Dintendo? : Noise: Citing danger of damage to hearing, entertainers and auditory experts urge the video game maker to drop an ad campaign that urges youngsters to ‘play it loud.’
A new Nintendo television commercial opens with stern adults telling youngsters to behave and keep the noise down. Then it explodes into electric guitar-inspired defiance, bombarding viewers with cascades of music video and video game clips, urging children to “play it loud.”
On Thursday, a group of grim-faced entertainers and hearing experts--looking as though they could have stepped out of the ad--said it wasn’t funny. They urged Nintendo to pull the commercial, complaining that it and two other Nintendo “play it loud” ads will encourage youngsters to pump up the volume on their video games or music and lead to hearing loss.
“Nintendo makes a great deal of money off our children,” hearing-impaired comedian Kathy Buckley said. “I cannot imagine why they would want to encourage our children to play it loud. . . . If children already have their hearing, by all means let them keep it.”
A Nintendo spokeswoman responded that the activists were misinterpreting the campaign.
“It’s not a literal thing,” spokeswoman Perrin Kaplan said. Comparing the ads to Taco Bell’s “make a run for the border” campaign, Kaplan said: “You don’t see people suddenly running for the border” after seeing Taco Bell ads.
The multimillion-dollar national ad campaign, which began July 4 and is scheduled to run for the rest of the year, is aimed at 9- to 17-year-olds, Kaplan said.
Last month, Joseph Rizzo, executive director of the Better Hearing Institute, wrote to Nintendo asking it to withdraw the ads. Nintendo replied that the ads articulate a lifestyle rather than clamor for more noise.
Rizzo was not convinced, nor were other hearing activists who turned out Thursday to urge Nintendo to, in their words, “just turn it down.”
“This is an ad campaign that’s aimed at young children, teaching them to enjoy more volume,” said Dr. John House, president of the House Ear Institute in Los Angeles. “It is important that we all take responsibility and do everything we can to discontinue their campaign and (pressure Nintendo to) convince children that their product is fun--it doesn’t have to be loud.”
Critics said the commercials may encourage children to boost the volume on their television sets beyond 85 decibels, a level that can lead to hearing loss if maintained for long periods. “What Nintendo’s doing is a slap in the face,” said Kathy Peck, executive director of Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers, a group that works with musicians such as Pete Townshend of the Who and members of the heavy metal band Metallica to guard against the effects of loud rock music. “It’s just eliminating all the hard work we do.”
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Kaplan said that before the ads were released they were tested on many children by a professional research corporation, “and 86% of all the kids understood that it meant have fun, live life, play hard, and that it didn’t mean anything about turning up the volume.”
Buckley, however, said she asked eight youths of varying ages in her North Hollywood neighborhood what they wanted to do after seeing the commercials. “Six of eight said let’s turn it up and see what happens,” she said.
Comedian Steve Allen and actress Nanette Fabray joined the critics at a news conference Wednesday. A statement distributed by the group said that actors Leslie Nielsen and Richard Dysart also objected to the ads, and that Dysart has volunteered to lead a protest march on Nintendo headquarters in Seattle.
Allen, who infuriated hard-core rock fans in the 1950s by mocking song lyrics and having Elvis Presley sing “Hound Dog” to a basset hound on Allen’s national TV show, said “the world has gotten too loud recently, particularly the part of it that is man-made.”
He acknowledged that what he and his fellow activists were urging goes against the grain of the rebellious lifestyle lauded in the Nintendo ads. His response: “In the 1960s some of the leaders said ‘Don’t listen to anyone over 30.’ Well, they’re now in their 60s and realize what a stupid thing they said.”
