From James Taranto’s ur-blog Best of the Web comes this tidbit (scroll down to the bottom):
AdAge magazine reports on a big stride in racial progress:
A huge, black man raises his arms to gloat obnoxiously over a foosball goal, and this vile underarm stench overpowers everyone in the room.
It’s a Right Guard commercial, and it’s wonderful.
Actually, the BBDO, New York, ad itself–starring Tampa Bay Buccaneers star Warren Sapp–is pretty ordinary, a sort of generic argument for deodorant with a brand name attached. What’s wonderful is that the big stinker isn’t white.
AdAge’s Bob Garfield lists other recent ads that depict black characters as the butt of jokes and observer: “We’ll know when we’ve achieved some sort of racial equilibrium in this country when black people can appear ridiculous in the pop culture right alongside white people. The very fact that this phenomenon has been growing for two years, and nobody has even flinched, speaks volumes.”
Absolutely correct on all fronts. For years (and years) it has been a convention of US TV commercials that white men, and only white men, are portrayed as foolish boobs, and women, or men “of color”, are wise, clever, etc. I happen to believe that TV commercials can be high pop art and a wonderful oracle to consult if you want to know what the current zeitgeist is all about.
I applaud the new willingness of the ad industry to poke fun at black men as a good sign that race is becoming a non-factor to many Americans, and I plan to keep an eye out for more examples of the same.
You’re right, this is a great trend. Here’s another one that someone — I apologize, I don’t remember who — pointed out recently:
Hollywood has produced “buddy” movies for some time. The archetype is “48 Hours” where the white guy and the black guy are an odd couple who eventually become friends. Then there are similar movies where the American and the non-American form the odd couple (e.g. “Shanghai Noon” off the top of my head).
The recent phenomenon is that in a movie like “Ruh Hour” with Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan, the formula’s American was a black guy. In this case, the black guy was not the outsider, or what have you, he was just the local guy and it was unremarkable.
If this is a trend I’m not sure how much it means. The most serious, hardest to solve problems of black America are not the hurt feelings of African Americans who are doing pretty well, but the broken families, poverty, miserable schools and dysfunctional culture those who are not have to live with.
But the “Make 7-Up Yours” campaign was still pretty funny.
The other, equally interesting possibility is that agency creative staff are getting sick and tired of following the PC line. Or perhaps the researchers are turning up evidence that the public has had enough of it and is turning off the products.
This has been one of my father’s greatest media pet peeves for some time. He’d get huffy whenever he percieved “the typical white American male” to be on the recieving end of finger-wagging, a joke, or some form of “you silly ignorant jackass, ha ha!” sentiment. He often blew some things out of proportion, but his point made an impression on me…enough so that when I saw the commercial Tarano is talking about, two thoughts flashed through my mind.
One was about how funny the ad was and how seamless the CG looked for the foosball characters.
The second was how “Black America” was going to react to the imagry. I was conditioned to automatically worry whenever a minority or person of a disadvantaged class gets less than stellar treatment in public. I’m glad the TV spot hasn’t caused an uproar. Progress is possible! 🙂
It didn’t occur to me until just reading this that the guy in the deodorant commercial was black, go figure. On another note, I’d like to voice my complaint about the subjugation and trivialization of the noble leprechaun in the current dnL ad campaign . . .
There is nothing wrong with the DNL ad the leprechaun says to the policeman “Im not realy ya moron! i a myth!” and proceeds to dance, it’s funny not insulting considering Leprechauns are myths, People try too hard to be insulted…