Hold the front page, stop the presses, don’t hit ‘publish’ yet. We’ve got shocking news from the forefront of media decency, suggesting one of the country’s biggest broadcasters may well be tarting up controversialist trash TV to make it look like an anthropological documentary.
As per one of our go-to websites, BrandRepublic, a representative of the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain says the Advertising Standards Agency’s move to ban commercials for Channel 4’s Big Fat Gypsy Wedding- sporting the slogan ‘Bigger. Fatter. Gypsier’- shows the producers up for being morally bankrupt. Well, how about telling us something we didn’t already know- with the title alone being as far removed from good taste as Big & Bouncy.
For successive seasons now the series has done little other than provide a window with which to peer in on another culture, but with as much amazement as interest. Hark at the dresses they wear, garish and gaudy being understatements, tremble whilst imagining running into an angry ‘Paddy the Hardman’, and observe the rather eyebrow-raising practice of ‘grabbing’.
The point being that, whilst the adverts in question caused offence due to the aforementioned slogans, and use of a young girl and boy (respectively sexualised and off the rails), any real lasting damage that could be caused to the community in question doesn’t end, or even begin, with this most recent example of wham-bam promotion. Episode One, Series One, is really where the root problem lies, leaving plenty of questions unanswered as to what constitutes acceptable programming.
