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Chimpanzees Real Winners of Super Bowl XLVII
Ravens weren’t the only winning animals in Super Bowl XLVII. Great apes finally got a
reprieve when CareerBuilder
at long last decided to stop dressing up chimpanzees in business suits and
featuring them in ads about immature coworkers. The ads were unintentionally
ironic, since the chimpanzees truly were immature, as in babies. Thank the
football gods that CareerBuilder decided to retire those idiotic ads before Ray Lewis got his first hip replacement.
In fact, no great apes were used in any Super Bowl commercial this year, the
first year since all the top 10 U.S. advertising agencies pledged never to use
great apes in their advertising after meeting with PETA.
As shown in PETA’s video exposé,
narrated by Anjelica
Huston, great apes are torn away from their mothers shortly
after birth and are beaten in order to force them to perform. Once they get
too powerful and dangerous to control, they are often discarded at dismal roadside zoos.
Great apes weren’t the only animals given
the day off. Most of the exotic animals featured in the Super Bowl ads were
computer generated, not that the average viewer could tell the difference. It
makes a big difference to the animals, though, when advertisers opt for
realistic computer-generated imagery and animatronic stand-ins and refrain from
subjecting real animals to the rigors and abuse of training both on the set and
off.
During a PETA undercover investigation
of a facility that trains big cats, we documented that the animals were deprived
of food, dragged by chains around their necks, hit in the face, and smashed
over the head with ax handles. When they’re not being
forced to perform, exotic animals are confined almost constantly to cages and
chains.
If this Super Bowl is any indication, cutting-edge
companies seem to be recognizing that compassionate customers are turned off by
animal abuse and will tune out cruel ads—because the only squirrel dance that we want to see during the Super Bowl features a burly linebacker.
2013-02-04 14:31:08
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