Devangshu Datta: Saying it with Oranges

VIEWPOINT

Elderly lady (EL) with mop trudges down hotel corridor.

Scene Two: Hotel room # 69. Middle-aged bloke lies tied and gagged on bed. Lady in leather (LiL) stands over him with whip.

LiL: "You've made mistress angry! You've been a bad boy! Mistress will punish you!"

Man: "Grunt!"

Enter EL: "Yes! What have you done about climate change? Emissions are up and up! You better act right now, young man, while we still have time to do something about it!"

EL then whacks man with mop and walks out. Fade. Drumroll.

Slogan: "Ask your MP direct about climate change" segues across the screen.

This little skit from Friends of the Earth and thebigask.com has been among the most popular clips on the Net for about six months. It's very funny and it gets the message across. As "shock ads" go, it's witty and sophisticated without being bloody like the Benetton heart was.

What really impressed me was that the chap was gagged with an orange. Now, that's a real professional touch. As your friendly neighbourhood dominatrix could tell you, an orange is just the right size and shape to prevent speech when strategically stuffed into the mouth. It's pulpy and therefore safe. If it's bitten through and swallowed in the throes of pain or passion, the victim merely passes pips rather than chokes to death.

According to urban legend, the citrus fruit was first employed for this purpose in 16th century Sevilla when the Inquisition was going strong. Sevilla is famous for its oranges so it was probably serendipity. Disturbed by a heretic yelling his head off on the rack, an inquisitor with sensitive ears picked up the first gag at hand "" and it was an orange.

In the red-light district of Brussels, "eating an orange" is a coded reference to playing out a certain kind of game (the elderly lady is optional). Brussels has one of the best-run and safest red light districts anywhere, though the Dutch and Germans get more publicity.

You can walk into any reputed establishment of ill-repute in Brussels' area of scarlet illumination, inspect the staff and their medical certificates, pick your scenario, be billed (quite truthfully maybe!) on your credit card for fruit or flowers and emerge satisfied.

One reason why the red light district is safe is that there are always a lot of cops floating around. An anguished Brussels police chief recently circulated a memo castigating, "These officers (who) think their duty hours are to be used to drink alcohol in bars, practice sports..., visit brothels or massage parlours, and entertain intimate relationships with residents of the neighborhood during their patrol. It is only by setting a good example that the police can make themselves respected."

In my experience, however, uniformed men with guns tend to be respected by default. They may be deeply disliked or treated with great suspicion but respect is rarely lacking. Any bar, massage parlour, bowling alley, or house of ill-repute that is visibly patronised by policemen, is liable to be a safer environment.

The officers who frequent the Brussels district of scarlet illumination could argue that their ultimate objective is to prevent crime. If this paradigm of getting unusually close and personal with the local community works, why change it?

Prostitution has long been legal in Belgium and licensed sex workers pay income tax. The brothels were more recently legalised "" they used to operate earlier as licensed massage parlours with attached Fruit & Flowers departments. Pimping and trafficking are illegal and punishable by long sentences.

In the third-world and even in first-world countries where prostitution is a gray area, a police presence in the red-light district would scarcely attract comment. It would be assumed that the cops had come around to collect their percentage of the daily take. In Belgium, they can't do that. So they are reduced to accepting freebies instead. I wonder if they deal in oranges.