“Cinema’s ‘ban’ the Church of England Lord’s Prayer advert!”
And so they should!
When I go to the cinema to watch a movie filled with guns and explosions and people being killed, with a hint of a love story and maybe one comedic character for the kids. I want lots of sneaky product placements to subconsciously infiltrate my mind, so that when I leave I immediately go out and spend a fortune on memorabilia and unrelated goods that seem to have been endorsed by the stars of the film.
I don’t want the Church getting involved in my entertainment and spoiling all that, how dare they try to spread their propaganda in the run up to Christmas, it’s preposterous!
I want to see adverts for expensive electronics I can’t afford, sugary soft drinks, and fat filled fast food, that I must drink and eat until I am the size of a house.
I want adverts telling me I am stupid and uncool unless I am wearing particular clothes, and commercials that use an irrelevant tear-jerking story to build emotions in me that are completely unrelated to the product that is being sold.
I want celebrities from the sporting world encouraging me to purchase products to be more like them, and 2nd rate ex soap stars giving me the opportunity to get into debt.
I don’t want to see people praying for Gods sake!
Whatever next? Singing ‘God Save the Queen’ before sporting events, when that time should be spent learning about beer, credit cards, high interest loans, and buying expensive replica football shirts.
What is the world coming to?
Though in defence of the cinema company, they do specify in their advertising terms and conditions (section 2.1.3) that they won’t allow political or religious advertising to be shown. Surely someone in the Church looked into this before trying to get the advert on the big screen and realised they were going to be knocked back.
And they wouldn’t want that, because that would just lead to a backlash of people criticising it and lot of people blogging and tweeting about this – spreading the message far and wide, and, hang on a minute…
The Lord does indeed work in mysterious ways.
In fact DCM, who banned the advert, don.t mention Politics or Religion at all in their full T & Cs but hey all publicity is good publicity. Good blog, by the way.
Here you go:
Digital Cinema Media Limited’s Advertising Policy:
http://www.dcm.co.uk/uploads/documents/1.FINAL_20847121_3_Digital_Cinema_Media_Limited_s_Advertising_Policy.pdf
2. Required Standards
2.1 To be approved, an Advertisement must:
2.1.1 have been cleared as compliant with the UK Code of Non-Broadcast
Advertising;
2.1.2 have received any necessary classification (for example a film
classification for age rating);
2.1.3 not in the reasonable opinion of DCM constitute Political or Religious Advertising; and
2.1.4 otherwise comply with DCM’s Terms and Conditions (effective from 1 January 2015), as published on DCM’s website (http://www.dcm.co.uk/).
For the purposes of clause 2.1.3 above, Political or Religious Advertising
means:
2.2.1 political advertising for the purposes of section 321 of the
Communications Act 2003; or
2.2.2 advertising which wholly or partly advertises any religion, faith or
equivalent systems of belief (including any absence of belief) or any part
of any religion, faith or such equivalent systems of belief.