Um, hmmm

[girliejones]

I'm really not sure what to say about this.

Adolf Hitler is the face of AIDS in a controversial new awareness campaign.

Warning: it's graphic and NSFW.

Comments

[stephen_dedman]

I really don't think this is a good idea: it's just not scary enough. It might have worked if they'd used more than one face for the man - turned him into Stalin, Osama bin Laden, and/or some other mass murderers - but as it is, I think it looks more like Nazi fetish porn than something that'll frighten people away from having unsafe sex.

[thebellman]

My understanding is that it is part of a series, which also uses Stalin and Saddam Hussein.

[girliejones]

I kinda agree

Agree with stephen_dedman

[ed_rex]

It's very well-produced and frankly kind of hot, at least from this basically straight male's point-of-view. As I was watching it, I kept wondering how making sex look that could could possibly scare people into using condoms.

Then Hitler showed his face and I understood the intent. And it was shocking in a horror-movie sort of way. A cheesy horror-movie sort of way.

I suspect it'll be required viewing for giggling, drunk, first-year university students for years to come but isn't likely to sell a single condom.

B+ as a student film project, F as anti-AIDS propaganda.

[thebellman]

My concern is the concern that I always have with using Hitler (and other horrible people) in this way: it turns a real historical person into an inhuman monster, an Other outside humanity. Which means it helps people forget that the horrors perpetuated by (in this case) Hitler and his followers were carried out by perfectly ordinary, average human beings and not monsters.

[girliejones]

I think he was a monster.

But yeah for me, I think I'm going with Stephen and the German fetishising of it. There's some weird undercurrent in the ad ... something about Nazi sexual domination or something?

[homonculus]

Leaving aside any comment on the fitness for purpose of the ad, just think how chuffed the Hitler impersonator would have been to get the gig:

Ad makers: We want to hire you to impersonate Hitler in an ad.
Actor: Fine. What shall I wear? The brown uniform or the grey uniform?
Ad makers: Actually, it's a sex scene.
Actor: Sex scene? You want me to be in a sex scene? Not, you know, ranting or raving or anything?
Ad makers: No.
Actor: Awesome. This will get rid of my typecasting!

[girliejones]

heh

[girliejones]

Now that Tom Cruise does Hitler I guess this dude would be finding it hard to get gigs.

[jo1967]

Where does Tom Cruise do Hitler? (leaving aside all the obvious teenage boy responses)