Posted on 07/18/2003 9:04:30 PM PDT by Imal
WARNING!: If you are an attractive young woman accustomed to jogging nude through the desert outside Las Vegas, Nevada, then you may want to pay close attention to this story. Why? Because someday, when you least expect it, you may just find yourself the target of a ruthless, sex-crazed paintball hunter.
Or so the press would have us believe.
It's a sordid tale of guns, violence, sex and money. In other words, it has everything necessary to be the latest cause célébre among the perpetually-outraged set. So what is all the hubbub about?
All you need to do is visit the website! Huntingforbambi.com spells it all out for us:
More shocking than anything you've ever seen before. Labeled by CBS News as a cross between Sex and Violence a deadly combination! Women are being hunted down like animals and shot with paintball guns. This Raw and completely Uncensored video is a cross between Bum Fights and Girls Gone Wild and is sure to be the topic of many Howard Stern Show fans. You will be completely stunned when you see some of the wildest, most outrageous moments ever caught on tape. This is without a doubt one of the sickest and most shocking videos ever made. When it comes to hunting women if you can think of it we probably show it. Women are screaming with fear as our Team Bambi hunters track them down and blast them with paintball guns...
Sounds like good, clean fun, so why all the controversy? At a glance, one can see plenty of ammunition for pompous indignation from:
- The National Organization for Women (NOW), for violence against women and the exploitation of women.
- The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (TBCTPGV), because guns, even paintball guns, are evil! Of course, we can expect the entire alphabet soup of "gun control" groups to climb on board and use this to remind us why "assault paintball weapons" are the criminals' "weapon of choice". Expect breathlessly-worded federal legislation and maybe a few constitutional amendments to follow soon.
- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), because this points out the shocking cruelty of hunting to which real animals are exposed (oh, and by the way, check out their sexiest vegetarian contest). Maybe they'll treat us to some more of their own nude protests in Times Square or on the Capitol Mall.
- Hunter's Quest International (HQI), for giving real hunters a bad name (and getting them into more trouble with PETA). Secretly, they're probably upset that they didn't think of it first.
- The Walt Disney Company (WDC), for besmirching the respected name of "Bambi", one of their veteran cartoon actors, who also happens to be a buck, not a doe. We can expect the real Bambi to hold a press conference on this and announce a lawsuit, after consulting his lawyers, of course.
- The Screen Actors Guild (SAG), for not using union members in producing the video, itself an unforgiveable crime worthy of permanent blacklisting. Just wait and see if the producers and staff of Hunting for Bambi ever work in that town again!
- The Occupational Safety & Health Administration (OSHA), because the women are not wearing protective eyewear, and for other likely safety violations in the "workplace".
The list of the potentially aggrieved goes on and on. Any organization with a good acronym can probably find something to disapprove of here. And that's the giveaway. The story is just too pat, too well-contrived to be anything other than a publicity stunt.
I won't even bother to cite press accounts of this tempest in a teapot, because they are worldwide in scope, and I am certain you have already heard about it. Even now, from across the Atlantic, do I hear the sound of millions of French tongues condescendingly clucking in unison at the latest exploits of the "dirty cowboys"? I doubt anything could be more delicious to the Gallic palate than a plate of brie, a bottle of Chateau de Cochon Bleu and a generous helping of titillating scandal from those perverse Anglo-Saxons across the pond.
This kind of publicity is something traditional film studios pay tens of millions of dollars to try to achieve, and usually without anywhere near the success. And these guys are getting it for free!
Now they can marvel as the donations just roll right in! At $20 per video, these questionable opportunists stand to benefit quite nicely from the moral outrage of America's self-appointed guardians of the American psyche. Buying the video on DVD or VHS is as easy as clicking on a few buttons. Oddly enough, however, actually contacting the company if you have questions about your order or need customer service is more difficult than you might expect. You can send email to bambi@huntingforbambi.com if you wish to contact the "company", but good luck finding a phone number or physical mailing address on the website. Hmmm.
Some clever rascals made a rather tasteless "themed" porn video on a shoestring budget and needed to drum up some cheap publicity. But how to do it? The video alone was not enough. They needed something "over the top" to catch the imaginations of America's opinion leaders. What better than to take the action out of the staged video and offer "hunting trips" for "real"? Apparently, that's all it took, and the rest is history.
So are the producers of Hunting for Bambi actually running safaris aimed at bagging nude women? As of this writing, there is nothing to suggest that this has ever been done, except for some rather unsubstantiated claims by the producers themselves. As usual, Snopes.com, a voice for reason in the maelstrom of breathless Internet-propagated urban legend, weighs in with the sort of level-headed analysis of the Hunting for Bambi controversy that seems so tragically elusive to "professional journalists".
I think the real story here is how the press and America's "legions of decency" are promoting the success of a porn video.
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| That's the nicest thing that anyone's ever done for me. |
| It isn't every day |
| good fortune comes me way! |
| I never thought the future would be fun for me! |
| And if I had a bugle |
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| o' how's your father's touch. |
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| I simply have to say |
| Thank you very, very, very much! |
| Thank you very, very, very much! |
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