No longer do Adbusters need to generate spoof advertisements to make a political statement – it seems that Land Rover is doing it on its own. Their latest ad campaign features a super-sized SUV parked in the middle of a generic “Arab-looking” market.

I sat gaping for several minutes on turning a page of The Guardian newspaper and seeing this advertisement. Could it possibly be for real?

To me, this is a political statement. The British Army uses Land Rovers in Iraq and Afghanistan to drive themselves around as they kill “suspected insurgents” (shoot now, ask questions later – maybe), and, of course, civilians.

For an advertisement to have such a massive vehicle parked in the middle of a souq seems at little crass, to say the least. Is the SUV not a symbol of “American” domination? Of Western extravagance? Of fuel inefficiency and wastage of finite global oil resources? Not to mention the fact that souqs are generally pedestrian only, so it terms of scale it’s even more ridiculous than the enormous Hummer I once saw parked in Auckland’s tiny High Street.

It is an oversized symbol of the West planted smack in the middle of the Arab world.

How could people look at this and associate positive connotations with a Land Rover?

And yes, it seems it is for real – it’s been run again in today’s Independent. Unlike this particularly amusing piece of culture jamming.

Other posts by Katie Llanos-Small