A bit of old news however McDonald's France has brought out a 'Gay Friendly advertisement:
Now, I must admit I do rather like this ad! It's portraying gay teens without revolting stereotypes and deals (albeit only lightly) with the difficult situation of coming out to parents who you don't think will accept you for who you are. Alternatively of course it could be argued that he's just not ready yet - we're not really sure of the history, relationship... it's 30 seconds for goodness sake!
There has been some criticism of this advertisement from gay media arguing that it's a blatant attempt to gain some of that lucrative pink dollar. Of course this is a commercial attempt to tap into the gay market! It's McDonalds, that's to be expected, they're all about the money. But I think the subject matter has been dealt with in an effective way - there's no flailing wrists, no lisp, no in-your-face-ness about this. In fact nowhere in the ad is it even obviously mentioned that the kid is gay, it's simply very clearly implied. I think the ad makes a greater point of inclusion regardless of who you are than an obvious 'we're gay friendly' stand.
What I find interesting (albeit unsurprising) is the way that McDonald's US has dealt with the subject matter, essentially stating in no uncertain terms that it has no interest whatsoever in screening the ad Stateside.
On one hand, this runs the risk of irritating the gay community, which compromises of about 10 million Americans (conservative estimate only based upon less than a 4% calculation). McDonald's has traditionally been quite a strong supporter of the GLB cause, including donating money to the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. On the other hand, it may not be such a stupid response for McDonald's (or, for that matter, any company in the states) to take commercially speaking. As much as I hate to admit it, this stance could actually help their sales. When Ford took a supportive stance over gay rights, lobby groups helped to drop its sales by 8% per month. Playing the conservative card in an economic recession is probably the safer bet.
However this ad and others like it give me hope. It's nice to see gay people being treated as individuals, not just fitting into a nice comfortable box. I can't, off the top of my head, think of anything like this being screened in NZ on any of the major networks (I'm happy to be proven wrong), so hopefully we'll get to see something like this before too long.
