French Tree Huggers Make Light of 9/11

tree_hugger_french_911.jpg

If memory serves, after 9/11, wasn't it the French who sort of dragged their feet and made things difficult for the countries trying to tally together against Bin Laden? If so, that might explain this ad for French tree hugger site Defi Pour La Terre which thought it would be witty to transform the image of two trees into the twin towers burning on that fateful day. All to somehow equate the value of a tree to the value of a human life.

We not sure any amount of time passed makes this sort of thing OK. Then again, we're American. We knew people on Flight 93. The French? Well, perhaps they didn't know anyone who died that day or just feel Americans can't keep their hands out of other countries' issues. While the latter may be true, mocking a world event such as 9/11, at least for now, is still in very bad taste. And the French are supposed to know about taste, right?

by Steve Hall    Jan-23-07   Click to Comment   
Topic: Creative Commentary, Magazine, Opinion, Worst   

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Comments



Comments

This has to be bullshit, not to mention in very poor taste -- it's in English. Not exactly the lingua franca of the French. Even on the Defi website, there's no English translation available.

Posted by: daveednyc on January 23, 2007 10:47 AM

Dear ad students, juniors and amateurs,

The "9/11 shocker" print ad has officially jumped the shark. It no longer makes your book look "edgy." In fact, it wasn't "clever" or "provocative" the first hundred times I saw it. It does no service, it serves no purpose, other than to generate traffic for bloggers who post fake ads and student work from Europe, Asia and South America. Instead, why don't you try to create some work that summons emotions other than disgust and contempt? Maybe then you will get hired by a real agency and get to do some real work for some real clients. Thank you.

Posted by: rushing on January 23, 2007 11:42 AM

I would fire a team that presented that to me. Shows a terrible lack of judgement, awful taste, and no respect/human dignity.

I bet this is a fake anyway--but that's another sore spot with me altogether.

Posted by: Tas on January 23, 2007 12:11 PM

come on, get over it, worse things have happened at sea...Americans you have to get over it seriously!!!!!

Posted by: viralista on January 23, 2007 4:58 PM

People are over-reacting about this ad. It serves to show how nature is destroyed everyday. It's not meant for fun or as a joke. It is an analogy.

Get over the whole Franco-American rift. It has nothing to do with it.

Posted by: Provence on January 23, 2007 5:53 PM

Joke or not, it's still in bad taste; imagine if an American company turned the July 7 bombings in London or the Bali bombings or the Madrid attacks into commercial fodder.

Posted by: Cindylover1969 on January 23, 2007 8:26 PM

thats the whole point cindy, we where making jokes about july 7th on july 8th, just cos some guys decided to blow themselves up on a day and take a load of people with them is not reason not to use the idea of it, or even the aftermath as artistic, creative or even ad-fodder...it's just images, and it's a great insecurity to think that reprinting that image under a different banner of context will in some way take away from the original event, but the main fack is, that it's a bad advert...becuase the metaphor doesn't even work, people weren't upset about the lose of the towers on 9 11, it was the people inside them, so unless this is an advert to save "tree sap" it's a bit off message and is shock-vertising...

Posted by: viralista on January 24, 2007 8:43 AM

"If memory serves, after 9/11, wasn't it the French who sort of dragged their feet and made things difficult for the countries trying to tally together against Bin Laden?"

If my memory serves, after 9/11, it was a French newspaper that had a headline saying "Today, we are all Americans." Although they later dragged their feet and made things difficult for the US' attempt to rally together a "coalition of the willing" for an illegal and unnecessary attack on a country that had no connection to 9/11 and posed no meaningful danger to America in any case, so I suppose there's some connection to reality going on here.

Posted by: Captain Slack on January 24, 2007 11:16 AM

Just got to say "Amen" to Captain Slack's comment. Really, people, you've got to stop believeing Fox News... There's a whole world out there and we don't all hate you, but try to see it from our point of view.
The face of your nation is currently: Bush. With a healthy background of Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, 14 year old girls raped by US soldiers, and villages of poverty-stricken villagers bombed by US planes. Oh yes, and uncontrollable corporate greed.

Posted by: Londoner on January 26, 2007 7:08 AM

"Earth first! We'll log the other planets later."

Posted by: The Underwriter on January 26, 2007 1:27 PM

Is anyone really surprised that other countries jump at the opportunity take jabs at us. The whole world has hated "our government" for six years. I give the French credit for having the gonads to say to our faces what the British, Germans, etc. are all thinking.

Posted by: Closet organizers on March 27, 2007 5:12 PM

WRONG! Our French allies were right there with us in our pursuit of Al Qaeda and Bin Laden in Afghanistan. It's when Bush wanted to pull many of our troops OFF the trail of Bin Laden and send them into a completely unrelated country (Iraq) that had nothing to do with 9/11 for fabricated reasons that the French--correctly--opposed our policy.

And you don't hear the Bushies talk very much about getting Bin Laden "dead or alive" any more do you?

Posted by: kendiggs on July 7, 2007 1:21 PM

I, for one, like this ad. It's fantastic.

Why you think it "mocks 9/11" or shows "a lack of respect for human dignity"? This is not what this ad does at all.

Like Provence rightly points out, this is designed to show a parallel between the tragedy of 9/11 and our wanton destruction of the environment.

Yes, it's provocative. That's what's necessary to get people to pay attention to something that has a much more serious impact on all of our lives. Tragic as 9/11 was, it is insiginificant compared to the effects of environmental destruction, pollution, biodiversity loss on our planet and our species.

Posted by: Mike on June 27, 2008 4:42 AM