each may parent differently, we all want the same things. We all work toward the same goals, though we may take different paths to get there.

So, when a company chooses to poke cynical, mean-spirited fun of us to make a quick dollar, it doesn't help. It adds nothing of value. It belittles the very people who do society's heavy lifting.

McNeil Consumer Healthcare, the makers of Motrin, (ibuprofen), have decided that it makes monetary sense to belittle women who, after careful study, keep their young babies in slings worn on the body(^). Women the world over "wear" their babies. They always have. It provides babies with the constant warm and loving environment they need to thrive and flourish physically and emotionally.

Many moms have found that babies who are worn are generally happier, and more content. They find that their babies eat better, and they often breastfeed longer, which directly translates to better health. Slings allow mothers the freedom to move back into an active lifestyle soon after the child's birth, and it has been suggested that slings can help with postpartum depression. Translation: it's good for moms as well.

But, according to the people who make Motrin (and Tylenol, for that matter), and in contrast to the overwhelming majority of women who wear or have worn their little ones, doing what women all over the world do and have done for centuries, wearing your baby makes mom cry.

The ad has lines like:

Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion.

Translation: Jump on the bandwagon, you silly, thoughtless woman.

Someone should inform them that women have always done this. Always. Take a look at a United States Mint One Dollar coin. It has Sacajawea, the Shoshone guide to the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1804 on the obverse side, her tiny son Jean Baptiste being carried on her back.

More, from the ad: Supposedly, it’s a real bonding experience.

Supposedly? Where is a baby supposed to be, if not with her parents? In a crib, alone and screaming?

(&)

These things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders. Did I mention your back?!

Um, no they don't. Choosing the right sling and wearing it properly doesn't hurt. If it does, seek out the help of other moms, try a different one, or wear the one you have differently. Did I mention it isn't supposed to hurt?

Honest.

Really.

I promise.

The ad ends with:

Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom.

Translation: There you go again, fluff-for-brains. You didn't research your position. You didn't think it through. You aren't competent or smart. You're doing it because it looks good.

~~~

McNeil Consumer Healthcare and Motrin thinks it's ok to insult moms to make a buck. They think it's ok to demean women, to undermine our parenting, to sell their product.

But they are wrong. This cynical ploy is enough to banish Motrin from our medicine cabinets. If the makers of Motrin feel that denigrating women to make a buck is ethical, we feel comfortable refusing their product.

Generics are there for a reason. Loyalty to brands only works when the brand is worth being loyal to. The makers of Motrin and Tylenol have lost me as a customer.

If you'd like to hear the ad yourself, find it here, at Motrin's website. It was there when I started writing tonight. If they remove it, Barb at Perfectly Natural Photography(^) has thoughtfully transcribed it.

If you Twitter, consider tweeting this. If you do, please add "#motrinmoms" or "#motrindads" (no quotes) to your tweet. I'm not sure who started this, but here are the results at Twitter(^). Pages and pages and pages. My own Twitter feed is in the smaller column here on my blog, or here(^).

If you feel moved, you can write a quick note to McNeil Consumer Healthcare here(^). Here is what I wrote:

I find it hard to fathom that denigrating mothers makes good business sense, so when I heard your commercial last night which belittles dedicated parents to sell Motrin, I was shocked.
We will no longer be purchasing Motrin (or Tylenol) and will strongly encourage our friends to avoid your products as well.

I am mommy, hear me roar.

Namaste