So I was watching the Sucker Free Countdown on MTV2, and right after this video from B.O.B. entitled, "Haterz Everwhere" ended, this commercial came on that made me go like WTF. So it opens with this really muscular black guy standing on a diving board 30 feet above a pool, and as he's stretching, this voice-over comes on, he describes how for his entire life, he has never been able to swim, and the fear of water has plagued him. Suddenly, he jumps off the diving board! He tenses up and looks kind of panic-stricken, but he manages to overcome this fear with firm resolve! As he approaches the surface after diving, we see where he got this firm resolve to overcome his natural fear of water, since he comes out of the water as a U.S. Marine! He pops up wearing a camouflage jumpsuit and carrying an M4A1 assault rifle, in the middle of an ocean, only to be scooped out of the water by a boat filled with his equally well armed, yet significantly whiter, comrades. Now come on non-existent readers of this blog, are we seriously going to let the marines get away with this? I mean, sure, all advertising is designed to manipulate us emotionally, but are we really going to tolerate the marines basing an entire commercial on the stereotype that black people don't know how to swim? Maybe I'm just overanalyzing. At least the marines are willing to help black people with this problem of theirs. Just watch the commercial! The marines give him a gun, and some nice white friends, and the newfound confidence he needs to beat that fear down. Or shoot it down. The possibilities are endless.
Before you, non-existent readers, start calling me politically correct, or some extremely offensive insult like that, you should know that I don't find anything wrong with stereotypes. Stereotypes are a natural way of labeling people, plants, and things. They are the logical product of the way we perceive a complicated, diverse world around us. Stereotypes are wrong when we freight them with some kind of actual meaning. For example, when your belief in a stereotype is stronger than the weight of your own experiences, that's fucked up. But please, judgmental as well as non-existent readers, put stereotypes in their place: they should inform you only when you have no other information to go by. They are also extremely funny when presented in the right light. In this case, I guess the commercial just portrayed it a little too darkly. The advertising branch of the marines has committed some heinous crimes against man and logic. First of all, the Marines used the stereotype in dispute in an inappropriate way. The purpose was to design a commercial that would cause the African Americans to whom it was targeted to associate Marine with power and confidence. The real crime here was thinking that this method of advertising would actually work.
Nice try Marines! What's next? I have a few ideas....
An Asian guy is trying to parallel park in the middle of his road test. Pan out to the tester, who is clutching a clip board and scrunching her white, middle aged face in a very prejudiced way. A look of fear washes over his face, but he is going to park this car, dammit. As that fear blazes into confidence, he flips on his blinker, swings his silver Jetta around in a perfect arc, and plants neatly into the spot. As the camera zooms out from the beaming face of this 18-24 Asian dude, the car becomes a tank, suburban parking zone turns into an Iraqi war zone, and that oh so prejudiced tester has become a mustached commander in an army helmet, whose pride in the tank's stereotype defying driver is so obvious, you can taste it, through the TV set.
Even when a commercial shows a minority consciously defying a racist stereotype, that stereotype still serves as the framework for understanding that group. Whether or not that's wrong, it's true, its false advertising, and be aware.
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