This video is recommended for 15+ years of age. I’m also adding a trigger warning to this, because it does depict rape.
I’m going to attempt to ignore the fact that this advert was shown before my showing of Breaking Dawn, an advert given a 15+ age certificate playing for an audience of pre-teens and teens.
I’m also going to (attempt) to ignore the fact this was shown before my showing of Breaking Dawn. A film in which there is sexiness that leads to extreme bruising of a female character, because her big, yummy new husband is just too rough for her fragile fragile state. Which forced the hunk of vamp-meat to become passive aggressive towards his newly wed wife, because nothing says true love like violence and blame! (You can just go ahead and skip sending me messages about how he is only blaming himself and Not! Bella! because he could never! be mad at Bella because he loves her so much and I have clearly missed the point of the books and the films and I should shut up and go away and stop bashing Twilight and Stephanie Meyer is only depicting an inter-species teenage relationship of course there are going to be differences to human relationship!!!1!! I just said it for you.)
What I want to discuss is how awkward I feel about this advert. Not awkward in the, ‘oh that was harrowing to watch’ sense, although there is partly that. No I want to discuss how I just don’t know what to think of this advert.
On the one hand, extreme blame and responsibility for cases of violent and unpredictable rape are squarely placed on the shoulders of the victim here. ‘Know what you’re getting into’ the slogan reads. Because if you don’t know, it’s your own fault if your cab driver decides to violently sexually assault you. Silly little sluts, getting drunk and stumbling into cars masquerading as cabs!
Because when constructing a rape awareness advert it’s always important to get a little slut shaming in.
And is unlicensed cab rape just a female issue? I really don’t know the statistics on this, if anyone has any, I’d love to see some. I’m sure the ratio is higher for female rape, but… is it only women being raped? How does advert make other genders feel on watching this? More shame/embarrassment/guilt for getting their selves raped when they should really be big and strong enough to not?
However, on the other hand, this is a real concern. At this time of year unlicensed cabs are rife hanging around waiting to pick up unarmed and defenceless men/women. I know this is a real issue. I am not negating that.
So maybe what I am saying, is wouldn’t it be nice to see a rape awareness advert that targeted the perpetrators of the rape? No? How about you put the mother fuckin’ cabbies on trial here, how about you put the fear of the hallowed cab gods into them and find more efficient ways of getting the unlicensed cabs off the roads?
Then we could all go out for our whiskey’s and stumble home at slutty hours of the morning without concern of being attacked by our ride.
