ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
Just when you thought Australia’s advertising industry couldn’t get any tamer, the boss from the iconic ‘Not Happy, Jan!’ ad has been retrospectively cancelled for workplace bullying.
People on the internet began debating the ad this morning and decided amongst themselves that Jan’s boss should’ve really taken the issue of Jan not putting the company’s ad in the Yellow Pages to HR instead of screaming at her from a second-story window.
These internet personalities wanted to stress to The Advocate that they weren’t cancelling Deborah Kennedy, the actress who played Jan’s boss, they were cancelling the fictional character.
“Treating employees like that, especially female ones, isn’t acceptable in 2020,” said one person.
“It’s actually pretty gross that the writers even made the actors do that – and in retrospect, it’s actually fucking disgusting that the actors didn’t say something at the time like maybe this script wasn’t appropriate,”
“Jan’s boss in cancelled.”
The cancellation has put other characters from other ads on notice.
Especially the young female grocery shopper character from the 2003 Moccona Mocha Kenya.
In the ad, the young woman asks a man of African appearance to reach a pot of instant coffee for her and when he does, she explains that she likes ‘exotic’ things before saying that the man must be from an ‘exotic’ place because of his appearance. He then says he’s from Shropshire, with a heavy lisp.
The young lady in the ad spoke to our reporter today and she said that she lives in fear of being cancelled every day.
“It’s going to come one day,” she said.
“And Mike, the actor who played the English bloke, doesn’t have a lisp and he’s actually from Fremantle so he’s worried about getting cancelled, too,”
“They come for everyone one day. It’s inevitable.”
More to come.
