What does it take to shock in the land of the Gallic shrug? Ads that suggest adulterous oral sex, according to complaints about new movie "Les Infideles."

Posters for the film - which show the contented male stars with faceless women in submissive positions - went up Tuesday but were being taken down Friday following a request from France’s self-regulating advertising body.

In one poster, actor and comedian Jean Dujardin stands between a pair of upside-down bare female legs, clutching them. In another, the back of a woman’s head is waist high to actor Gilles Lellouche, who is on his cell phone. Her hands stretch up to his chest and a quotation over his head reads: "It’s going to cut off. I’m going into a tunnel."

"We could see that this campaign didn’t respect (the rules) with the sexually explicit positions, the play on words ... the boundaries were crossed," said Stephane Martin, the head of the Authority of Professional Regulation of Advertising.

Some French newspapers have suggested the ads could even cost Dujardin - nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the silent hit film "The Artist"- the Oscar.

They at least appear to have hit a raw nerve in a land with fresh memories of the scandal of last year’s arrest of potential presidential contender Dominique Strauss-Kahn on charges of attempted rape.

JC Decaux, the outdoor advertising company that hung the posters, conceded they weren’t in "good taste" and they would all be down by the end of the day.

French actor Gilles Lellouche in one of the posters for the film ""Les Infideles" that have been pulled because of questions of taste.  

They have been replaced by a third poster, where the male leads sit and laugh as two sexily clad women walk away.

"We already refused other visuals for this film that seemed unpublishable to us," the company said in a statement - without elaborating on what those images contained.

To some, the rumblings may indicate a post-Strauss-Kahn shift in French mores. When the former head of the International Monetary Fund was arrested last year in New York - on charges later dropped - it set off soul-searching in a country known as a beacon for the sexually liberated and for its acceptance of extramarital affairs. Had the posters revived questions over whether France’s reputed sexual liberation is a one-way street and largely disenfranchising to women?

Not quite, according to Osez le Feminisme, a French feminist organization. Magali Dehaas, a spokeswoman for the group, said that while she hoped the incident would prompt a rethink about sexism in advertising, she feared that the images shocked more for their sexually explicit content than for their depiction of women. She said Strauss-Kahnn’s arrest may have started the wheels turning, but "we have a lot of work to do in that department."

Sure enough, on the streets of Paris, some were left scratching their heads over why the ads had caused such a stir, given that French advertising is no foreigner to the racy. Yogurt is sold by bare-chested women on mainstream TV and a current ad pretends to show a man and woman having sex in the middle of their open-plan office - until we learn he is just applying a hot compress to her back.

"I am more shocked by the fact that the billboard was changed, because for me, there was nothing shocking," said Corinne Maugrenier, 37, as the posters came down Friday. "I think that we are moving toward a puritan system as in the United States."

French newspapers were suggesting Friday that Dujardin might lose his Oscar to the stunt.

"America doesn’t kid at all with these kind of dirty photos," Le Parisien wrote.

Le Figaro suggested that those promoting rival actors might "play on the Puritanism" of the Academy’s members to discredit Dujardin in the notoriously fierce competition.

The company that distributes the film in France, Mars Distribution, did not respond to requests for comment. A spokeswoman for Dujardin and the film also declined.

GLAAD Bashes Transgendered People, Calls For Censorship

Over that awful upcoming ABC sitcom, “Work It.” (Trailer above.) I can objectively say that “Work It” is awful having not even seen a full episode, because, uh, hello. But can you take out a full page ad in Variety demanding that ABC pull the show from its schedule if you haven’t even seen a full episode? GLAAD thinks it can.
In addition to the call for censorship (ironic for a group that supposedly celebrates free speech, inclusion, and freedom of expression), GLAAD inadvertently attacks the people it’s supposedly trying to protect in their ad:

Next month, ABC plans to premiere the show “Work It,” featuring two men who dress as women in order to gain employment. By encouraging the audience to laugh at the characters’ attempts at womanhood, the show gives license to similar treatment of transgender women.

Oh? So, GLAAD is comparing actual transgender women to men who dress up as women in order to get jobs. Or, they’re saying that television viewers won’t be able to tell the difference and will, after tuning in to “Work It”, just assume that all trans men and women are just playing dress up, to get jobs! In this economy, I guess anything’s possible.

ABC should not air this show – plain and simple.  At the very least, “Work It” is offensive and insulting. At worst, the show is downright dangerous and sends a message that transgender people are to be laughed at, or are somehow less-than. This show would be a setback for transgender Americans, and for everyone who believes that all people deserve to be treated with respect and dignity.

Never mind the fact that cross dressing as comedy has been making people laugh since before GLAAD was even born (Some Like It Hot, Milton Berle, “Bosom Buddies,” etc.–which is not to say that “Work It” is anywhere close to those levels of comedy, because clearly it’s not)?
The people who should be offended by “Work It” are unemployed, middle-aged men, who are being depicted as bumbling and submissive clowns. Others who could possibly be offended are comedy writers and people with taste, but not transgendered women.

NY Republicans Want To Block The Jesus AIDS Video From Public Display… Again

Last December, a bunch of Republican U.S. legislators joined forces with the Catholic League’s blowhard president William Donohue to get the Smithsonian Museum to censor part of their Hide/Seek queer art exhibition, all because of David Wojnarowicz’s video Fire In My Belly which showed ants crawling over a Jesus figurine for a whole 11 seconds.

Now that the show has moved to The Brooklyn Museum, New York state Republicans have started threatening to pull all the museum’s public funding calling Wojnarowicz’s work “sacrilegious,” “Christian bashing,” “a hate crime,” and “blatantly disrespectful and offensive to Christians during the holiday season.”
Even Bill Donohue has jumped into this deja vu scenario by saying that Wojnarowicz died by “self-inflicted” AIDS, something Donohue implies wouldn’t have happened if he had simply lived life according to Catholic doctrine. This is the same man who called Catholic child rape victims “gold diggers” and blamed gays for the Church’s molestation problem adding that the church has been unfairly singled out and scrutinized over the alleged rapes.

Maybe we can divert New York’s public art funds and pay Bill Donohue to deliver more of his anti-LGBT theatrics in the Brooklyn Museum. Viewers won’t be able to tell whether it’s real or just very passionate performance art. Either way, they’ll understand why the public needs queer art exhibitions in the face of Donohue and his elephantine friends

US authors say publisher told them to ‘straighten’ gay character

Two authors who wrote a young adults’ post-apocalyptic novel say a publisher offered them a deal on the basis that they turn ‘straighten’ a gay character.

Sherwood Smith and Rachel Manija Brown’s book "Stranger" has five main characters, one of whom, Yuki, is gay and has a boyfriend.

They said that an agent from a major literary agency offered to sign them “on the condition that we make the gay character straight, or else remove his viewpoint and all references to his sexual orientation”.
The pair did not name the agency but said it represents a bestselling YA (young adult) novel in the same genre as their book.

Ms Manija Brown says she responded to state that the authors would never alter the character’s sexual orientation. In reply, the agent said that Yuki could become gay in a sequel if the book was popular.
The authors wrote: “We knew this was a pie-in-the-sky offer – who knew if there would even be sequels? – and didn’t solve the moral issue. When you refuse to allow major characters in YA novels to be gay, you are telling gay teenagers that they are so utterly horrible that people like them can’t even be allowed to exist in fiction.

“LGBTQ teenagers already get told this. They are four times more likely than straight teenagers to attempt suicide. We’re not saying that the absence of LGBTQ teens in YA sf and fantasy novels is the reason for that. But it’s part of the overall social prejudice that does cause that killing despair.”
Ms Smith and Ms Manija Brown added that this was not the first time publishers had asked them to remove gay characters.

They wrote: “This isn’t about one agent’s personal feelings about gay people. We don’t know their feelings; they may well be sympathetic in their private life, but regard the removal of gay characters as a marketing issue.

“The conversation made it clear that the agent thought our book would be an easy sale if we just made that change. But it doesn’t matter if the agent rejected the character because of personal feelings or because of assumptions about the market. What matters is that a gay character would be quite literally written out of his own story.”

The pair said they would not name the publisher who spoke most bluntly, because “naming names can make it too easy to target a lone ‘villain’, who can be blamed and scolded until everyone feels that the matter has been satisfactorily dealt with.”

Other authors, including Jessica Verday and Nicola Griffith, have told of run-ins with publishers over gay characters.