Sex, Race, and Advertising

Sex:

Formally, it’s a pleasant poster. Whites and sandy beiges to recall Karen Blixen stories – the sun, the beach, the endless Africa, the innocent exotic; a successful attempt to cater to our idea of the far away, in a classy, elegant way. Even the slow walk, in which the men are captured as if coming back from work, helps to maintain a relaxed ambiance.

The content, on the contrary, seems to be a masterpiece of offense.

It starts with the exact same troubling “sandy beiges”: colonial cliché of a white man wearing his elegant outfit next to indigenous “exotic-folk” batik skirts and beads (if the men are indeed coming back from a work site, should one ask about division of labor? Better not).

And it goes further, to the main message of the poster, being a quotation of the man on the first plane (the two men turn their heads to him, listening eagerly): “Approach women like you do wild animals, with caution and a soothing voice.”

I can’t stop thinking about Bakhtin and his approach towards “the chain of speech communion” (although I’m not sure if I would like to be chained to the speech visualized on the poster in any way). Aside from his famous “the speaker is not Adam,” indicating that no speech is “innocent” and free of its precedent, he was also pointing out – a father of advertising? – that the speech is created in anticipation of encountering its response (which in his metaphor of chain of communication adds subsequent links to the preceding ones).

So there is no need to discuss a scandal of the actual statement – rather, one should think about the expectations of the response.

Was the indigenous man chosen to make this statement, as he could serve as an authority, given his familiarity to wild animals? Or was he chosen to be easily dismissed, in the presence of civilized white man, who knows (does he?) it is not exactly proper to make a statement like this? Or is he just there in a wink-wink situation: we all know this life wisdom, but in case someone makes a fuss, we can always say it is this uncivilized approach…

And the “stay thirsty, my friends” note – what exactly is the advice/invitation for? Should the readers, clearly befriended by the brilliant anecdote, look forward to even more indigenous wisdom? I would be scared to meet one of these “friends” on the street at night. And to be exposed to more “wise” statements.

Will one more bottle of beer widen the smile of “friends?” Maybe.

But will it relax the grimace of distaste, too?

Race:

Reading “Oprah” is my favorite activity when I wait for my prescription at Duane Reade. I should rather say: watching “Oprah” – as I mostly appreciate how the visual precision of the magazine is trimmed to its message.

Hence, I was shocked to see the ad of Dove a few weeks ago. The ad was broadly protested in the UK a few months ago, as ambiguously racist and suggesting that the soap can “wash out” skin color to a better (more beautiful) one. Dove officially apologized for the ad and changed the campaign.

How is it possible, then, to see the same ad in American magazine, targeting women with  significant African American readership,?

Has the interpretation changed so much? Is context more important than text? Are the editors so color blind that they simply don’t notice?

As a Polish woman, I see in this ad what the British saw: a subtle message that you can wash yourself whiter. A visibly scary vision of “visibly more beautiful skin.”

Perhaps it’s a class issue, or an issue of cultural capital here. I wonder what the readers of Deliberately Considered think.