A Droll Sports Ad, or Violent Imagery?

In the New York Times article by Ian Austen, found at Sports, the Television Bureau of Canada has refused to approve a 30-second commercial for the Toronto Blue Jays because of an abusive or what reviewers called “violent” pillow fight. A harmless pillow fight is not the view of the agency approving these ads. Marketers of the baseball team can’t believe they are taking it so seriously. In the commercial, Frank Thomas, the 6 foot 5 inch American League hitter for the Blue Jays, smacks a small boy off the bed during a pillow fight while smiling. Thomas portrays a father trying to end a pillow fight between two young boys in a fun manner that the bureau says got out of hand and became inappropriate. After one of the boys hits him, Thomas says, “Oh, yeah?” and grabs a pillow and swings back like he’s holding a bat. It knocks the boy off the bed. After the boy lands on the other side with a thud, Mr. Thomas runs out of the room like he’s running bases. The child pops up and says, “Whoa!” He’s not smiling or laughing. He’s in shock and trying to regain focus. The issue is power, not humor, says the president of the television bureau in Canada.

Mr. Thomas is a large man and weighs 275 pounds. The kid takes flight, disappears, and there’s a crash. There’s definitely nothing funny about that. A small child and a huge man is overpowering. The parent is in control and dominates, but showing that in a physical way to prove that a baseball star can hit can become extreme. It makes viewers think ‘the poor kid and the champ dad’. The dad wants the spotlight, while his kid is literally thrown into shock. However, this kind of action or scene actually takes the attention off of Mr. Thomas and puts it on the poor boy, which I don’t think is the message. It’s not acceptable for adults to hit children, and even though it’s just a pillow fight, it’s the power put into the swing by a very large man. Violence and child abuse is very controversial, and anytime a child goes flying through the air to land with a crash on the floor, it’s an eye opener, even if it’s done out of innocent fun and games with an object made of feathers. There is force enough that the little boy is shocked. The dad did it in retaliation, and it’s not okay to hit back, especially if it’s the father hitting his child. It sounded like they weren’t playing around when the dad said “Oh, yeah?”, as if he was going to come back even harder to see how the kid liked it and to prove he was in power. It’s the degree of the rough housing that went too far. That’s when it got serious. Media and commercials portray a violence that goes on in real life. Being that it’s Canada’s most popular sport, it’s too bad this commercial got such unfavorable light. There is fighting and physical violence in sports, but there shouldn’t be fighting (enough to injure someone) during a pillow fight.