Advertising clip for the Jacobs Kronung coffee The family at a moral crossroads

The whole thing is actually outrageous - at least by the usual moral standards.

The kid comes out of the daughter"s room (or from the bathroom) in the morning in his underwear, and it is obvious the two of them didn"t work on their Math overnight.

The father didn"t know his daughter had a "friend" over.

He doesn"t know the boy.

His daughter had a one night stand.

This is happening in a home where there are two other teenagers - not the really the role model they need at their age (imagine how, every morning there"d be another unknown young man coming out in his underwear from the bedroom of each of the three girls - we know the name that kind of place goes by, don"t we?).

The wife is aware of her daughter"s affair and most certainly has nothing to say against it.

It"s possible the other two daughters are aware of it as well - it"s a kind of a women"s conspiracy against the man to impose a different set of moral standards than the ones of the father.

The young man is not only rude and cheeky, but he is outright obscene: he takes the cup of coffee from the father"s hand, even though it wasn"t intended for him (since the father didn"t know the young man was there); he makes fun of him by saying "Oh, thank you!"; he is the one to put out his hand first; he seems to think al it takes to defuse the situation is to say "I"m Alex"; and finally, to top it all off, he winks to the "old man" while taking the cup to his mouth, in a rather perverse form of male bonding - as if to say "I did your daughter!".

The spot doesn"t show us the father"s reaction; did he wink back or not?

Let"s not forget that either the daughter, or the kid, drink from the cup of coffee that the father had already drank from - rather distasteful, but then considering the whole script, it"s not even that far a stretch.

The wife acts like nothing happened: "What"s wrong, darling? You"ve always wanted a son, didn"t you?"

Apart from a slap, what would your reaction be?

It would be hard to find a more inappropriate context for the slogan "The delicate power of flavor".

What power would that be, exactly?

The power to distort family values?!

I don"t think that it"s possible or that this was the intention of the scriptwriter.

Most likely, it"s just that the whole message got out of hand, and doesn"t go with the usual moral code; perhaps the author thought that by trying to shake things up a bit, by taking a stab at the conventional morals, he would get the approval of the supporters of the "modern, inhibition-free family", and he would draw attention to the product that was being advertised.

But instead of "shaking things up a bit", the whole thing degenerated into an illustration of promiscuity.

And promiscuity is primitive.

Not trendy, not inhibition-free.