OK, breaking a long LJ silence, the reasons for which I won't go into. I'll blame credit
bethbethbeth for making me think about those reasons. Not that she asked, or should care. *g* It was just something that came up in the course of another conversation - the reasons I prefer to be on IJ, when I'm online these days at all. Such a pesky nuisance, RL
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OTOH, as fandom has been pointing out, avoiding racism (and sexism) take conscious *work*. Visual media, perhaps more so than other modes, tends to allow more carelessness I think, for various reasons, several of which I noticed in the Youtube defenses of the ad. Acting is not "serious." Something as short as 30 seconds "doesn't count." You can't "read" an advertisement like a book, so if you find racism in it, you must have "put it there." O to make every high school student read Barthes!
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Even worse: did you see the finale of Battlestar Galactica? Talk about cultural/racial/species appropriation....
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BSG - I'm looking forward to reading about this. So far, fans don't seem very impressed with the ending on the whole, much less its final word on cultural/racial/species issues. I will confess to a bit of schadenfreude: I was at my favorite regional pop culture conference last month and very much looking forward to a good mix of fandom papers. Instead it was like nonstop uber-pretentious BSG analysis. (Well, along with the uber-pretentious Buffy analysis. Which seems eternal.)
I did read with interest today's New York Times article on its conclusion: "Show About the Universe Raises Questions on Earth". The writer seemed to me to be struggling to comprehend - much less explain - the myriad readings on and reactions to the series. But ( ... )
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And because she cares enough about family and community health to plant an organic garden on the White House lawn - YAYYYY. The first to do that since Eleanor - and that will draw fire.
Because she's a great woman. And OMG black or white, we can't have that. Our "heroes" can only be whitemen. Aaarrghhhhh.
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Y'know, I've been rereading Susan Faludi's Backlash. It's just as horrifying as it was the first time I read it, and just as true.
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It strikes me that beyond the obvious outrageousness of this ad, there might be a useful lesson here about how fundamental and pervasive racism still is, and the degree to which it poisons our discourse without anyone being fully aware of it. There's a poster over in the comments at Media Assassin who's clearly full of fail, going on about how we PC Police would complain if it were a black mannequin grabbing the dress off a white mannequin too -- and while he's wrong in the specific point he's making, there's a way in which he's right: there is no acceptable way to make this commercialIt *would* be offensive for a black male to be grabbing the dress off a white female, for all the horrible and obvious reasons. It would be offensive for the black male to strip the dress off the black female, because that would -- duh -- play into creepy racist stereotypes about violence and primitive peoples. It would ( ... )
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Did you meaning that both ways? There's also no acceptable way to make this *commercial*. It fails, whether taken as video art/performance, or as a money-making act of advertising.
I wish you would post that at Media Assassin. I think Allen would love it!
And yes - it's a *wonderful* (academically speaking) case study. I zamzar'd a copy for future use, because as you note, there are both race and gender issues here, the whole commodification trope, and the possibility of exploring family, and children's involvement, as well!
It has perfect awfulness.
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