Some reaction from progressive and anti-racist bloggers:
Look at us. We’re mad, we’re talking about the damn ad, and now they’ve got another story about their company in the New York Times. Hell, they didn’t even have to hire an ad agency. With the announcement that they’re pulling these ads, there will now be legions of folks who flock online to watch the commercial and see what the fuss is about. All this, and now you’ve got a lot of people suddenly aware of a no-name company nobody would’ve given a crap about in the first place. Nobody’s sorry about anything here.
XicanoPwr (Hat Tip: Inteligenta Indigena):
Of course, the stereotypes and jabs aren’t always so blatant, though they can be just as unsettling. True, there are people who do think a Ghandi-like Indian accent or a Chinese “ching chong” are hilarious, but, the sad truth is, they are missing the point. When a stereotypes are repeated, those stereotype do become the norm and a frame of reference for a person’s entire cultural group and ultimately it becomes more difficult to avoid the stereotypes and clichés from our current racially biased system.
Understanding racial cues is very important, because depending how we interpret these cues will shape our opinions towards members of racial and ethnic groups. When commercials like these air, they tend to make explicit references – either by visual or auditory cues – to race, which then trigger racial thinking by activating past information held within our long-term memory about that racial and ethnic minority group. In other words, racial attitudes are primarily based on personal experiences, salient facts or events.
While there has generally been some backlash against SalesGenie for their slew of offensive commercials, nobody dares mark this as racism within popular culture. In fact, it seems that in most analyses the ads are only seen as “cultural insensitive” or “inappropriate.”
I’m sick of nobody calling these sort of media portrayals as they are, Racism!
Also, there is something disturbing in the fact that they thought it was ok to stereotype Asians in this commercial because I would doubt that they would do that for African Americans and Jewish people. They know if they did this to other groups, there would definitely be a backlash. It just tells you that it’s ok to be racist against Asian Americans in this nation and we saw it on display in the biggest television event of the year. I just shutter to think how many millions of people watched that and just laughed and thought nothing of it. We got a long way to go in this nation on the issue of race.
Remember that the Apu character has been appearing in the Simpsons for years. This does seem to be a stereotype that is still considered “acceptable.”
Do Indians find Apu to be offensive?
A convenience store owner with a singsong accent and eight kids seems to fit within the same analysis of stereotypes set forth above.
Of course not. These marketing guys, B-level comedians, and shock jocks push the boundaries and rebel – in all the ways their multimillion dollar corporate sponsor daddies give them permission to. It just turns out some forms of racism are no longer profitable while others are.
Picking on shows like Simpsons is kinda out of place, since they bag on _every_ possible stereotype. Do you hear nerds complaining about Martin Prince? Teachers complaining about burnt-out Edna Crabapple? The elderly complaining about the pathetic Abe Simpson and feeble Montgomery Burns? Schoolboys and girls complaining about Bart and Lisa? The stupid dad, the neurotic stay-at-home mom, the sailor, the spastic scientist, the Scotsman, the The obsessive keener and the little hoodlum work better with the stereotypes of their genders.
Pick any two roles on The Simpsons and swap their personalities/mannerisms without swapping their roles, and the character no longer works.
Every character is an insulting stereotype. The only reason you notice Apu is because you’re attuned to the racial ones.
Meanwhile, think of the token black characters on The Simpsons: Carl, Homer’s co-worker. Can you think of anything to say about him? No. He has no personality. He’s just there. Because they couldn’t do anything with The Black Guy, because you can’t do black stereotypes in a white show. Dr. Hibbert is a little better with his inappropriate laughter schtick (he always reminds me of a painfully jovial funeral director I once met).
Either way, I’m quite happy to say that I have no idea what the panda thing was an ad for.
Is it true that Carl has no personality? Or merely that he has the personality we expect of your archtypical white middle-class, reasonably-educated male?
People are offended by the Superbowl ad depicting the animated Indian character. Fine. Tell me this: Which Superbowl ad provided a better depiction of an Indian character?
So which do you prefer: imperfect depictions of diversity, or no depictions? Because as far as I can tell from the complaints, people favor the latter.
But that’s a false dichotomy, right? We can have depictions of diversity WITHOUT stereotypes – like the Cosby show! No offensive stereotypes in that show. Indeed, if you just listen to the dialogue, there’s nothing to indicate the characters’ race at all.
Except people criticized the Cosby show for this very dynamic. Rather than being something groundbreaking, it was just another tired family sit-com but with black faces substituted for white ones. It was the perfect show about diversity, in a zen sort of way: perfection as nothingness, invisibility.
What do you make of the Legally Blonde movies? The lead character represents the archtypical Barbie, with the exception that she’s a world-class lawyer. Do these movies perpetuate stereotype by putting the Barbie character in the media again? Or do they undermine stereotype by depicting the Barbie character kicking ass? The shows emphasize that a woman can be a successful lawyer without pretending to be genderless (where the norms of men are the standard of genderlessness). To the contrary, the lead character if stereotypical female, but that’s not depicted as a good thing or a bad thing; it’s just a thing.
Yeah, ok, it’s also a male fantasy. So is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Is that bad? And it’s also a female fantasy, at least judging by my 8-yr-old. If I can broaden her fantasies beyond princesses and rock stars, that seems like a good fantasy to me.
Let not the perfect be the enemy of the good.