ROME (Reuters) – Sony has apologized for an advertising campaign for its PlayStation game console which featured a young man wearing a crown of thorns with the slogan “Ten years of passion.”
Some Catholics were outraged by the adverts, which ran in newspapers and magazines to celebrate the product’s tenth anniversary.
“This time they’ve gone too far,” said Antonio Sciortino, editor of Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family), a mass-circulation Catholic weekly.
Sony’s ad is not the first to irk Catholics in recent months.
“There’s no religion any more,” read a slogan for IKEA in an advert to inform Italians, whose Church attendance is steadily falling, that its furniture stores were open on a Sunday.
And two adapted versions of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Last Supper have been used for adverts that caused controversy in other predominantly Catholic countries.
French fashion designer Francois Girbaud featured Jesus as a woman with a table of glamorous disciples, while Irish bookmaker Paddy Power depicted the original Christians gambling, the traitor Judas clutching his 30 pieces of silver.
“Blasphemy” is profitable. Think about that.
They knew it would have the effect it did with every intention of pulling it and “apologizing” for it. The publicity over the controversy gets bigger PR milage than a regular ad ever would. Shock sells. Talking about the shock sells more.
From the Article:
Quotation #1: “Sony … has apologized for an advertising campaign for its PlayStation game console which featured a young man wearing a crown of thorns with the slogan “Ten years of passion.”
Quotation #2: “In a statement, Sony Computer Entertainment Italia expressed regret over the reaction to the advert. It acknowledged that the “spirit of the message was misunderstood” and said the campaign would not continue.”
If Sony’s belief is that the spirit of the message was misunderstood, then why are they apologizing for it? I’ll tell you why: Political Correctness.
The surest way to kill creativity is to ask oneself every time one produces something whether somewhere, someone, somehow is going to find some reason to be offended by it.
Another thing that you have to consider is that how many times you’ve heard a Xtian ridicule the religions from Asia and you guys think it’s a funny thing…
It’s no wonder that Akira Toriyama created the character Mr. Satan (Aka Hercule in the USA) for the Dragon Ball Z anime series…
Hmmm…what’s the difference between Sony making an indirect reference to and Mel Gibson making a bazillion bucks from the same cultural image?