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Underground > Games & Gameplay >

Id entity thinks Sony's marketing department should be hit with sticks.

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MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

18:03 / 06.07.06

A recurring theme here, and one which also underlies much of this thread, is the idea that for something to be racist, it has to be intended to be racist. For something to convey a message, it has to be a message that the "speaker" intended. If the speaker did not intend a message which the hearer perceives, then the hearer is at fault.

I agree that this approach is deeply flawed, but the opposite side of the argument -- that any creator must account for absolutely every possiblity that somebody, somewhere, may under some circumstance see some aspect of the work in some roundabout way as being in some respect racist -- is equally problematic.

In the above cases, the top image: dumb. I mean, that's just flat-out stupid. I'm not about to ascribe "racist!" to the thought process behind it, but man, that's just a bad idea that never should have left the studio.

Jesus Christ, people. If you want to have a "black vs. white" ad campaign, just license Spy vs. Spy and have done with it.

The character design (second image) thing, however -- while there's some possibility that it may have been informed by stereotype images of days gone (thankfully) by, there's also a strong case that some guy just wanted to draw a really funky spider. In which case, I say let him draw the really funky spider, and if somebody says "say, that bears a slight resemblance to this really staggeringly horrible thing," let him re-draw the funky spider.

I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt, though, at least in the latter case. I had to read, scroll back up, squint, furrow my brow and say "huh" before I really got a "hey, that's racist!" response from the character design shots. It just looked like funky spiders.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

18:04 / 06.07.06

Or, come to think of it, critters from Samurai Jack.

18:10 / 06.07.06

Maybe I've been hitting the ginger tea too hard, but aren't marketing agents/agencies supposed to research this sort of issue?

I just used google and found these peoples, American Marketing Assoc.

We will value individual differences even as we avoid stereotyping customers or depicting demographic groups (e.g., gender, race, sexual orientation) in a negative or dehumanizing way in our promotions.

So it is in the awareness of the industry not to be asshats...

ONLY NICE THINGS

18:43 / 06.07.06

The posters in question used four lines: "Strong language and scenes of a sexual nature here", "Your girlfriend's white bits here", "Take a running jump here", and "Saucy emails won't get you fired here". The adverts were run primarily on billboards and buses, as well as other outdoor sites.

Yes - I remember encountering the "your girlfriend's white bits here" in the company of a sexy sex colleague, who was _mortified_ at how crass and ghastly that was - and, although not the exact target audience, the SSC was not at all far off and knew many who were.

As I say, Sony's advertising and marketing seems to be having some real episodes here.

MattShepherd: I WEDDED KALI!

19:00 / 06.07.06

What in the world is "your girlfriend's white bits here" supposed to MEAN? The parts that aren't tanned because they're usually covered in clothing = naughty bits?

19:14 / 06.07.06

I assume so, although I've never heard that phrase used to mean that before or after seeing that advert. However, there's a limited number of things 'white bits' could denote, in that context...

20:58 / 06.07.06

Fo one, I think it was plain bad advertisement. I mean, it reads like a bunch of writers who were not particularly inspired that day were trying to be "witty", and "iconoclast" (in the sense of being defiant to society's norms) in order to appeal to an adolescent (and therefore, "rebelious") target audience.

Plus, I didn't get the point until I read the explanation on the article linked above ("the adverts played on the PlayStation brand's irreverent advertising history, and simply focused on the four features they wanted to highlight: the ability to view and store photos, the ability to browse the Web wirelessly, the ability to play platform games, and the ability to watch movies."). IMHO, if an ad needs to be explained, it is a bad ad.

Regardless of that, I have to admit I liked the posters' design: a simple red caption over white background, it's a classic. I'll give an F to the writing team, and a B- to the design team.

22:05 / 06.07.06

re: sony's 'irreverance' - this is an ad that screened in the states.

Note not only the awful stereotypes of African-American men - but the cool, calm white boy narrator at the end.

VG cats has a nice little comment about it here.

re: Japan's problems with race- well, yeah. i worked there for a year, and it's a huge problem. There are very few black people in Japan, and most of the ones there are Nigerians who work in hip hop shops to provide cred (hip hop's huge there right now) - so most of their actual interaction with black people is through watching MTV and movies, or through buying products associated with mainstream hip hop.

This is why we (english teachers at the time) had to explain frequently- no, you cannot call every black person you meet 'nigga.' Really, this is a bad idea.

You could possibly argue that inadvertent racism within Japan is due to a lack of knowledge, but there is no excuse for the posters at the start of this thread and the video i just linked to.

re: Samurai Jack - that's a good point. I really enjoy Samurai Jack, but there are time when i look at his imagery and wince. i guess all of the artwork is higly stylised, but still, it's questionable.

23:11 / 06.07.06

it's also american.

23:35 / 06.07.06

yeah, i realise that. Director's Russian though.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

06:23 / 07.07.06

Haus Does that make a difference? Is it the fighting that is the problem, or the slogan, or the upper hand?

I wonder if there's any relationship with this and concerns about rising racism in the Netherlands? Is this ultra-liberalism gone maaaad, in that those who, at the planning stage, might have felt icky about this, didn't want to say anything? Alas we'll never know.

It's a combination of the fighting and the slogan for me. A white woman and a black woman fighting I might have passed by, thinking that it was bizarre. But the slogan draws notice to it. It's the slogan that sets off the alarms and should have at the ad agency too.

BTW, the other photos displayed here don't look much better, though they do confirm it is two women fighting.

Metafilter thread.

Regrettable Juvenilia

07:44 / 07.07.06

Oh, God - it's supposed to be sexy fighting, isn't it? In some ways that makes it even worse...

ONLY NICE THINGS

07:56 / 07.07.06

It is indeed sexy fighting.

yeah, i realise that. Director's Russian though.

Tartakovsky's father defected from the USSR when he (Tartakovsky rather than his father) was 7, and he was raised after that in Chicago. I don't know exactly what it says on his passport, but I'm not sure that counts as Russian strictly speaking. Russian-American, maybe?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

08:56 / 07.07.06

Oh, God - it's supposed to be sexy fighting, isn't it?

I certainly read the image as pure kink. I suppose one could attempt to use that as a way to excuse or ameliorate the blatant racism, since people in kink space do 'play' with race, prejudice and stereotypes. (IMO it would be entirely incorrect for anyone to say they shouldn't do so--not my kink, and I find it very troubling to witness other people engaging in race play, but that's my problem and not theirs.)

However, we're not in kink space here. We're in public space, we're in billboard space. We've got a company creating images of a white person subjugating a black person (okay, in 3 out of 4 images) and using those images to try and sell us shit.

Sony, YKINOK.

Our Lady Has Left the Building

09:14 / 07.07.06

It's the French Connection ad all over again isn't it...

10:03 / 07.07.06

Russian-American, maybe?

oops, my mistake.

i'm wondering, if the designers didn't think the ad was a problem, did they contemplate having the black woman in a dominant and/or defensive pose, rather than in the submissive position? it's not racial conflict, but the obvious dominance of the white woman that is so bad.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

11:46 / 07.07.06

Oh, I think the image where the black model is pinning down the white model is also dodgy, in part because of the heavy kink overtones I mentioned above. It seems to me to be playing off a different set of racial stereotypes, a different genre of pornography if you will: the supposedly more 'savage' or 'animalistic' black person assaulting the white in an act of heavily sexualised violence.

The more I think about it, the more I hate these freaking pictures.

15:00 / 07.07.06

You know, I never see these things and then someone points it out and it becomes instantly clear to me. Like that little back to front image of the vase/ladies face. First you can't see it at all, then you see it and can't imagine how you missed it in the first place.

But I don't understand why I'm initially blind to it. I'm sure it's not that I am stupid or don't care. Is it just that I am so used to overt racism in images I look at that I have become desensitized?

15:50 / 07.07.06

I think to a certain degree, that initial blindness might be because that "white" person isn't white in the way you may be used to thinking of yourself (or white people in general) as white. She's bleached out -- more like an albino or something. But that also ties in with the general invisibility of whiteness in most portrayals. The character in this image is visibly white, not the default "normal" setting.

I can't see the other pictures (don't know why) so I can't comment on them. I wonder how much the campaign is vexed by the fact that neither the Netherlands nor Japan has (as far as I know) a sizable black minority. Racism/thoughts about race in the Netherlands seems to involve Indonesians & Middle Easterners, and in Japan (with which I'm much less familiar) immigrants from China & Korea and the very marginalized Ainu minority. I don't know how much color comes into play in either culture... probably moreso in Holland.

Am having memories of the St. Nicholas in the dogeared copy of Struwwelpeter my German relatives gifted us back in my childhood.... struck me as a strange image, at the time. Even as a kid, I could kind of tell that whoever was writing that story didn't have a clue about actual black people like the ones at my school. (If you're unfamiliar, here, the Inky Boys chapter.)

This ad reminds me a lot of the Inky Boys.

All Acting Regiment

13:15 / 27.10.06

Just to bump this, as well as the racism issue, what do we think of the burgeoning (possibly post-Kill Bill) trend for images in adverts etc for what Flyboy calls "sexy fighting" (which is always between women), an example of which is shown in these adverts?

I'm troubled, because on the one hand there's that lesbian overtone and it's good that something other than het sexuality gets acknowledged but...no, it's not being "acknowledged" at all, is it? It's just that: an overtone, and it's being turned into wank fodder used to sell crap to teenage boys. Why no men sexy fighting?

We could even question whether fighting should ever be portrayed as sexy, but, well, we all enjoyed Captain Jack and several of us seem to be interested in kinky stuff, which two examples both involve sexuality-as-or-connected-to-violence (some kind of violence anyway, perhaps not "real violence"?)...so I think that's a question that might teeter a bit close to hypocrisy, and possibly needs it's own thread.

14:09 / 27.10.06

Why no men sexy fighting?

Heheheheh -- somewhere, I've got a book from a class I took on Spectacle & The Cinema on porn tropes in action films & the sexualization of male bodies. I remember stills from the Rambo movies playing key roles.

All those slow pans over trembling muscles... all those amazing physical feats.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:32 / 27.10.06

See also Dolph Lundgren getting whipped by Skeletor, etc. However, I'd arge that the undeniably rather homoerotic musclefest and the (trimly proportioned, tastily attired) chick fight are really being offered to the female gaze.

15:24 / 27.10.06

i love the fact that europe can produce a body advertising that offends both liberals and conservatives. whether it's tits or racism, there's something for everyone!

i like the posters. i think it's wonderfully bizarre that they even got made. it's a shame sony didn't have the balls to stick with it.

*

00:09 / 28.10.06

Allecto, yes, maybe its own thread? I'm not sure I think of it as something that's new, although I am concerned about what I've seen as a resurgence of gleefully violent, sexist, and racist imagery being embraced by certain intellectually underendowed and insecure youth.

14:03 / 28.10.06

Just to be clear, grime, it's the fact they were offensive that made you happy? Given that the discussion here is about people being offended by racist imagery, is that part especially delightful to you?

I may be reading too much into a brief post about your personal wishes, but I suspect that you may be speaking from the perspective of an iconoclastic rebel, and perhaps even a trickster, in the tradition of Coyote, and others. Is that the case? Do tell.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

18:57 / 28.10.06

It's so good that there is someone willing to stand up and be counted. To tell us that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes. To be as the court jester, who played the valuable role of speaking the truOH DEAR SWEET HOLY FUCK I CAN'T STAND IT ANYMORE MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOP MAKE IT STOPPPP

14:37 / 30.10.06

fred, the humour i find lies not within the offensiveness of the ads. that quality is fleeting and subjective. more funny, to me, is the offended reaction.

i like the coyote comparison! your snapanalysis seems pretty good to me. i felt it complimentary, so, thanks. but, just curious, why the probing?

15:38 / 30.10.06

I'm not sure I understand the question. You're wondering why I want to know what it is that you find amusing about other people's reactions? It's because your amusement didn't make sense to me. I know why I find racist imagery offensive -- it is because it reminds me of what it is that's bad about racism -- the way that people seem to be so willing to see others suffer if they can benefit from it; the way that people are willing to dehumanize others; the way people are willing to lynch, burn, and castrate others, and the way that not all that many years later, the way that other people are willing to remain ignorant of the way the imagery they use to sell products is completely unrelated to those horrifying acts, as though those images came from outer fucking space.

I want to know why you find people's disgust at these images amusing, because I'm sure that it isn't because you relish reminders of abuse, and I can't think of why else it might be.

16:29 / 30.10.06

oohh, see that's why i ask. i was wondering if i struck a disrespectful tone, and that i had been offensive. no disrespect to your outrage, intended!

i guess my sense of humour isn't very nice. i do tend to giggle when people trip. i'm working on that.

passionate people, divided by powerful issues tend to caricature themselves in interesting ways. it's like they become sock puppets controlled by the debate, instead of controlling the debate themselves. divisive issues, especially online, become focal points for competing world-views to repeatedly slam against each other, to no avail.

this isn't a comment about any of the debate taking place here. i'm just trying to explain my thought process.

i've been following some of the debate around the black-face videogame characters. it's an interesting, and pretty revealing look at two different world-views.

those psp posters struck me as bizarre and ill-advised. but those little dreadlock dudes are totally racist.

ONLY NICE THINGS

21:32 / 30.10.06

this isn't a comment about any of the debate taking place here. i'm just trying to explain my thought process.

Given that your thought process is not actually about the topic of the thread, or any of the actual discussion that has taken place, I'm not sure what we are meant to take from it, grime, apart from a vague feeling that we should be helping out at the orphanage.

Scrambled Password Bogus Email

07:26 / 31.10.06

i guess my sense of humour isn't very nice. i do tend to giggle when people trip. i'm working on that.

Whew. Such breathtakingly candid self-awareness. I'm betting one of your other faults is that you are a perfectionist, and work too hard.

All Acting Regiment

11:11 / 31.10.06

divisive issues, especially online, become focal points for competing world-views to repeatedly slam against each other, to no avail.

Why don't you piss off then?

19:10 / 31.10.06

tannhauser, i was just trying to answer fred's question, not rot the thread.

others: fuck you.

20:16 / 31.10.06

Eh...

Not to state the obvious, but, grime, I don't think that's the most helpful response you could have given to the 'others'.

But I'm stepping the hell away from that.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

20:50 / 31.10.06

I don't know about any other G&G mods, but I'm going to move any more off-topic posts in this thread for deletion. This is just getting fucking stupid now, above and beyond having moved into the realms of adolescent shit-flinging.

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