Corporate America Still Lacks Genitals

I own a Scion Xa - the car belongs to Toyota's Scion product line that is aimed at 20 somethings who don't have a lot of cash but do have a lot of need for individuation. I bought mine because it gets 38 mpg on the freeway, it's got a small wheel base, great visibility and a hatchback.

When I purchased my Xa I was excited as I'd been living on the peninsula without wheels for 6 months and generally hating life as a result. My nightlife was non-existent and while I love bicycling I was getting tired of biking against the wind along the Bay Trail to get home from work everyday.

What I wasn't super keen on was the Scion marketing stuff I ran across after having purchased my Xa. As I learned that Scion was sponsoring hip hop tours and graffiti competitions something smelled fishy. I wondered if Toyota had the balls to really pull off associating its cars with a culture that is at its roots is raw, dirty, DIY, and generally anti-establishment. I imagined Scion would end up looking ridiculous associating itself with subpar labels who were desperate for sponsorship and willing to ditch their integrity for corporate mullah.

Over the year and a half that I've driven my Xa I've mostly ignored the Scion ad campaigns and sponsorship that I've run across; that is until I read Leah Garchick's column today at SFGate:

"You can thank Robin Williams for defending genitals on Hayes Street. Scion cars, hoping to seem hip and happening, hired San Francisco artist Shawn Barber to curate a week of a monthlong series of "Dashboard'' art shows at a Hayes Street gallery. Barber selected works from about a dozen artists, including three who drove up from Los Angeles for Saturday's scheduled opening.

But on Friday, as the work was being unpacked, a worried Scion rep decided that some pieces were too racy; she ordered them out of the show. Stephen Malbon of Malbon Brothers Farms, the New York ad agency that produced the show, said the company worried about people visiting the gallery with children. He said one work included a couple just after sex, and another was a bird's-eye view of a woman standing on her head doing yoga. (I looked at some of the works at juxtapoz.com but couldn't see these images.)

In the ensuing discussions, artist Kevin Llewellyn brought his friend and patron Williams for a preview look-see, and the comic's clowning around persuaded the Scion rep to soften her stance just a little, Barber said. At least one private part remained in public, said Barber, but 12 works were removed by opening time.

Meanwhile, on Saturday, Justin Giarla put on a one-night show of that "Censored Art'' at the Shooting Gallery on Larkin Street. There was a good crowd, but Barber said Monday the whole experience had been "very frustrating.''"

What offends me most is this - if an advertising agency Scion paid to make ads created some campaign featuring half dressed women sporting cleavage to the nines suggesting sex they would probably run it. But an artist's creation that is explicit and clear is far more threatening. I don't get it - when is the country going to wake up and realize that titillation in advertising is often times far more destructive than sex expressed through art, music, film etc.?

Fuck Toyota - I have half a mind to have naked bodies painted all over my Xa - there's my individuation.