London Dungeon add which portrays Bloody Mary as a zombie is banned

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An advertisement for the London Dungeon which features the sudden transformation of Queen Mary I into a zombie has been banned after it frightened children.

The digital poster ran on digital screens throughout London Underground stations. The advert shows Mary I sitting on a chair, morphing into a zombie-like character with sunken eyes, pale skin, a wide-open mouth and a scarred face.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said that the ad was likely to frighten and distress children. One complainant said her eight-year-old had been frightened by it, while another had seen it "visibly shock and upset several children".

Queen Mary I came to the Throne in 1553 after the very short reign of her predecessor Lady Jane Grey. She was the Catholic daughter of King Henry VIII and his first wife Catherine of Aragon. During her five year reign, Mary I persecuted England's Protestants, burning almost 300 of them at the stake. This earned her the nickname Bloody Mary. The 300 executions, coming before Catholics were ever persecuted in England, ensured that Catholicism would become an unpopular religion in the British Isles.

The London Dungeon is a tourist attraction, based in Tooley Street, London, near London Bridge rail station about various tortures from the Medieval Age. It recreates various gory and macabre historical events in a 'gallows humour' style, which attempts to make them appealing to younger audiences.

'Shocking' London Dungeon ad banned

The Guardian
Wednesday 14th July 2010

ASA rules animated digital ad shown in London tube stations was likely to 'startle and frighten young children'


The London Dungeon ad

A digital poster for the London Dungeon featuring the sudden transformation of Queen Mary I into a zombie-like character has been banned by the advertising watchdog for scaring children.

The ad, developed by the agency Farm, ran on digital screens throughout London Underground stations.

Over the period of a few seconds an image of a serene Queen Mary – dubbed "Bloody Mary" for her persecution of Protestants, of which she burned almost 300 on the stake – sitting on a chair, morphs into a zombie-like character with sunken eyes, pale skin, a wide-open mouth and a scarred face.

The Advertising Standards Authority received four complaints that the ad was likely to frighten and distress children and was "inappropriate for display in an untargeted medium" such as digital escalator panels.

One complainant said her eight-year-old had been frightened by it, while another had seen it "visibly shock and upset several children".



The ASA said that the ad could be seen by anyone using the London Underground and that it was likely to "startle and frighten young children".

"We were of the view that the ad seemed to be setting out to scare and had overstepped the limit of acceptability in doing so because, although not frightening for adults, the image was likely to be shocking to young children and to cause them fear or distress without good reason," added the regulator. "We concluded that the ad was inappropriate for display in an untargeted medium."

Merlin Entertainments, which runs the London Dungeon, said that in order to "avoid causing fear and distress" it had followed London Underground's guidelines in "avoiding flames and excessive, dripping or running blood".

The company said that it had planned to run the ad again on the London Underground during the summer school holidays and Halloween.

It was meant to show the "dark side of [Queen Mary's] personality and portray her as a villain", Merlin added. The company said that the ad was "obviously historical and in no way irresponsible or gratuitous".

Queen Mary I aka Bloody Mary



Mary was the daughter of King Henry VIII and his Spanish first wife Catherine of Aragon. Like her mother, she was a devout Catholic. She was the only child of the couple to survive, so Henry eventually divorced Catherine because she failed to bear him a male heir. The difficulties of him getting the divorce eventually led him to break England away from Rome and installing himself, rather than the Pope, as Head of the Church in England. After his divorce, Henry married his second wife, Anne Boleyn. As a result of Mary's mother no longer being married to her father Mary was declared illegitimate and was to no longer to be called "princess", but rather "The Lady Mary". She was able to get the title of princess back only after she wrote letters to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (her cousin) and the Pope stating that her parents' marriage had not been valid

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]When Anne Boleyn gave birth to Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth I), Mary was sent to attend the new young Princess in her household. Soon Elizabeth would be declared a bastard as well, since her mother also failed to produce a male heir for Henry. So incensed was Henry that Anne had also not provided him with a son that he invented charges of adultery against Anne - even with her own brother - and she was beheaded outside the Tower of London in 1536.[/FONT]

But Henry was to have more luck with his third wife Jane Seymour. [FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]In October 1537, Queen Jane gave birth to Edward, Henry's longed for son and Mary stood as the young prince's godmother at the christening. The court was soon plunged into mourning as Jane died two weeks after Edward's birth.

When Henry died in 1547, his son Edward became King Edward VI - at the age of just nine. Edward had a fairly uneventuful reign but, s[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,Geneva,Swiss,SunSans-Regular]ome time in 1552, he began to show signs of the illness that would eventually claim his life. He was reported to have a hacking cough that eventually resulted in him spitting up blood and tissue. He probably had tuberculosis.[/FONT]

In the event of Edward's death, his half-sister Mary was to become Queen - Henry VIII even wrote that that would be the case in his will. But Edward, a staunch Protestant, didn't want his Catholic half-sister on the Throne so arrangements were made for the Crown to be passed to Edward's Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey.

Jane took to the Throne on 10th July 1553 at the age of 16. This caused outrage amonst the people of England as, despite the fact they didn't fancy having a Catholic on the Throne, they knew that the Throne was rightly Mary's.

As a result, Mary went to East Anglia and summoned troops. Not wanting civil war, the Privy Council switched their allegiance from Jane to Mary, and proclaimed her queen in London on 19 July among great jubilation of the populace. Jane and her husband were imprisoned in the Gentleman Gaoler's apartments at the Tower of London. Jane had been Queen for just nine days, earning her the nickname "The Nine Day Queen." The new queen entered London in a triumphal procession on 3 August. In September, Parliament declared Mary the rightful queen and denounced and revoked Jane's proclamation as that of a usurper. Jane was beheaded at the Tower of London on 12th February 1554.

There might have been rejoicing at Mary's accession to the Throne, but her reign would be a bloody one. Not only did she marry King Phillip II of Spain, who was also Catholic, much to the horror of the English people, but she also harboured a desire to return England to the Catholic faith. Protestants faced a choice: exile, conversion, or punishment. Several of those who remained in England to profess and defend their Protestant beliefs would be burned as martyrs in the four-year-long Marian Persecutions.

These executions were recorded in John Foxe's "The Book of Martyrs." Mary's first victim was John Rogers, a preacher, biblical translator and lecturer at St. Paul’s Cathedral. He was burned at London's Smithfield on the 4 February 1555. 284 Protestants (56 of them women) were executed. 30 died in prison, but the majority of the 284 were burned alive. The executions earned her the nickname Bloody Mary.

Mary died at age 42 at St. James's Palace in London on 17 November 1558, and was succeeded by her half-sister, who became Elizabeth I. Elizabeth was a staunch Protestant and she took the opposite route that her sister took when she made the practising of Catholicism throughout England illegal on pain of death.
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guardian.co.uk
 
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