This is not offensive so much as it is old. kinda corny and just wrong. It's not wrong entirely, but the creative teams seems to be unaware that this one actor in the spot is an anachronism. Somehow she has been time-warped from the early 1990's and her flippant stereotypical attitude and actions survived the trip. There is a good and interesting if not old premise; the sisters in the salon black advertising 101 concept (you are required to do at least one of these in your "black" advertising life, I've done many *sheds a tear* and for that I'm sorry, sob). As the spot progresses the women seem to regress, almost twenty years or so.
Where there no Black people in the office that day? No one to inquire about the accuracy or "realness" of the final punch-line reaction? Maybe not but the a basket full of cliches were were handy and must have begged to be on TV in this century. You see most women with weave, Black, White, Latino, know exactly where their hair came from and is made of. As a matter of fact Black women are so well rehearsed in hair care and hair products their knowledge is nothing short of encyclopedic! This question would rarely is ever arise. The response well, it's just something imagined they saw in one of the myriad "Beauty Shop" genre movies of the 90's. For full disclosure I called it a mess when a kind friend sent it to me. She replied this:
Thank you guest commenter: Ayiko (You rocked it!)
At least they are equally opportunistic in their offenses. Ladies, this ones for you...
https://sites.google.com/site/mayuradocs/PinIt.png
Come onnnnn, Cleetus. Mess is right!
The first woman, presents well, can speak English, okay...
The second, obviously it smarts a little because we have an "in" to the unkempt world of hair in between stages of coif but she's intelligent enough that she uses her smart phone to ask a question vs. "I dunno'", okay...and then the third.
First off, YAK?! I get the gist and why they were trying to be funny with using animal hair, implying we Americans have no idea where anything comes from but what's with all the extras...the head rolling and the "I don't speak English but I speak stereotype" speech pattern? Especially because she started off knowing how to speak English and so did the hairdresser!
And pay attention to the fact that girl #2 said extensions on her text but ol' girl yells weave. Keep it consistent, people, I still know what you're implying when you make sure black women's extensions are referred to as weave yet non-black women always have the luxury of saying "extensions." Like one is better than the other. Hmmph.
I know there's truth to this set-up and it would've actually been comical...but it's all about the presentation and this my friends is an epic FAIL.
*steps off, soap box*
Thank you guest commenter: Ayiko (You rocked it!)
At least they are equally opportunistic in their offenses. Ladies, this ones for you...
1 comment:
Gawd. Both are just, ridiculously dumbed-down offensiveness.
I remember watching Idiocracy and thinking that it's satire of today's steady decline was dead accurate. But now I realize, they kind of left out race (even though the future president is depicted as black). I think as we get dumber and dumber, white people in particular, and white-framed media, may well get more and more openly racist. I hope not, but I fear so. Dredging up old cliches, and laughing at them, is so much easier than the alternatives.
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