Top Gear ‘suicide’ ad ruled in breach

Britain’s television watchdog Ofcom has upheld 50 complaints it received in August following a Top Gear parody car advert in which a man suicided.

The joke commercials aired in the final episode of the show’s 13th series. In a Volkswagen skit, one man was shown committing suicide by shooting himself in the head. Another featured an actor waiting in a hospital room holding his own severed arm with blood spurting from the wound.

Whilst Ofcom said the scenes featuring the hospital patient with a severed arm were “so comically exaggerated and preposterous that they could be said to be justified” it ruled the suicide was too realistic and without warning.

“It was Ofcom’s view that the spoof suicide was graphically depicted on screen with the man holding the gun to his temple and firing and blood splattering into the air after the bloody impact of the gunshot. Its realistic depiction meant that the violent imagery was not appropriately limited,” Ofcom said in its ruling published today.

“It was precisely because Top Gear is an established entertainment programme which features a typical sort of humour that many viewers – including some adults watching with children – would not have expected such a violent scene to appear,” the regulator added.

“Ofcom noted there was no information before the spoof advertisement was shown which would have prepared viewers for its potentially disturbing nature and alerted adult viewers to the fact that it may be unsuitable for younger viewers.

It concluded that there was no editorial justification for its inclusion.

The show has previously been in trouble for describing a vehicle as being “ginger beer”, a term Ofcom said could be offensive to homosexuals, and making jokes about lorry drivers murdering prostitutes.

The VW ad can be seen on YouTube.

Source: Guardian