According to Pitchfork, a 16-second video advertisement from Perfume Genius for his upcoming album, Put Your Back N 2 It, was rejected by Google and Youtube for promoting “mature sexual themes” and being “not family safe.” Of course, this would be reasonable if the video contained nudity or something of that sort, but, from where we stand, it just shows two men embracing and nothing worse than would be displayed on an M83-featuring Victoria’s Secret commercial.
According to Matador Records, the following statement was received as explanation:
Any ads that contain non family safe material are disapproved. I noted to the team that the people in the video are not entirely unclothed, but the overall feeling of the video is one of a more adult nature, including promoting mature sexual themes and what appears to be nude content. As such, the video is non family safe. In order to have this video ad approved, you will need to bring it into compliance with our policy.
In addition, no guidelines were given as to what about the video could be changed to fit their standards. But, if one were to take a wild guess, I’d say turn one of those guys into a girl and it would probably meet their approval.
Check out the advertisement below and see what all the fuss is about. It’s a shame in 2012 we are still publishing stories like this.
Perfume Genius ad from nils bernstein on Vimeo.
