Such a shame...

IV Play is a make targeting youngsters. The word itself means ?mutual sexual stimulation prior to sexual intercourse.? (dictionary.com)

The latest advert done by this company is all over Mauritius and in people?s homes through the Internet.

Being a qualified designer and a design lecturer, I am appalled that in the year 2005, advertising agencies have not yet understood that they have a social responsibility and should not use people?s sensory organs to sell their products.

This advert is the personification of bad taste; it is very crude, without any sense of creativity and good design, and, to add insult to injury, it downgrades human beings.

When looking at it on a social level, we have to take into consideration the various problems we are facing with youngsters nowadays, concerning teenage pregnancy, rape, child prostitution, drugs and alcohol, as well as HIV and AIDS.

Instead of giving a helping hand to control the social problems, this advertisement titillates the brains of our young people in a distorted manner which can contribute to even more problems.

I have shown this advert to my students and they are between 20-25 years of age. They do not even find it funny and think it is cheap and has nothing to do with the product. They find it degrading. ?People are not animals that can be grabbed at anytime? and a few of them even added that they felt that the message behind is to tell people ?come and rape me or manipulate my sensory organs as everything is allowed?.

Where has creativity gone? It is such a shame that we have designers who are only good at manipulation of images and have no thinking and conceptualisation faculty. It is about time that designers realise that critical thinking, aesthetics and originality are the key to good design. Advertising gurus should encourage their ?designers? to be more original and creative and teach them their social responsibilities.

Anushka COY Media Watch Organisation

Autobus à gogo

Tous les matins entre 9 et 10 heures, arrivent à Port-Louis, à la queue leu leu, plusieurs dizaines de bus de 40 places avec deux ou trois voyageurs seulement par bus ! Ces encombrants véhicules bloquent complètement la circulation depuis Bell-Village jusqu?à la gare centrale. La rue Brabant en est remplie, cela est aberrant ! Pourquoi les autorités ne prennent-elles aucune mesure pour pallier cette énorme bêtise ?

L?ancien gouvernement projetait de construire une gare routière importante à Coromandel où tous les bus relativement vides transborderaient dans d?autres bus relativement pleins et ceux-ci seulement arriveraient à Port-Louis en petit nombre. On pourrait ainsi réduire ce nombre de bus à la gare Victoria de 60 %, ce qui décongestionnerait énormément la circulation dans cette partie de la capitale. A Coromandel, il y a toute la place qu?il faut pour une grande gare; ce serait peut-être un petit inconvénient pour les voyageurs mais ils arriveraient sûrement plus tôt au travail. Et aussi quel soulagement pour les automobilistes arrivant à Port-Louis le matin !

Un jour peut-être notre ministre des Transports publics se réveillera, souhaitons-le.

Cyril V. MAMET