Ad referring to Octavia Spencer as “scary b**ch” taken down
theGRIO REPORT - Promoting the freshman hospital drama on Fox, the ads had the words "scary bitch" scrawled next to the image of Academy Award winning actress Octavia Spencer...
Los Angeles buses will no longer feature Red Band Society advertisements. It seems they have been pulled due to offensive language.
Promoting the freshman hospital drama on Fox, the ads had the words “scary bitch” scrawled next to the image of Academy Award winning actress Octavia Spencer. Some thought this was inappropriate and asked for the ads to no longer be displayed.
Spencer’s character is Nurse Jackson, a woman who can’t stand nonsense, causing the other characters in the show to oftentimes call her a “scary bitch.”
After the public outcry, Metro Los Angeles announced on Twitter they are going to take down ads from buses. It happened Thursday, after the community contacted the Metro’s board executive committee with their concerns. This is what Metro Los Angeles tweeted:
“Metro Board Exec Comte getting earful from community over allowing ‘Red Band Society” ad on buses. Metro officials say ad is being pulled.”
The mayor of Los Angeles Eric Garcetti, along with the board members, also sent their apologies through Metro Los Angeles’ Twitter account. They said the “agency is sorry ad went up,” and that their “ad policy needs to be tightened to prevent ads with offensive language from being used in the future.”
“We were notified yesterday morning of the concern around the ads and immediately offered to remove the language,” a Fox spokesperson said when asked by The Hollywood Reporter. “Metro Los Angeles ultimately decided to take down the ads, and we respect that decision. We sincerely apologize if the copy was offensive to viewers.”
This resembles the July billboards pull, when graphic ads for The Strain had to be removed because they depicted a worm crawling inside of a human eyeball. The Los Angeles community’s reaction was the same back then as well.
