Care to deconstruct this Italian TV commercial for fabric dye? (Thanks, Abe, for pointing me to it.)
There’s a sequel as well. It’s here.
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22 comments:
I know MF---come back!
Who will preserve my Black sanity?
Just what I needed.
When I finally do get to Rome, I get my ass kicked for walking down the street.
All because some gay Italian art director has a Negro fetish.
Where are the fascisti when you need them?
(I know it's wrong, but Alessandra Mussolini was hot back in the day.)
^ All because some gay Italian art director has a Negro fetish.
Snap!
That's got nothing to do with gay.
When I was in college, like most super-black-nationalist-dark-sunglasses-wearing brothers, I had my secret white girl on the side. Being a Yale legacy white girl she was a direct decedent from the Mayflower immigrants. Her most fervent wish was to have a "brown baby". I used condoms, so I didn't oblige her, but another non-white person certainly did. I've always contended that here is not one white woman on the planet that does not fantasize about sex with black men. I don't give a shyt how openly racist they are.
The darker the better. In essence that's what the white women's lib movement about. Equal access to black bodies.
But, Frances Welsing can give a better answer. I'm gonna ask my man GP to put a video together.
invisible woman...
"I know MF---come back!
Who will preserve my Black sanity?
Sis, you're doing a pretty good job of preserving that sanity yourself, if I may say so. Though, as I said, when I have something to say, I'll post. Probably soon, cause I find this whole Obama thing extremely fascinating and baffling. I'm trying to analyze what's going on.
^ ... I find this whole Obama thing extremely fascinating and baffling.
I know, right? Not to go off-topic on my own damn blog, but... I commented recently on Dragon Horse's blog that this whole thing is so strange.
Not only is Obama housing Hillary, but the hand of Fate has worked to provide the perfect Republican opponent: a 71-year-old white man who supports the Iraq war and whom the conservative base cannot stand.
It's like the skids are being greased to put Barack Obama in the White House.
Usually gay guys are more interested in the supermasculine he man type. Bodybuilders, for example, have way more gay groupies than straight female ones. If you've ever looked at the gay personals, then you know "straight acting" hypermasculinity is a most desired quality.
Straight women, OTOH, often like their men a bit girly. Not too much, but slightly on the pretty side doesn't hurt. Younger women in particular dig men bordering on androgynous. The man-boys in Tiger Beat usually wore as much makeup as the girls who read Tiger Beat.
Hard to imagine a straight Italian guy making an advert suggesting cuckoldry by a big, muscular black man.
Hard also to imagine an Italian woman making such an ad. If Italian women were doing the fetishsizing, the men would be either big blond beasts, or fine featured pretty boys.
Women everywhere drool over Johny Depp. They never drooled over Schwarzenegger.
Ergo, gay guys put this campaign together. They tend to dominate in Western countries when the task is marketing style, taste, and fashion to women.
Men in general are more comfortable with objectification. Gay guys seem to have a penchant for outrageous, attention grabbing expression.
(Maybe this is stereotyping. Maybe it's bigoted. This isn't my aim. If you think I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.)
odocoileus...
"Hard also to imagine an Italian woman making such an ad. If Italian women were doing the fetishsizing, the men would be either big blond beasts, or fine featured pretty boys."
Hmmm...
odo, are you a white male? A white person?
Have you ever been to Italy? I have. Plenty of times. I even have Italian relatives. Those Italian women, just as most European women I've been able to observe (and I've been to most European countries several times) loooove themselves some chocolate.
Beyond that, how is the brother in the video hyper masculine?
Mills...
"It's like the skids are being greased to put Barack Obama in the White House."
Just wait. They gonna come out and try move on Obama. Just got a call outta NY. The NYTimes is doing a story about Obama's drug use. The twist? He exaggerated his drug use.
(((shakin' head)))
Dude is obviously hypermasculine. Muscle on muscle. Just short of a competitive body builder. And he's clearly intended to exemplify that. In comparison with the nerdy paisan.
Molly Haskell talks about this in From Reverence to Rape. The difference between a female aesthetic sensibility and a gay male aesthetic sensibility. Having a muscular, cut black man pop out in his underwear is more of a gay fantasy than a female one.
Now, why would I worry about getting my ass kicked in Rome if I was a paleface?
It's wonderful, I guess, that some Euro women dig brothers. But paranoia about supposed desirability has fueled a lot of anti black male violence over the years. All over Europe and the States, and even more so in China.
The Tianemen Square protests had their roots in Chinese university men who were furious about African students getting together with Chinese girls. They even had dark skinned Hindus and Arabs afraid to leave the house for fear of being caught up in the lynching party. The Chinese men rioted, and it grew to become a full scale anti govt protest.
So, the dye advert is just the kind of "help" I can do without.
Oh yeah, one more thing.
The second ad - the sequel- suggests what the real intentions are. The brother and the skinny paisan are both in their draws at the end. No woman around at this point, and my man is blowing an air kiss to whomever.
And the skinny paisan is transfixed. He ain't going no where.
Huh.
The Tianemen Square protests had their roots in Chinese university men who were furious about African students getting together with Chinese girls.
Furious about who in the what now??
Actually, I have half a memory of reading something about this angle years ago. But it didn't stick with me.
Of course, the cultural meaning of this commercial that we're all reacting to is: White women have always been entitled to fantasize about interracial sex. White men have been entitled to do more than fantasize about it.
At the same time, a black teenager who dared whistle at a white gal ends up in the river tied to an industrial fan.
One thing I like about anti-racists is how they call out this kind of "privilege"... and the fetishizing of non-whites.
They gonna come out and try move on Obama.
Everybody gets a move tried on 'em at this level of competition Michael.
Long as there ain't no fuckin' bullets involved, let the game be the game.
Obama's already winning by the Establishment's own rules. Let him deal with the horseshit.
You should see how some on the Right are smearing McCain now. That's some dirty shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Anti-African_protests
The wiki entry smooths over things a bit. The Chinese men were furious specifically about interracial sex, and they were assaulting Tamils and Arabs as well. Anybody who looked close to black.
Mills...
"Of course, the cultural meaning of this commercial that we're all reacting to is: White women have always been entitled to fantasize about interracial sex. White men have been entitled to do more than fantasize about it."
Bingo!
fisher, ain't retiring is he?
Who's gonna have my back in the Stakes Be High debates?
I'm sure you've seen this one, but just in case:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gwqEneBKUs
There are some very clever people in this world.
deangelo...
"fisher, ain't retiring is he?
Who's gonna have my back in the Stakes Be High debates?"
Don't worry D. I'll be around just to help you fuck with Dave. ;)
The ad makes a far-fetched argument for the potency of its product – it’s a fabric dye, but it can also dye, pump up and rejuvenate your scrawny white husband. Strong enough for a fabric but made for a dissatisfied white housewife with chocolate fantasies. The ad argues that colored fabric is better than white fabric, by showing that black men are better than white men. Although this is piss poor logic, if I were an Italian housewife (surely the targeted market here), I would buy this dye just so people would think I WASN’T racist.
The ad is clearly illogical and tongue-in-cheek. It’s going for shock value to get name recognition. In that sense, I imagine it’s probably been pretty successful, and thousands of people now know the name Coloreria!
As for the speculation on who would author such an irresponsible and insensitive campaign, my educated guess is that it was done by asexual extra-terrestrial genetic scientists trying to understand the intersection of mating preferences, sexual fantasies and shopping habits of Italian housewives in preparation for body snatching the Pope.
Looks like GP came up with an answer
^ I've been wondering for a while, Michael... are you "Gabriel Proctor"??
Mills...
"are you 'Gabriel Proctor'??"
No.
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