If you thought that Iggy Pop ad from Amnesty International last week was a little off, you were correct. The singer is claiming that he never agreed to his photo in the PSA, which was featured with the ironic tagline: “Justin Bieber is the future of rock n’ roll.”
The Belgium ads were meant to imply that torture (using photos of bloodied and bruised public figures) pushed people into making confessions and false claims. As Iggy Pop stated on his Twitter on Tuesday (June 24), Amnesty is now apologizing for the doctored images.
To generate awareness about our campaign against torture, Amnesty International Belgium French speaking section used an image of Iggy Pop without his authorization.
Even though we acted in good faith, we would like to apologise to Iggy Pop for having done so.
The overall goal of this campaign is to try to influence people’s ideas on the use of torture. According to surveys, a shocking number of people believe that “torture may sometimes be useful” ; more than 36% of people even think that torture is justified in some cases. This is unacceptable, and we illustrate this reality with the message that a man who is tortured will say anything in order to escape this awfulness, using provocative images and statements to attract public attention. We would therefore also like to make it clear that the statement attributed to Iggy Pop that he believes Justin Bieber is the future of rock and roll does not represent Iggy Pop’s personal opinion but was part of the creative process for this campaign and was intended to be ironic.
Previously Amnesty International came under fire for using doctored and unauthorized photos of the Dalai Lama (caption: “A man who doesn’t have a Rolex by age 50 has wasted his life.”) and Karl Lagerfeld (“The summit of elegance is a hawaiian shirt and flip-flops.”). The image of the Dalai Lama was taken down after religious backlash.
Emilee Lindner
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