No more taboos for young people? sex and death in provocative advertisement

According to young people, «nothing is taboo anymore». Taboos, as cultural productions, geographically, historically, and socially situated, evolve in line with society and mentalities. One may therefore wonder whether the traditional representations of taboos found in literature are not, at least in part, dated. This research proposes to answer the following questions: What are the current representations and modalities of the concept of taboo? What impact could they have on attitudes to provocative advertisements? What advertising strategies can moderate these reactions? We mobilize a sample of 20 semi-directive individual interviews, asking respondents about their experiences as spectators of shocking advertisements using taboos. We assess their individual perceptions and attitudes, in the face of various sexual and morbid stimuli pre-tested as taboo. The interviewees are invited to share their own definition of the concept, we compare their speeches with defining facets found in the literature. The ambivalent young people want to push forward the morals and the mentalities, it is taboo for them to say that they have taboos, they appear thus rather favorable to taboos’ breaking if advertisement has progressive intentions. This study demonstrates the importance of social and momentary contexts in forming the attitudes towards provocative advertisements