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The L.A. Times Wants You -- On Secret Video

May 15, 2001

If you want to see an example of how technology can advance and then be misused by people whose ethics have failed to advance, check out what the Los Angeles Times web site has been doing with advertising. When you first arrive at the home page for the Times site, an uninvited second web page is spawned on your computer, in back of the home page, with an advertisement on it.

Not only does this second web page interfere with your experience of the Internet but, based on my experience, you can't get rid of it while you're at the Times site unless you have cookies enabled. If you click it off, the uninvited advertising page simply reappears when you click on a link to go to another page of the Times.

You have to wonder about the mindset of the people at the Times who are willing to use such an aggressive technique to advertise a product. But the content of the ad involves an even worse violation of what should be public standards since it actually encourages people to spy on each other. "Tiny Wireless Video Camera - Fits Anywhere," the headline to one version of the ad says, with a picture of a miniaturized hand-held camera just below it. On the right side of the page is a list of the places where the miniature camera can be used. Naturally "Bedroom" is on the list, just above an invitation for you to click to get more information.

On the left side of the ad (as shown above), next to the picture of the miniature camera, we see an image of an attractive women. Her legs are spread unselfconsciously open, while her bright, vulnerable, expression suggests that she is having a good time during a social evening with you, the viewer. You are presumably sitting across from her and about to make your move.

The implication is impossible to miss -- the mini-camera can be used to secretly record sex with her, or with any women. After all, the whole point of having a miniature camera that "fits anywhere" is that it can be hidden.

Another version of the ad, (below) is even more blatant. It includes an attractive woman showing mostly skin, looking out at the viewer with bedroom eyes, next to the words, "Who do you want to see." The clear implication is that the camera will show you things you wouldn't see otherwise.

If you look closely at these ads, they don't only suggest that the camera is an electronic eye can be used by men for sexual spying. They also turn the camera into a disguised depiction of sex organs. With its opening in the center, the camera is the female genitals, a close-up of what the women who is pictured has to offer.

But the camera is ambiguous enough to be phallic, as well, since it appears to slightly project out. When you look at the ad above this way -- with the camera projecting forward, the women with her legs spread, and the promise that the camera "fits anywhere" -- it seems to be selling the idea that the camera can be used as a phallic extension of male power to invade women and record male conquests.

In many ways, what we see in this ad is quintessentially "postmodern". It is invasive; it is a sales pitch, and it invites people to engage in transgressive behavior. It is also drenched in sexual imagery and multiple meanings, offering a piece of technology as an ambiguous sex object. It turns technology into both a human eye that sees and desires, and the object that it desires at the same time.

But, once again, you have to wonder about the mindset of the people at the Los Angeles Times who are willing to do something like this. And you have to wonder where this is going to go in the next few years as we are routinely connected to the Internet 24 hours a day and as surveillance equipment becomes even more inexpensive and portable. It's quite a prospect really -- a society full of people trying to escape from aggressive advertisements as they secretly videotape each other. It's enough to make you yearn for something simple like transistor radios.

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Update: On a check on May 16, at approximately 10:20 p.m. (Boston time), the ads had disappeared.

Notes:

* Another version of this ad offers more sexual imagery. It shows the camera with an arrow above and below, pointing into the camera opening. The arrows quickly bounce up and down, toward the opening and away from it. It doesn't get much more unsubtle than that.

* Below the woman in the ad (at the top of this page), is the statement  "Have fun! Feel safe". Perhaps this is an effort to appeal to women by suggesting that they will be able to let down their guard and have a good time since they will be protected by the mini-camera. There might also be a more pernicious message -- that the woman pictured should be off her guard as she is secretly recorded. 

Ken Sanes