Professional provocateur group The Billboard Liberation Front has struck again, lending their billboard modification skills to the Final Exit Network’s controversial advertisement – or, rather, public service announcement – at Howard and South Van Ness. (Via Laughing Squid.)
The FEN’s declarative statement, “My Life, My Death, My Choice,” to be formerly understood in the context of advocating a right-to-die legal regime currently in existence in only three states, has been put to the service of BLF’s Adbusters-esque subterfuge, and now indicates one’s right to smoke his or herself out courtesy of Phillip Morris.
In the end, so to speak, the ambidextrous message adorning the roadway might have caused more controversy in its original form. New Jersey’s Final Exit Network attracted criticism when its message was first spotted in early June. With its call for bodily sovereignty in the matter of ending one’s life, it brings to mind Dr. Kevorkian, terminally ill cancer patients, Catholic guilt, and a host of other weighty cultural artifacts.
Though for some passersby, even in its original form it was apparently just confusing (“I don’t know what it means at all“), a product of the brief and cryptic message itself that barely hints at its subject matter and instead directs you to a website.
According to the BLF: “The message of ‘My Life. My Death. My Choice.’ informs and empowers the consumer to choose, as their god given right, how they want to die. Philip Morris brings this message to the consumer to remind them that some rights are inalienable in life as they are in death.”
This seems to mark a new era of productivity for the BLF, as just a few weeks ago they alerted the residents of Nob Hill were alerted that an Egg McMuffin may in fact be responsible for the mass murder of their taste buds. Beware, SF advertisers — no billboard is safe.
Photo: Billboard Liberation Front
