Everything Also Complain

From ‘Does ad convey right values’, 23 June 2010 ST Forum

THE new TV advertisement to promote filial piety… has left me disturbed.

While some people may find it touching, the message of filial piety seems distorted to the point of emphasising the wrong values.

…By his actions, the father seems to be teaching his son that it is perfectly fine to disregard his wife’s feelings in favour of his mother. It also seems to suggest that it is acceptable for the elderly to create disharmony at home.

Then came the slogan, ‘How one generation loves, the next generation learns’. In this instance, the boy seems to be learning a lot of wrong values.

Shouldn’t the authorities have thought of a happier way to teach and instil filial piety – perhaps featuring a happy and well-adjusted family visiting the grandparents, and the parents explaining to their children why it is important to spend more time with the elderly to create precious memories for all?

Or, they could have altered the ad to show the father comforting his wife and acknowledging her feelings in a delicate situation – thereby setting a good example for his son.

Using an overly domineering grand- parent in an ad to promote filial piety does not send out the intended message. After all, is it not true that one has to show respect to earn respect?

Other than a profound ability to lose the plot, does Hannah Chee even have a heart at all, I wonder. The ad works exactly because dealing with the senile elderly is never fair to those affected nor hardly does it ever have a happy ending, and admittedly those short 3 minutes were sufficient to make me hold back the tears. Logic wise, just because the ad skipped the reconciliation bits doesn’t mean one can automatically assume that the father is telling his son that one should favour one’s mother over the wife. And even if that were the case, this happens in real life. Get over it.  The writer then goes on to berate the elderly for unreasonable behaviour. That’s the whole point dammit! In the opening scene, a woman one can safely assume to be the wife, lets the husband attend to his dying mother while she exits the ward to handle administrative matters. Doesn’t that action alone speak volumes about love, forgiveness and magnanimity on the part of the wife?

Someone at MCYS please send a deleted scenes version to Ms Chee, probably featuring a scene of dad, mother, son and wheelchair bound grandmother group hugging in the midst of a picnic in front of the Singapore Flyer. Personally, I felt the ad did brilliantly leaving out the feelgood parts and focusing on the man-mother – estranged wife-clueless son -relationship. Even without the child-in-a-hospital melodrama, it tugs at the everyday familiar, and even without verbally extolling the importance of respecting the elderly, the images speak for themselves. More ads ‘teaching wrong values’ here.

Filed under: 2010, Advertisements, Campaigns/Elections, Parenting Tagged: | Advertisements, Campaigns/Elections, father and son, filial piety ad, MCYS