7/21/2002: Iranian impotence ad

[Undertoad]

By all accounts, Iran is a country in turmoil. Its leaders are Islamic fundamentalists, but the people are not so hard-line, and they are struggling for more freedom. It may well lead to outright revolution.

This ad is from an Iranian newspaper, and the Mullahs that run the government are none too happy about it. Why: because this impotency cure ad is just too open about sexuality. This kind of openness just can't be tolerated.

So on one hand, the ad is evidence that the culture is becoming more open. That alone makes it an IotD type of image. But when I saw the ad, I noticed something else interesting. The little cartoon guy pushing the tower back upright is in the style of American visual artist Keith Haring.

Mr. Haring died of AIDS in 1990, at the age of 32, having made his mark (so to speak) on art and culture in the US. If you've seen his visual style, you remember it. One of his more famous drawings (for S. Africa):



Haring was more style than substance. Although he was a trained artist, he got his start doing graffiti in NYC subway stations, and his style was so blatant that somehow he turned into a one-man artistic wrecking ball. His subway-to-modern-artist story had appeal, and soon his "little guy in motion" was found both at museums of modern art and on the side of Bloomingdale shopping bags.

But to see the little guy in an Iranian ad for impotence, 12 years after Haring's death, is a very strange cultural mix indeed.



Keith Haring "holding up" the tower.

(Iranian ad via Asparagirl; Haring images via haring.com.)