Another Indo-American reaction to Ashton's "brownface"

I posted earlier today about Puja Mohindra's reaction video to the tasteless Indian stereotype Ashton Kutcher portrayed in a viral ad for Pop Chips.

It turns out Ms. Mohindra wasn't the only one. American comedian Hasan Minhaj really lays into the advertiser:



And so he should.

I find Mr. Minhaj's term "clownable minority" a really useful one when discussing the "just a joke" racism of ethnic stereotypes. We really need to take a step back and think about what these jokes really mean to a billion of our friends and neighbours.

Advice for Ashton on how to make fun of Indian people

Indo-American actress Puja Mohindra has some advice for Ashton Kutcher on how to properly make fun of Indian people:



Kutcher's steretypical portrayal of "Raj" on a since-yoinked online campaign for Pop Chips has been roundly criticized on social media. But this oddball (and somewhat meandering) video is at least the most... ummm...  interesting reaction I've seen.

UPDATE: Ms. Mohindra has listened to critics of her video's pacing, and has edited a new version:

Ashton Kutcher drags out the tiresome stereotypes #FdAdFriday

Yes, Peter Sellers did it. The Simpsons still does it. But can we agree to stop accepting racist stereotypes of Indian people now?



I know it's a comedy staple. But so was blackface, until shortly before my lifetime. Enough is enough. Let's move on to something funnier and less insulting to a billion of our fellow humans, shall we?

Update: The Vulture reports

"Interestingly, as recently as 6 p.m. today [May 2], Pop Chips had separate ads up on YouTube for each of Kutcher's different characters, including an extended-play audience with Raj. But by shortly after 7 p.m., they had all been marked "Private" and are inaccessible. Perhaps different decisions are being made very quickly. UPDATE: And it looks like all of the other videos with Kutcher's other characters spotlighted individually are back up, but Raj's remains taken down."

Update 2: The video has already been pulled from all official channels.

Kraft's "mixed race" snack ad is all kinds of wrong #FdAdFriday

I'll let Bradley Koch from Sociological Images take it from here:

"The problem with a marketing campaign like this is that it trivializes the experience of people with multiple racial/ethnic identities who are still often met with derision and confusion. The first ad above perpetuates the self-fulfilling prophecy about “confused” identities. As a child, I remember family members telling me that they didn’t have a problem with interracial couples but worried about how others might react to their children."

Yeah, what he said.

And Kraft just keeps going and going with the awkward and inappropriately racialized gags.









WTF?

The only Chip Shop ad I like... #FdAdFriday

...is totally ruined by bad punctuation.

The Chip Shop Awards allow British creatives to show off how "edgy" they could be if it weren't for pesky things like client approvals, focus groups and basic human decency.

Many of them pander to the lowest instincts of cynical ad guys, with a good dose of racism thrown in:

And some good old toilet humour:

See more ads at Copyranter's Buzzfeed post, or go straight to the source

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Unhappy marriage? Have you tried vulva bleaching?

There's no more... umm.. delicate way to say it.

This appalling ad from India takes the old-school fear mongering of women over vaginal odour and adds India's bizarre obsession with skin-whitening products to create a veritable symphony of wrong:



From the YouTube link:

"Designed to address the problems women face in their private parts, Clean and Dry Intimate Wash offers protection, fairness and freshness. To be used while showering, its special pH-balanced formula cleans and protects the affected area, and even makes the skin fairer. Life for women will now be fresher, cleaner, fairer!"

"Do you ever feel, you know, not so bleached?"

 Jezebel sums up the international reaction to this appalling product and ad quite nicely:

"...this product—which, in addition to just being fucking insane, brings up painful issues about the hierarchy of skin tone within the Indian community. As if it isn't bad enough that darker-skinned people are encouraged to stay out of the sun and invest in skin-bleaching products like Fair & Lovely, and that white actresses are being imported to play Indian people in Bollywood movies, now everyone has to be insecure about the fact that their vaginas happen to be the color that vaginas are??? Splendid! God, I was just saying the other day that my misogyny didn't have enough racism in it."

You tell 'em, sister!

WHAT-brown pants? #FdAdFriday

Via Buzzfeed

Yes, that's how they described them.

It is not, apparently, a hoax. The offending web site, by an Abercrombie & Fitch outlet that seemed to be in the UK (one would assume, from the prices) has since been taken down. But Google still has it cached, sans image (but with image tags still in place).

And there's this text:

"Abercrombie and Fitch brand has been attracting the young market to the greatest extent. They are in love with these products, for they perfectly suit their looks. The reason of success of A&F is the dedication, which you can see in its stitching, designs, detailing, fabric and color contrasting. It pays attention on each and every detail of the garments and accessories."

Note the bad English. And that's a clue to how this may have happened.

A&F, according to The Daily Mail, has nothing to do with the site and are probably the ones who got it shut down. The site was actually registered in China, where the counterfeiting of famous brand name  clothing is common. The Mail adds, "observers said the racist name given to the clothes could be put down to bad Chinese to English translation software."

So hopefully, it was not intentional. But it is still unfortunate PR for A&F, since they have been accused of intentional racism (and "lookism") before, including in a $50 million class action lawsuit.

And the most ignorant Facebook comment of the week goes to...

Those poor children.

In response to this image, shared by The Why Movement.

For those unfamiliar with the case, Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old who was pursued and shot dead this week by a self-appointed neighbourhood watch vigilante named George Zimmerman, for the crime of "just walking around, looking about." Zimmerman has yet to be charged with a crime, because in Florida it is totally legal to carry a concealed weapon and murder people who frighten you by their very appearance.

Remember when Canada was horribly racist?

Via Buzzfeed

This poster promoting the Canadian Patriotic Fund, a World War One fundraising effort to help support wives and dependents of Canadian soldiers, is pretty damn offensive by today's standards.

But, almost a century later, we still have a long way to go:

Violations of the basic human rights of Canada's Aboriginal people is still a "Priority Concern" for Amnesty International, and you don't have to look far to see examples of how our country's first populations are still treated like second class citizens.

Sad.

"China" political ad proves that racism is a losing strategy

Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican running for the United States Senate, ran this Super Bowl ad that offended pretty much everyone.



Accusing his opponent, Debbie Stabenow of increasing US reliance on China by passing "wasteful spending bill after wasteful spending bill," it used a caricature of a Chinese woman to push xenophobic buttons among his supporters.

Instead, the ad rallied support (and funds) for "Debbie Spenditnow" and critics from both parties called the ad “offensive and insensitive,” “very disturbing” and “really, really dumb.”

It was also parodied by Funny or Die:

Controversial Racist Pete Hoekstra Ad - watch more funny videos      

Even the actress involved in the ad became the focus of negative attention, and she was outed by the Angry Asian Man blog:

The details about her identity are out there, slowly trickling in. And I imagine Ms. Chan is about to receive a lot of unwanted attention. I actually agonized over whether or not to post this information. I'm not trying to demonize her -- people have already done plenty of that, and I think that takes our attention away from the real culprit, Pete Hoekstra and his blatantly racist fear-mongering. And I hope you, good readers, will keep cool heads about this. 

I'm not saying Lisa Chan is blameless. I go back and forth between wanting to hang her out to dry for making such an idiotic, destructive choice, and feeling sorry that she was just doing a job, manipulated by a politician's ugly tactics.  

The truth is, I fall somewhere in the middle, and in the end I'd just like to know how a seemingly intelligent, educated person with a history of community involvement could willingly take part in something so fantastically awful and so harmful in ways that we can't even anticipate. 

For her part, Ms. Chan issued a full and heartfelt apology (in the manner of our times):

 And the man who "approved this message"? He still doesn't get it.



Lose, Pete Hoekstra. Lose big.

UPDATE: Hoekstra pulled the ad from YouTube. But it lives on.

In times like these, comedy means war

The escalating tensions between Israel and Iran have been a concern for some time now. In the midst of this, the Israeli cable company, HOT, produced an ad featuring a comedy team from the popular sitcom Asfur being summoned to Iran by an undercover Mossad agent.

The video is subtitled, and the YouTube post contains a glossary of all the cultural context, slang, and double meaning used in the ad.



You might put this down to typical culture-bashing between enemies, which Iran must be used to by now. But the video also featured a Samsung tablet. And that, to Iran, means war. With South Korea?

According to Haaretz:

"On Thursday, a top Iranian lawmaker said Iran's parliament was considering to cut the country's trade ties with the country, over what he said was an "insulting" commercial, over the depiction of Iran as a "primitive society" and of insinuating that Israel was 'powerful enough to easily destroy Iran's nuclear facilities or assassinate the country's nuclear scientists.'

Head of Majlis Energy Committee Arsalan Fat'hipour told Press TV that Samsung chose to forget the high volume of trade it shares with Iran in its attempt to move closer to Israel, adding that Samsung's apology to Iran, 'though necessary', would not be enough to patch things up with Tehran. 

In response to Iran's claims, Samsung released a statement condemning the production of the commercial by the firm's Israeli branch, with Samsung's Tehran office saying that the spot had nothing to do with the firm and that it had been produced by HOT. "

Silly comedy segments starting trade wars. These are truly very tense times we are living in. The spot has the same cultural arrogance and casual racism that we see in American lampoons of the Middle East, but Iran seems more pissed off by the implication that Israel can wipe out its facilities so easily. I wonder if this is what the international mood was like back in the summer of 1914?

Thanks to Tatjana for the tip

Awww... what a cute little racist Skype ad!

The German/Indian one seems, somehow, not as bad. And the French/Tibetan(?) one is just confusing.

Campaign by Wunderman, Santiago, Chile.

Via Copyranter and Ads of The World