240MC Week 6 Cultural and Semiotic Analysis of Advertising Race John Keenan

240MC Week 6 Cultural and Semiotic Analysis of Advertising Race John Keenan john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

Who - Labelling • What - Ethnicity Commodified; Symbolic Anhilation; Stereotypes • Why

Kate Moss

Labelling We are all ethnic

Labelling 100% English? 1.10

Labelling What lies behind the way we structure the world is, ‘not directly available to the senses … non observable … unconscious’ Strinati D 1995 An introduction to theories of popular culture London: Routledge p96

Labelling

Essentialist: Is it natural, anatomical, chromosomal or hormonal? Judith Butler

Non-essentialist: identities...are constantly in the process of change and transformation Stuart Hall

Labelling Who is ‘black’?

Labelling EVIL DEATH Black BAD TROUBLE

Labelling I waz whitemailedBy a white witch,Wid white magicAn white lies,Branded a white sheepI slaved as a whitesmithNear a white spotWhere I suffered whitewater fever.Whitelisted as a whitelegI waz in de white bookAs a master of white art,It waz like white death. People called me white jackSome hailed me as a white wog,So I joined de white watchTrained as a white guardLived off the white economy.Caught and beaten by de whiteshirts I waz condemned to a white mass,Don’t worry,I shall be writing to de Black House. — Benjamin Zephaniah (1958 - )

Labelling Such a white soul, they say That noble preacher had. His skin so black, they say, His skin so black in colour Was on the inside snow A white lily, Fresh milk Cotton. Still it might be said another way: What a powerful black soul That gentlest of pastors had. What proud black passion Burned in his heart. What pure black thoughts Were nourished in his fertile brain What black love. So colourlessly Given. After Martin Luther King’s Assassination His skin was black But with the purest soul, White as snow Yevtushenko

Labelling Solutions: ‘caucasion not ‘white’ However, we need labels for identity we need labels to redress the balance ‘Being black in Britain is about…a process of consciousness, when colour becomes the defining factor about who you are…to be black in Britain is to share a common structural location; a racial location’ H Mirza, 1997, Black British Feminism, cited in Chris Weedon, Identity and Culture, 2004, Maidenhead: Open University Press, p.74

Labelling Foucault Althusser ethnicity Discourses Play Adverts reveal, normalise and sustain racial discourses

Ethnicity Commodified Romance – French Passion – Italian Reliability - German

Ethnicity Commodified ‘When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices …affirm their power over .. the Other’ Bell Hooks, p.23

Ethnicity Commodified ‘recurrent patterns establish and continually reinforce ideas about social relationships and intercultural exchanges...At the core of this discourse are lessons about dominance and hierarchy, subordination and inequality. In their own time and place, these messages about otherness embedded within contemporary advertising are no less important as a form of public instruction than were the biblical teachings .. in other ages’ O’Barr p.75

Ethnicity Commodified ‘It is within the commercial realm of advertising that … Otherness finds expression’ bell hooks p.26

Ethnicity Commodified

Symbolic Annihilation Cultivation Theory Agenda Setting

Notting Hill It Ain’t Half Racist, Mum

Symbolic Annihilation

Symbolic Anhilation Symbolic Annihilation (in the USA) ‘Magazine advertisements from the 1920s to the 1960s hardly disclose any glimpse of a model whose skin color differs from the hue of the white majority’ Leonard J Davis, 1997, The Disabilities Reader, New York: Routledge, p.180 Year 2000 USA 30% of adverts contained black people Matthew P McAllister, Television Advertising and Textual and Economic Systems, Chapter 11 of A Companion to Television, Janet Wasko (Ed) Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, p.23

Stereotypes 3 Black Stereotypes 1. Musician 2. Athlete 3. Crime-related But, ‘we have moved beyond the point where we can say that a single set of media images represents African Americans - or any other racial group’ David Croteau and William Hayned Media Society (3rd Ed), 2003, London: Pine Forge Press, p.10

Reason 1: Racism Coca-Cola ‘L’Oreal…sought to exclude non-white women from promoting its shampoo’ The Guardian 7/7/07 http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,2120789,00.html

Reason 1: Racism Whereas the subjugation of women and immigrants appeared to be directly related to the impetus for mass consumption in a capitalist society , the social and economic subordination of black Americans …(and) disabled persons…was accomplished through subtle and indirect means’ Leonard J Davis, 1997, The Disabilities Reader, New York: Routledge, p.182

Reason 2: Economic Low income among non-whites http://www.poverty.org.uk/03b/index.shtml http://www.poverty.org.uk/28/index.shtml

However... Today (in USA): ‘middle-class blacks have become mainstream in prime-time entertainment programs. Epitomized by The Cosby Show of the 1980s, these programs portray African-American families who have succeeded in attaining a piece of the traditional ‘American Dream’. On the other hand, news coverage and documentaries about blacks tend to focus on poor African Americans…mired in drugs, crime and violence. One implicit message in these contrasting images may be that, since some blacks have clearly succeeded, the failure of other blacks is their own fault’ David Croteau and William Hayned Media Society (3rd Ed), 2003, London: Pine Forge Press, p.10

240MC Week 6 Cultural and Semiotic Analysis of Advertising Race John Keenan