Hannah, Dave, and Decadence

On Wednesday, the advertising standards authority said it was considering investigating Crown Paint over its 'Hannah and Dave' advert. The crime? a putatively humorous song about a couple decorating their new apartment; the woman is pregnant (after meeting Dave at an illegal rave) and is hoping for a girl, whereas Dave is just hoping that the baby is his. boom boom!

Some people are outraged, saying that the advert is ‘beyond mad’ and ‘massively offensive’.

Is it though?

Isn’t it just an inevitable comment on our decadent society?

Why be offended now? Every day of the week people hook up; contraception is used to ensure pleasure without consequence; for some it fails, and the woman gets pregnant; of those, a few decide to keep the baby, most terminate.

In 2021 214,869 abortions were carried out in England and Wales, the highest since the abortion act was introduced. 99.9% were carried out because of a risk to the woman’s mental health, 43% had had one or more previous abortions. These are terminations typically sought for reasons of inconvenience, and each one the deliberate killing of a human being. Almost 250,000 innocent lives eradicated because we have separated love making from family making. We demand to have one without the other, then get outraged by some lame joke on an advert. It’s like digging around for a bit of sawdust in crown paint whilst clambering over a bloody great plank shot right through the centre of the earth.

Sex is not regarded as sacred, but recreational. Few people seem outraged by this, TV broadcasts are not full of celebrities calling for a return to traditional values, films do not promote the merits of abstinence and (other than Kanye) rappers aren’t rapping about the dangers of sex outside marriage. Instead, people are encouraged to just have fun, be themselves, take pride; programmes commonly display scenes of sex and nudity, including ‘Naked Attraction’ where people pick dates based on the look of their genitals, and ‘Love Island’ where contestants ‘couple up’, steal a girl and relegate others to the subs bench. This is how we treat one another, and it’s not only generally accepted, but applauded. Why is anyone surprised by something as mild as the unknown provenance of some kid conceived at an illegal rave? I'm only surprised she chose to keep it. Mary Whitehouse saw this decline coming decades ago and she was right.

There’s a scene in Frasier where Roz complains that a guy she has been having sex with wants to start dating her, she is horrified! Frasier’s response?

‘Didn’t your mother warn you that sex could lead to dating’. Now that’s funny.

As Peter Kreeft observes “Sex is obviously very attractive and very addictive and in its proper and natural form its liberating and pure and an icon of God...but the holier a thing is, when its twisted, the unholier a thing is. Badly twisted sex can do an enormous amount of harm”.

This is our culture. It’s how it is. All Crown Paint has done is observe.

Our culture has become a joke. We place carnival rides in our cathedrals and have women ribbon dancing through others. Drag queens teach kids how to twerk in libraries. In sport, women with wombs compete against women with testicles; and all the time we laugh and cheer and beg for more.

There is a scene in Gladiator where Gracchus says of the new Emperor;

“I think he knows what Rome is. Rome is the mob. Conjure magic for them and they’ll be distracted. Take away their freedom and still they’ll roar...he’ll bring them death – and they will love him for it”

For those of us who don’t love the culture of death and can see that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, we need to straighten our backbones and get ready for the pruning, because as Peter Kreeft says, it’s coming;

‘If God still loves His church He will soon make it small, and poor, and persecuted…so that He can keep it alive. If He loves us, He will prune us, and we will bleed, and the blood of the martyrs will be the seed of the Church again, and a second spring will come – but not without blood. It never happens without blood, sacrifice and suffering. The continuation of Christs work – if it really is Christs work and not a comfortable counterfeit – can never happen without the Cross”

To pick up our cross is hard, it’s far easier to look the other way, say nothing, compromise with the culture, but…

‘…what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul?’ Jesus.