A live-action Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 advertisement that aired last year has been banned from re-airing in the United Kingdom after the country’s Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) concluded that it “trivialized sexual violence.”
For many years now, Activision has advertised its Call of Duty: Black Ops franchise with a series of comical live-action ads depicting “Replacers” replacing people at their jobs or in life so those folks can play the new Call of Duty. And for Black Ops 7, Activision continued this with new Replacer ads, including one involving two Replacers, played by Peter Stormare and Nikki Glaser, working security at an airport. And it was this specific ad that got Activision in hot water with the ASA, as reported by Game Developer.
In the airport ad, the Replacers are seen roughly handling a passenger after he is stopped at a security checkpoint. Stormare’s Replacer tells the man he has been “randomly selected to be manhandled.” Glaser’s Replacer puts on blue gloves, and the passenger is told he has to remove all his clothing. The gloved Replacer then says, “Time for the puppet show.” Before the short ad ends, the passenger has a metal detector shoved into his mouth and is told to “bite down” because the gloved Replacer is going in “going in dry.” The ad is still available to watch on YouTube.
The ad was initially approved to air in the UK because it was seen as a “deliberately implausible, parodic scenario that bore no resemblance to real airport security procedures.” It was classified “Ex-Kid” and would not be aired alongside programming designed for kids under 16.
On February 18, the UK’s ad standards group said it had received nine complaints about the live-action advertisement, claiming it trivialized sexual violence. And after review, the ASA has ruled that while most viewers would likely understand it was a humorous ad, the problem is that the humor is “generated by the humiliation and implied threat of painful, non-consensual penetration,” and that is an act “associated with sexual violence.”
“Because the ad alluded to non-consensual penetration, and framed it as an entertaining scenario, we considered that the ad trivialised sexual violence and was therefore irresponsible and offensive,” said the ASA in its ruling. As a result, the ad must be edited to remove the jokes about sexual violence before it can be aired again in the UK. The ASA also told Activision Blizzard to ensure that in the future its ads were “socially responsible and did not cause serious offence, for example by trivialising sexual violence.”
Activision, for its part, told the ASA that the ad was for a mature video game and “targeted at adult audiences only, who had a higher tolerance for irreverent or exaggerated humour.”