You are now entering Ad Space, a realm of commercials, brought before us so we might examine how they work, and discuss why we both love and hate them so. So it is written …

The Product:
Public Service Announcement

The Promotion:
***(POSSIBLY NOT SAFE FOR WORK?)***

The Pitch:
Shutting down the clothing industry isn’t the most efficient way to reduce fossil fuel consumption, but every little bit helps.

A few months back, we looked at a PSA warning against AIDS that featured some … graphic content. It was just a radio commercial, so it didn’t show anything, but it was still almost a full minute of simulated sex noises.

That was certainly a choice, but at least it kinda fit the ad’s purpose: it was talking about the dangers of unprotected sex, so some graphic content is not out of place. But this ad here?

Like … just … why are they all naked?

For the first little bit of the ad, I thought not drawing anyone’s clothes was just a stylistic simplification – no different from not bothering to draw the nails on people’s fingers or the individual strands of hair on their heads. Except, no, the folks behind this took care to draw bare asses and bare breasts in all their shapeliness- only the nipples and genitalia were left out.

So, yeah, the characters in this ad are definitely all meant to be naked – and not for any reason I can figure out. Maybe if I my knowledge of 1970’s Australian culture was broader than having seen Mad Max once, I’d get some sort of reference that was being made with the nudity, and it’d all make sense.

Then again, maybe there’s no sense to make of it – maybe the artists and animators who got this gig just thought it would be fun to draw a bunch of naked people?

Either way, it certainly makes for a memorable ad.