Much like some infamous ads that I have already featured, race and racial stereotypes are often at play in advertisments. Who could forget #51 ('little darkey in a watermelon'), #38 (‘Chip feels sorry for Jap kids’), #31 (‘darkies eating watermelon on the fence while the slaveholders puff on cigars’), #25 (‘really cute Eskimos beheading surprised seal’), and #6 (‘traumatised pickaninny has penis eaten by goose yet mistakes it for Nazi panzer attack’).
Yet this one disturbs me probably the most, and no, it is not the lack of burnt cork or muss (whatever that is). The whole notion of marketing the 'oddball eyes (adjustable to any angle!)', 'buck teeth' and 'plantation hat' as "great fun" is offensive to the extreme. The fact that the stereotypes are based on crude caricatures of misfortunes no doubt associated with neglect and ill-treatment makes it worse.
When you consider that these sort of ‘entertainments’ could still be commonly purchased in comics and magazines into the 1960s, and having seen enough of the ‘funny dress ups’ that routinely hit the press, you start to realise how far the world has to go. The fact this sort of thing offends most people is a sign of progress, but then I think back to the Spanish basketballers and Argentinean women’s soccer team doing the ‘slitty eye’ team photos, or the ‘great fun’ of some English cricket fans (and tabloids) dressing up as ‘Gyppos’ to abuse Jason Gillespie during the Ashes series in 2005.
What do people think? I know that people are looking from all over, and that different places have different prejudices, but I am keen to know whether people think that things are much better in your part of the world on this score?
Comments
but it is, isn't it?!... and that is quite sad indeed...
P.S. yesterday photo is just awesome!
(How is your newest son doing?)
It's about ad men on Madison Ave around 1960.
It's certainly eye-opening in terms of the role of women in society during that time (not to mention Jewish people and people with black skin).
And of course we had the Dukes of Hazzard after that, with their stars and bars, and the horn (much imitated in NZ at the time) playing the first few bars of Dixie (I wish I was in the land of cotton) - google its lyrics for something else ...
Neva, too right! Not liking someone solely on their race is as absurd as disliking someone for what kind of ice cream they prefer.
Zsolt72, I am sure that Budapest is no different from most parts of the world in this regard.
Ump, the minstrel show is an odd one, along with the Sambo and gollywog presentations. Although I’m sure that they were not intended as deliberately offensive, they did tend to present a negative physical stereotype (‘buck teeth and bug eyes’, for example).
The whole Dixie/confederacy historical memory is a sad tale all around. The deliberate and manipulative misuse of historical memory is a terrible crime, and evident from all angles in all countries.