Racist V ad
April 12, 2007 at 9:05 pm (media, race and racism)
I have a bajillion things to blog about, but this is something I can do quickly, in between everything else (non-bloggy) I need to do.
Has anyone else seen these ads around? They’re for V, apparently to release a new flavour.
APPARENTLY IT’S FUNNY TO MAKE JOKES ABOUT MYTHS THAT LED TO GENOCIDE NOW. FFS!!!!
THERE ARE NO WORDS.
I posted a message to the V message board, but who knows if they’ll even notice it. It’s not like I was a customer, just a passerby put off by the offensive visual pollution.
EDIT: I sent this message to them via the contact form.
To whom it may concern,
I am writing to express outrage over the new poster advertisements I have seen around Sydney.
They are offensively racist. They rely on a disgusting stereotype of people of colour as cannibals, and valorise white peoples’ “exploration” of remote regions. These are stereotypes which have been used to justify genocide and exploitation on a hideous scale. See for example Michael Taussig’s work on the use of this myth by brutal colonial regimes to inflict horrendous violence upon indigenous peoples.
Your rendering of this myth as a humorous anthropomorphism of energy drink cans is a joke at the expense of people against whom genocide was committed in the name of this myth. This both exploits the pain of these people and renders their suffering invisible and ridiculous. It is inhumane.
I would suggest you withdraw the poster.
Who knows if it’ll achieve anything, but at least it’s not addressed to the marketing exercise message board.
Vox said,
April 13, 2007 at 3:16 pm
Wow. That’s … really messed up.
benjamin rosenzweig said,
April 17, 2007 at 3:34 am
I tried to find your comments on the V message board but couldn’t - I’d be interested to read what you sent. And I think you deserved the thinking blogger award.
BTW, I also got a (far less deserved) “thinking blogger” listing from the wonderful insultadarity, but I’m just not a very active blogreader and almost all of my regular award-worthy blogreads have already received recognition from this odd chain e-letterwriting campaign: insuladarity, archive, slackbastard… Now that I think of it going somewhere? might not have been yet. And the blog dedicated to Keithie, the five month old girl to whom I am one of three parents: gestation…
Benjamin
Fire Fly said,
April 17, 2007 at 8:08 pm
Given that the message board is completely moderated, they must just can the criticisms.
Oh well.