Unknown filmmaker | Arrivals / 2013 [travel advertisement]

greetings and departures

by Douglas Messerli

 

Unknown director Arrivals / 2013 [travel advertisement]

 

In 2013 the Quebec government of Canada developed a TV, radio, and web campaign to prove just how open to different kinds of sexual orientation the province of Quebec was.

    The first of these ads shows a man texting his lover while he awaits at the airport.

   Soon after we see both a man and woman coming down the exit ramp simultaneously, a basically everyday scene in which we have not yet any clue to the sexuality of the arrivals or the man waiting.

     The woman, however, quickly breezes past him, and he quickly joins the man for a deep kiss on the lips for joy of his arrival.

      In a second ad, a woman returns home to find a note from her partner, catching her a bit off-guard since it announces a surprise party with a group of friends. But soon after, with the gathering around her, she shares a passionate embrace with her lover, another woman.

  

   In both instances, the narrative voice asks the viewer (in French): “Does this change what you were thinking 20 seconds ago?” almost as if the provided evidence were a test of the viewers own attitudes toward sexuality.

      Clearly, the Quebec government makes clear, we are liberal minded here.

      Martine Delagrave, who oversaw the project for the ad firm, insisted that their intention was not to shock the viewer, but simply to help people begin to think just how open-minded they really are. A survey conducted by the government suggested that although people tend to see themselves generally as more open-minded than the society in general, they were not perhaps as permissive as they believed themselves to be.

      Interestingly, while 78% of those queried claimed they were comfortable with homosexuality, in their survey of 800 Quebecers, although 90% said they were open to sexual diversity, and 78% declared they were comfortable with gays and lesbians, the percentage dropped to 45 in the case of transgender individuals. And 40% of those queried observed that they were not comfortable with seeing two men kiss in public.

      A second series of ads, revolving around issues like same-sex parenting, was planned for 2014 or 2015. With a slash of $3 billion from their budget the next year, those ads never appeared.

 

Los Angeles, October 1, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (October 2024).