Here’s A Gentle Reminder That Tina Turner Once Starred In A Very Homoerotic Rugby League Ad
"Would watch a lot more league if the ads kept focusing on shit like this."
The year was 1989. George Bush Snr. had just become President. The Game Boy had just been released around the world. And Tina Turner was about to star in a deeply homoerotic rugby league ad that changed the world forever.
Anyone who was above the age of four in 1989 probably has that advert seared into their memory now. A stark contrast from most rugby commercials, many of which focused on the seriousness of the game, the Turner ad took the camp and dialled it all the way up to 11.
Even now, the two-minute extravaganza feels shockingly progressive. There’s Tina, blasting out the lyrics to her song ‘What You Get Is What You See’. There’s rugby balls galore. And there’s mostly nude, extremely buff men, gazing into one another’s eyes and wiggling their butts.
Of course, the clip is very famous in its own right. But it’s received a new burst of viral attention and fame thanks to @adamjmoussa, who shared the clip to their thousands of Twitter followers, and sparked new interest in it all over again.
I mean, just watch:
This ad for the 1989 season of rugby league with Tina Turner pic.twitter.com/TU5YRyYeb3
— Adam Moussa (@adamjmoussa) July 26, 2020
Wilder still is the back story behind the clip. As reported by InsideSport, Turner never actually travelled to Australia to star in the promo. Her involvement was filmed entirely in London. In fact, some of the extras that you can see in the clip are British, so as to work around the scheduling conflict that stopped Turner from flying Down Under.
That’s the magic of movies, hey? Not to mention the magic of camp, raunchy Australiana. Truly, as a culture, we never did much better than this.
Watch the ad in full right here: