Blog #7: Come on, come on the camera's on.

I think the images used in used in Calvin Klein’s campaign for jeans definitely pushed the boundaries of child pornography. The ads picture young looking models in a very suspicious looking room. In the commercials there is a man behind the camera asking them a variety of questions, at some points you feel almost awkward watching.

These images do qualify as pornography because they show boys and girls under the age of 16 portraying sexual characteristics. You could also say there is an essence of male dominance because in a few of the ads there are young women in front of the camera and the man you cannot see is giving them directions on what he wants them to do.

In my opinion, these commercials remind me of videos you would see in the news because they were confiscated from some child molester’s basement. Just watching them makes me uncomfortable, it feels like they were not filmed for people to see. Even the models themselves seem a little awkward in them and it gives that feeling to the whole commercial.

The ads were meant to draw attention to the product being sold and they definitely accomplished that. Whether good or bad, attention is still attention. There is no doubt that the ads and the controversy surrounding them made the jeans more popular than they would have been otherwise.

Klein does claim that the ads were intended to “convey the idea that glamour is an inner quality that can be found in regular people in the most ordinary setting; it is not something exclusive to movie stars and models” however, I think that message was lost in the way that it was presented. The way that that ad could be viewed was left way too open for negative interpretation. There were so many ways that this message could be conveyed in a way which would not be viewed as pornography.

I think it was a good thing that the ads were pulled. They sent across the wrong image to young people viewing the ads. The commercials crossed a line that isn’t meant to be crossed, especially when selling a simple pair of jeans.