Sunday, June 13, 2010

Harmless Fun

As pointed out to me by my friend over at Cathólica Coreana, all sorts of what I would call "fundamentalist Catholics" are in an uproar over this "blasphemous" Hyundai commercial shown during the World Cup. Get a life people!!!!

God, I just hate these humorless neocons and trads. I for one don't want to become a whining Abraham Foxman or Bill Donahue, and it makes me so frustrated to see identity-politics Catholicism going down that road.


It is, in fact, based on a real "church" in Argentina, and it's harmless parody making a tongue-in-cheek point about the zeal of soccer fans using familiar religious imagery. I think it's great (and, as Cathólica Coreana points out, more liturgical than most Catholics see in their own parishes!)

You might consider sending an email to Hyundai (consumeraffairs@hmausa.com) telling them that not all Catholics are humorless fogeys and that you don't find the commercial offensive in the slightest:


4 comments:

Agostino Taumaturgo said...

LOL... that was funny, even though they're getting the Latin wrong (they're saying «Qui tollit peccata mundi»).

Me, I can't stand Foxman, Donahue, or anybody else with that activist mentality. To my mind they're no different from Patricia Fresen and the activists in the RCWP crowd, except for the brand of s**t they spew.

Anyway, the mistake is that they're assuming it's a Catholic church. A lot of Protestant churches incorporate Catholic-type practices, and as Arturo's fond of pointing out, Protestantism in Latin America isn't too much like the Protestantism here.

Long story short, they're jumping the gun. But that's what activists usually do: lie in wait for somethign that offends them, then jump the gun the second they see something that remotely resembles it.

Hoanyeon said...

Actually I watched it again, and even these guys have "communion" on the tongue while kneeling.

Michael D said...

Well, I guess the Donohue crowd won out, Hyundai pulled the commercial:

http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/06/14/catholics-push-hyundai-to-cancel-commercial/?test=latestnews

I wasn't really offended by these Argentines, the guy who founded the group says that he is really a Roman Catholic. My knee-jerk reaction was to be judgmental, but now I see it probably is just harmless fun.

However, I was actually upset by the REAL message of the ad, which seems to have gone by without much notice or detraction. Basically, you don't have to worship Hyundai like a god to show your appreciation, just by a new one. Seriously, that's the best campaign they could come up with? To me it just seems asinine, and frankly somewhat insulting to people's intelligence, that they would think invoking images of religious worship would sell luxury sedans.

A Sinner said...

lol, yeah. And the reason they pulled the ad was, likewise, their bottom line. Society is crazy!