Friday, July 23, 2010

Racks and racecars

Okay, yes, I used the word "rack" to describe breasts, but it alliterated nicely with "racecar".

This has been coming for a few months now. Supersport, the providers of F1 coverage in southern Africa went to great lengths during the off-season to put together a montage of F1 scenes to show before and after each practice, qualifying, and race session. They must have spent hours on it. Seriously. There's no way you could make a three-minute montage of nothing but breasts without having spent hours combing through promo footage. Not breasts belonging to women who are in some way connected to F1, for example drivers' girlfriends/partners/wives or team staff (and, yes, part of me is glad that there isn't a boob-shot of Petrov's manager [on the right of the shot]. That woman scares me). Not even shots of grid girls from last years' races. Women who are in no way recognisably F1-related. They just have great boobs, and most are wearing bikinis. Oh, there's one shot of Bernie Ecclestone (who is, after all *the* loveliest human being on the planet. The wiki article explains why I don't really like him), but, apart from that, just boobs.

Forget, for a moment, that I'm a feminist and politically object to boobs being used as marketing tools; I simply want an honest answer to a perplexing question. How, exactly, does a montage of bikini-clad breasts convey the meaning/intent/spirit of a car racing session? I thought title credits were supposed to convey the meaning of the show. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not above watching things that involve breasts. However, if I want to watch race cars, I want to watch race cars, not a montage of fake titties belonging to random anonymous women. Are they assuming that the only motorsport fans in Southern Africa are teenaged boys, unable to get their cheap boob thrills elsewhere? Wake up, Supersport! Don't try and get better viewership by showing boobs; we would far rather see race highlights, drivers and actual team members!

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