Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Condom Commercials!

Saw this Indian condom commercial at Womanist Musings and thought it was a wonderful place for me to start blogging again. 
It's amusing, lighthearted, fun, simple, and informative. And like Renee, I think it's something that we should probably seek to emulate in our own attempts at educating people. Now, I'm not totally sure that this commercial actually aired on television in India, especially given the diagram of anal intercourse between two men, but that's not really the point. Things that are funny, entertaning, and can hold the interest of the target audience make it more likely for people to pay attention, and making it funny and lighthearted takes a bit of the awkward out of it. However, it seems to me that a lot of the time when we attempt to create materials that will engage young people enough that they will actually learn what we're trying to teach, the result tends to be corny, outdated, or otherwise something that young people will be too busy laughing at to get any of the message. Some of this I'm sure comes from the general attitude among teenagers that learning things isn't important, that they know everything already, and that whatever concequences exist don't matter because it won't happen to them (this is a gross generalization of teenagers, I know). The rest however, and the part we need to be concerned with, is because we don't know how to reach them and keep throwing the same tired strategies at them over and over again. Maybe if we attempt something like this, silly but straightforward, not taking itself too seriously, and kinda catchy, we'll actually get somewhere. 

I will leave you with this durex ad that probably everyone on earth has seen, but I think is one of the most amusing and clever condom commercials I've ever seen.


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