New York – Amazon.com Inc on Monday agreed to pull advertisements for a new television show featuring Nazi-inspired imagery from New York City’s subway system, a transit official said, hours after Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the company to do so.
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The advertisements for “The Man in the High Castle” completely wrap the seats, walls and ceilings of one train on the heavily utilized shuttle line that connects Times Square and Grand Central Terminal in midtown Manhattan.
The show depicts an alternate reality in which Nazi Germany and Japan have divided control over the United States after winning World War Two.
The advertisements include a version of the American flag with a German eagle and iron cross in place of the stars, as well as a stylized flag inspired by imperial Japan.
Representatives for Amazon and its television production arm did not respond to requests for comment.
The shuttle train ads had been scheduled to run until Dec. 6, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In addition, Amazon has paid for 260 subway station posters to be displayed until Dec. 6.
An MTA official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Amazon had asked for the shuttle train advertisements, but not the posters, to be removed.
In a statement earlier on Monday, de Blasio called on Amazon to remove the shuttle train advertisements, calling them “irresponsible and offensive to World War II and Holocaust survivors, their families, and countless other New Yorkers.”
The MTA had said the advertisements do not violate the agency’s content-neutral guidelines, which ban political ads.
The show is an adaptation of a Philip K. Dick 1962 novel, “The Man in the High Castle” that describes a version of history in which the Axis powers win World War Two and divide the United States into a Nazi-controlled East and a Japan-run West. All 10 episodes became available on the Amazon Prime streaming service on Nov. 20.
Frank Spotnitz, the show’s creator and executive producer, told Entertainment Weekly he agreed with critics that the advertisements could be seen as offensive.
“It’s very difficult with a show with subject matter like this to market it tastefully, so I understand they’re walking a very difficult line,” the magazine quoted him as saying on its website. “If they had asked me, I would have strongly advised them not to do it.”
Insensitive. Stupid. I’m sitting in a rehab with holocaust survivors; many of them alive and well and still living with daily trauma and horrible memories from the war. I shudder to think of the idea that a holocaust survivor would step onto such a train cab and be greeted by this.
The “creator” of the show says “It’s very difficult with a show with subject matter like this to market it tastefully”.
Mass-murder, genocide and religious discrimination cannot be marketed tastefully?! I’m appalled!
THIS is exactly the kind of marketing they knew would happen – do something legal but distasteful that would cause an outcry and it advertises the show way more than any other paid advert could!
Can someone post phone numbers , email addresses to flood the makers of this movie.
Thank you Mayor, where the haters
now?
People! think! before you are outraged
It’s an advertisement for a show that is extremely anti nazi, anti hitler yms”v.
It’s a show about how bad it would be if we didn’t win the war. It’s a very important message, especially now, when there are forces that want to annihilate all of us and control our every move.
The ads are meant to drive the message home.
It’s a good message and very well done.
When you remember history you can prevent it from happening again.
There is a shul in LA on Beverly Dr that had a billboard for this show put right on top of the building where it rents.
They specifically changed logo for the adverts from the swastika to the Moravian cross.