Grotesque PSAs not for kids

A recent advertising campaign in Milwaukee is aimed at warning parents about the dangers of sleeping in bed with your baby.

The shocking advertisement depicts a small infant curled up and fast asleep next to a butcher's knife. The text above the baby reads, "Your baby sleeping with you can be just as dangerous."

This isn't the first instance where an organization or company has used advertising in a shocking manner to gain people's attention. But has the question ever been raised: How far is too far?

The innocent baby with a knife, while upsetting, doesn't really push the boundaries on acceptable public advertising, but what about the gross smokers' lungs plastered on billboards for all to see?

The decrepit lungs are an obvious attempt at an anti-smoking campaign but, in my experience, people who want to smoke are going to smoke whether ads try to scare them out of it or not. Plus it's an awful image to have out in public for anyone to see. I doubt that advertising companies or independent organizations that make up these campaigns stop to think about the 7-year-old who asks their parents about the meaning of an anti-abortion billboard. That's hardly the kind of message children should be taking in.

But who could blame the world of advertising when everything in the media is about shock value? People always hear that sex sells and as society "progresses," people bring down the bar on what's acceptable and what's not more and more.

I Dream of Jeannie, a show filmed in the 1960s, created controversy when the staff made the decision to attempt to show Jeannie's bellybutton on television. I'm sure those former network commanders roll in their graves every time there's a swear word, inappropriate reference or, god forbid, a private area shown on nationally syndicated TV.

It isn't just advertising and television either. The whole media world is softening and succumbing to this idea that vulgarity is what people want. So of course there's no question that the image of a baby with a knife is wrong, because that could just as easily have been an ad for a new horror movie.

Call me old-fashioned but I think there's definitely room for improvement here. Perhaps the industry could benefit from a little more content regulation.

Bridget DeMeis can be reached by email at demeis.record@live.com.