Posted on 03/10/2005 10:29:45 AM PST by bloggodocio
French Catholic Church tries to ban fashion ad
PARIS, March 10 (AFP) - France's Catholic Church sought an injunction from the courts Thursday to ban an advertisement for a leading fashion house which is based on Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting of Christ's Last Supper.
The advertisement - for Marithe and Francois Girbaud - shows designer-clad women in the place of Jesus and the apostles, one of them with her arms around a half-naked man in jeans.
"When you trivialise the founding acts of a religion, when you touch on sacred things, you create an unbearable moral violence which is a danger to our children. Tomorrow Christ on the cross will be selling socks," said lawyer Thierry Massis.
But lawyers for Girbaud said that to prohibit the image would be an act of censorship.
"The work is a photograph based on a painting, not on the bible," said lawyer Bernard Cahen. "There is nothing in it that is offensive to the Catholic religion. It is a way of showing the place of women in society today, which is a reflection of our changing values."
Three years ago the Catholic Church reacted with anger to a poster for the film Amen by Constantin Costa-Gavras which showed a cross whose branches turned into Nazi swastikas. However it did not launch court action.
In 1998 the church complained about a campaign for Volkswagen which also used Leonardo's Last Supper with the slogan: "Rejoice for a new Golf is born."
A decision was due late afternoon.
How is it the French can get the complicated things right but the simple things wrong (i.e. Bush good, Saddam bad)? There must be some late night TV punchlines in here somewhere.
The Catholic church just gave this company a gift. The publicity from this will bring them more visibily and viewings of the add than they could have bought with money.
There's an active Catholic Church in France? Where? I never saw anybody but tourists in the cathedrals I went to.
Looks like it. Oh, well...worse has been done with the Last Supper.
NFP
Let me guess, this company will not doing something similar with Mohammad. There might have been some heads that would have been cut.
It seems like there is only Christianity that is peaceful enough to be kicked around by hiding behind "freedom of speach". Cowards!
The scene in MASH for one
Didn't someone do the Last Supper with those dogs that are otherwise playing poker or something like that?
> It seems like there is only Christianity that is peaceful enough to be kicked around by hiding behind "freedom of speach".
Untrue. It's not a matter of Christianity being the only one peaceful enough to get used in cheap ads... it's a matter of Islam being jsut about the only one nasty enough to *not* get used. How often have you seen witches, Thor, Zeus, etc. used in ads?
Because it may offend some here, I'll not post the pic, but one of my all time favorite parodies of DaVinci's painting may be found here:
Who knew?
Yeah, that's a good one.
Your right I had forgotten about that
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