Killing Mind

Hyundai Australia has a TV advertisement for their 4WD, where a toddler is driving the car with his arm out window and hair blowing in the wind. He picks up a hitch-hiking girl of similar age and takes her to a beach for a bit of surfing. Well, they had such an advertisement. It has now been banned from television, due to fears of copycat behaviour.

And not a moment too soon I say! Just last Saturday some snot nosed little fuck almost side swiped me in his Santa Fe, just so he could wave at a group of pre-school girls waiting at the lights. The little bastard wasn't even in an Australian approved baby seat when he blew the swooning toddlers a kiss. On the same weekend a trusted friend also told me she had heard of illegal drag races for under-5's, held out on Kooragang Island. Apparently nitrous oxide conversions are all the rage amongst the impressionable four year olds. And to top it off my surfing buddy, relating his latest tube ride over a bong or two, reckoned some punk-arse kid in diapers dropped in on him halfway through his longest ever hang ten.

If Hyundai's irresponsible ad were allowed to continue broadcast, it is only a matter of time before kids make the natural extension to hot wiring cop cars, and we will have swarms of the little shits hooning through local streets with sirens ablaze. It's only common sense to suspect that from there, babies will be sneaking into military compounds just to go for joy rides in tanks, busting up F-117 jets and driving over other kids in Santa Fe's.

In fact, I don't think the ban goes far enough. The fact the ad is rated PG and restricted to the 8:30pm to midnight time slot means nothing to Hyundai driving pants-pooer's. Surely someday soon we will wake up to news that some youngster has jumped on the family dog, waved a "wand", and convinced the dog that jumping off the kitchen table will result in an exciting thrill flight. Or maybe they'll be strapping plastic "wings" to their back, screaming some indecipherable nonsense about going beyond infinity, and launching off the house roof. In fact, on two separate occasions last week I found some grouchy kid living in a garbage bin. It's not too much of a stretch to assume that next week I'll read about a parent discovering their three year old, wiggly angle grinder in hand, halfway through the removal of the family sedan's roof. Put your money in auto detailing workshops people, because there's about to be a lot of work in removing the red paint and coloured wheels from big family cars.

In this day and age of fragile bones and fragile supervision, I can't believe we allow fantasy in media at all. All it does is incite the imagination of children, irresponsibly putting them in danger of learning creativity and developing a curiosity about the world. And I for one, will not stand for it.