Gay Vague Advertising

"Despite huge progress in gay equality over the last few years advertisers have been slow to tackle the queer market head on," according to a recent article about "Gay Advertising" on the Rainbow Network that includes a link to the top ten gayest adverts of all time.

The Commercial Closet, a website that's all about bringing GLBT sensitivity to corporate advertising, says "Gay Vague" is the industry term that refers to ads that "aren’t overtly faggy, but play around with the notion of queerness and its myriad iconography."

"Gay Vague" is a term coined by Michael Wilke at Advertising Age in 1997 for ads that covertly speak to gays or seem to imply gayness with a wink -- an intention advertisers often deny, or sometimes don't even intend. This can include ambiguous relationships, blurred gender distinctions, wayword same-sex glances or touching, camp/kitsch, or coded references to gay culture (but not subliminal). Some ads convey different meanings in mainstream media versus gay media because of who is intended to look at it.

A recent article in Advertising Age, by Bob Garfield, takes issue with an ad for the new Dodge Caliber that some might find gay vague, asking whether this "Fairy" commercial is actually hate speech in disguise?

Look, there's nothing wrong with positioning an economy car as a car with truck values. In fact, "the manly subcompact" is a very good idea. You can even suggest that everything else in the category looks effeminate. Though political correctness is out of control in this society, you're still allowed to choose your own sexual demeanor.

But what no advertiser has any business doing is calling people fairies, because it is cheap, because it is gratuitous, because it is hateful.

"So, is Dodge offending gay people or not?", asks David Kiley at Brand New Day, the BusinessWeek marketing and advertising blog.

While I would have panned the ad for being lame on many fronts, Garfield panned the ad for being an example of hate speech. The oafish man reminds us of those lads in the schoolyard who call the weaker boys fags and fairies. Frankly, I'm inclined to agree with Garfield. And I seldom agree with Bob, who also hosts "On The Media" on National Public Radio. It seems like one of those ads where the creative guys knew exactly what they were doing, and intended to push the envelope. It has long been in the Dodge ad playbook to get people talking about its ads by ocassionally running, or trying to run, controversial themes and images. Nothing wrong with that. But I, like Garfield, thought it smacked of insensitivity and callousness.

I read the comments on Adage.com, though, and if the posters, especially those who said they were gay, were legit, then maybe Garfield, and Kiley, are all wet.

This is typical of the posts on Garfield's column: "I appreciate the sensitivity to the issue, but as a gay man in the business, I don't see any level of homophobic undertones in the ad at all. Now, if there were any stereotypes of swishy walks or limp wrists once the guy is transformed, than I'd be emailing HRC, BBDO and Dodge. Think it's a cute ad. Jeff New York City –NEW YORK, NY"

It's getting harder to know where those political and social lines are.

The success of Brokeback Mountain might be to blame for the recent crop of confusion in advertising—and March of the Penquins. Why, just this week, in Queensland of all places, theme park bosses re-named their colony of fairy penguins amid fears they could upset the gay community, according to reports in the Daily Mail.

Managers at Sea World, on the Gold Coast, are now calling the species "little penguins" in case associations with the word "fairy" offend visitors to the park.

"We didn't have any complaints about the name of the penguins, but someone thought they could be seen as offensive so we decided to change it to little penguin instead," a Sea World spokeswoman said. "We just didn't want to upset the gay community. The new name is more politically correct."

However, Queensland's gay community and other zoos which keep fairy penguins described the name change as ridiculous and unnecessary.

If you've just read this post without clicking on the links, you missed a lot of entertaining advertising videos with thoughtful analyses.