I recently posted about the de-gaying of the movie A Single Manin promotional posters and trailers for different audiences. James H. (of Town Creek Poetry) sent us an example of how the cover of the book Spice & Wolf was changed for the U.S. market (the original is the Japanese version; image found at siliconera):
So we move from a fully-clothed manga character to a cover with a photo of a naked woman with her head cut out of the image, removing all subjectivity. The publisher says they did so in order to try to draw in a wider audience than people who are already interested in manga, and apparently they decided that a naked woman is the way to draw the interest of U.S. readers.
I wish I could say they’re totally wrong and it would never work. But clearly Evony also thought it would be effective. I wish I knew how their sales have changed as their advertising became more boob-centric.
FiveThirtyEight has up an interesting article about the proportion of Republicans in the U.S. Congress who are women, as well as comparisons to conservative parties in several other countries. The U.S. data (note that, contrary to the usual color-coding, in these tables red = left and blue = right, and an * indicates it is the party in power):
Now, one obvious explanation for this data would be that there aren’t that many women in the Republican party compared to the Democratic party, so there are accordingly fewer women in Congress (anyone have data on the gender breakdown by party, as opposed to voting in particular elections?). Or maybe they just can’t get elected. Another would be that parties on the right often encourage gender roles that are more “traditional,” with the idea that public life (particularly politics) is more appropriate for men, while women focus more on the private sphere of home life and extensions of it (say, education).
There may very well be some truth there, but that’s not the whole story. For one thing, the U.S. lags behind many other nations in terms of the percent of female legislators (a pattern that holds in the U.S. whether Republicans or Democrats control Congress, though the % changes somewhat):
The FiveThirtyEight post also compares parties in Sweden, Japan, Germany, and the U.S. in terms of the representation of women in left- and right-leaning parties, based on data for the parties holding seats in the legislative bodies in each country. In Sweden a center/right coalition is currently in power, while in Germany a left-leaning and right-leaning party have formed a coalition. A party on the left recently took power from a party on the left in Japan. A comparison of the four countries, broken down by political orientation:
Of course, parties on the right and left in each nation have different platforms, policy emphases, bases of support, and gender ideologies, so they aren’t directly comparable. But the “proportion” column above compares left and right parties within each country; it reflects the % of right party legislators that is female compared to the % in more left-leaning parties. That is, if the parties on the political right had the same % of female legislators as parties on the political left in that country, the proportion would be 100.0%. The lower the proportion, the lower the % of female legislators on the right compared to their representation on the left.
As we see, there are clear differences by political orientation in all countries, but there is an enormous range. The U.S. stands out with a particularly low proportion, indicating the largest gap between right and left parties.
Of course, the other story here is that both the U.S. and Japan stand out with extremely low percentages of legislators who are women in either party, with Germany doing better but still lagging compared to the proportion of women in the population. On the other hand, both left and right parties in Sweden seem to be capable of recruiting women who run for national office and win.
Tristian B. told us about Jeanswest Australia’s Authentic Japanese Vintage Denim ad campaign, which features images of White people surrounded by groups of kneeling Japanese men or women:
Oddly enough, Andrea J. recently sent us a link to the Palm Pre “Flow” ad, which has a White woman using the Palm Pre while a group of identically-dressed Asians, none shot in a way that presents them as individuals, dancing around her as she discusses how nice it is when everything rearranges itself to do just what you want:
NEW!(Oct. ‘09) Macon D. found another example of the use of generic, undifferentiated Asians as props. This time in a performance by Shakira:
This reminds me a lot of some images from Britain’s Next Top Model that Lisa posted about last year, in which Africans were used as background props in a photo shoot with the contestants. The Asian individuals in these two ads are an undifferentiated mass, strikingly dressed and posed to show off the subjects of the ads–the White people who are foregrounded and depicted as specific, individual human beings rather than an interchangeable member of a group.
For other examples of non-Whites used as props, see our post about a fashion spread in Vogue Italia and this photo from NYLON magazine.
Our friend Jason S. is in Tokyo this week. He reports that designing and assembling dolls is a popular hobby there. The photograph he sent us shows that doll bodies come in three sizes: small, medium, and large. Unfortunately that doesn’t suggest acceptance of a diversity of body types, nor does it allow for a just-my-size version, unless you’re talking only about boobs:
By the way, Jason will be back from Tokyo in time to come to OUR PARTY ON SUNDAY (August 9th at 6pm at Johnny Foley’s Irish House in San Francisco, CA)! We hope you can come!
We’re pleased to feature a post by Macon D. About himself, Macon writes, “I’m a white guy, trying to find out what that means. Especially the ‘white’ part. I live in that heart of the heart of American whiteness, the ever-amorphous ‘Midwest.’” Macon’s blog, Stuff White People Do, is an excellent source of insights about race and racism. We thought this post grappled nicely with the complicated phenomenon of (literal and figurative) black face, while addressing a difficult and contemporary form of humor:
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Chicago-Lake Liquors
Minneapolis, Minnesota (click here for larger version)
On the absorbing and informative blog Kiss My Black Ads, Craig Brimm responds to an ad campaign currently being run by Chicago-Lake Liquors, a store located in a largely black area of Minneapolis, Minnesota. The images above are apparently billboards, and I’ve embedded below the three TV commercials also included in this campaign. (If you can’t view them, they’re also running now on the store’s site here.)
The ads include “black” language, gestures, body language and so on, as performed by white, middle-class men (why no white women?). As I understand it, the joke is that these white folks are making fools of themselves by imitating black people.
Are these ads racist? Or are they making fun of racist white people? And if they’re “only” doing the latter, does that really make the contemporary blackface here any more acceptable?
Does context matter here, with Chicago-Lake Liquors located in a largely black area? Given that, perhaps the ads allow black people to feel superior in a way to these white people, by laughing at their silly efforts to get hip by acting “black.” Maybe, but that seems like a stretch.
Speaking of context — while blackface is largely condemned in the U.S., because it perpetuates and solidifies racist stereotypes, it serves other purposes in some other countries. Take a look at these other examples; as a United States citizen trying to become more aware on a daily level of racism and my own whiteness, I have increasing trouble ever seeing blackface, literal or otherwise, as acceptable. And yet, I’m a strong believer in the meaning-generating significance of social, historical, and cultural context. Many things have different meanings in different contexts.
Last summer, I posted a video in which British TV star Tracey Ullman donned blackface, in order to satirize (effectively, I thought) self-aggrandizing white people who adopt African children. Now, though, I’m not so sure this skit is worth applauding, despite the good point that I think it makes.
Is that acceptable blackface?
Then there’s this recent blackface performance by a Turkish newscaster. Apparently, according to ScoopThis.Org, this is a complicated joke of sorts, mostly meant to pay homage and gentle respect to Obama, and also to criticize Turkey itself for recent dealings with the U.S. BuzzFeed adds this: “Apparently, it’s actually a metaphor for the way the Bush administration ‘darkened’ the face of the Turkish public, and how the anchor hopes Obama will turn things around.”
Within a Turkish context, is this acceptable blackface?
Whether your answer is “yes” or “no,” it does seem worthwhile to interpret this performance in light of the strong probability that Turkish society in general has little sense or understanding of the particular, deeply racist history of blackface in the United States.
I’m also reminded of the Japanese teenagers who used to dress up, and maybe still do, in a fashion known as Ganguro (ガングロ), which literally means “black-face.”
According to a Western video report on this phenomenon, this look does not come from people of African descent; instead, its origins are traceable to a Japanese comic’s donning of blackface in order to clown around in a loincloth in the guise of an aboriginal Australian.*
So, I do find the Chicago-Lake Liquors ads racist. Even though the satiric butt of their central joke is clueless white people instead of black people, their version of blackness is insultingly cartoonish. They also basically revive what amounts to an American white supremacist tradition that deserves to die, blackface minstrelsy.
Still, I wonder — if we consider geographic, sociohistorical context, are some versions of blackface okay? Perhaps even, given its urban location, the contemporary American version in Chicago-Lake Liquors’ ad campaign?
* As Restructure! notes in a comment, Ganguro is one of three such modes of teenage blackface identified in the video; Yamanba, which means “mountain hag,” is the name of the one that’s tied to a comic’s racist parody of an aboriginal Australian. Jonathan Ross, the narrator of the video, notes that when Ganguro appeared after Yamanba, “many thought it was simply an homage” to the comic’s “beloved creation,” but apparently it’s not.
With all uproar focused on the morality of buying and selling sex, most people have little idea what much of the sex industry actually looks like. Or rather, the media repeatedly show the same images of women in short skirts and high boots leaning into car windows, giving the impression that street hooking is the dominant situation, which is far from the truth. And, of course, we are constantly shown horrifying images of the worst sites and victims of trafficking and exploitation…
At the same time, millions of people the world over work in the sex industry, in jobs other than providing sexual services. And more millions visit, drive or walk past sites without even thinking about it because they look ordinary.
To offer an alternative view of the sex industry, she’s started an online album (here). I’ve selected some to reproduce here.
Am Sülzwall red light district, Lüneburg, Germany (photo by Claus Petersen):
Prostitutes’ vans (Lyon, France):
Soldiers’ brothel (France, WWII):
Brothel in Linz, Austria:
Austrian brothel:
De Wallen, Amsterdam (The Netherlands):
Cottontail brothel, Nevada:
View of prostitutes in Yoshiwara, a red-light district in Tokyo from the 17th to 20th centuries (author possibly Kusakabe Kimbei):
Entrance to a Soho walk-up (New York, NY) (London) :
Brothel in Munich (Germany):
The expensive end of Basin Street, in New Orleans’s Storyville, Louisiana:
Many scholars have written about sex tourism, claiming that many nations turn a blind eye to it, if not actively play up the idea that there are sexy locals ready to please foreigners. In poor countries that have little to export, their populations, and their presumed sexual availability, may be their most valuable “resource,” particularly if the woman are stereotyped as particularly submissive, sexy, etc.
Tara sent in a link to a post at Yes But No But Yes about a different way of using popular conceptions of a country to appeal to foreigners: Japan’s Ambassadors of Cute:
In a bid to raise its international profile, the city has appointed three young women as cultural envoys because they represent Japan’s long-running craze for all things cute.
About the schoolgirl Ambassador:
“Every female from small girls to grandmothers loves pretty clothes,” said nurse and part-time model Misako Aoki, now ambassador for the doll-like “Gothic Lolita” style.
I just thought it was an interesting example of a different way a country might try to market its people (women?) to tourists–not as sexual adventures, necessarily (although there is the Lolita aspect, but I don’t think it’s meant in quite that way), but as adorable representatives of the culture. I’m not saying it’s totally unproblematic, just different.
UPDATE: Commenter mercurianferret asked why I didn’t post any of the comments from Yes But No But Yes. I hadn’t even looked at them. Here’s an example:
Seriously though…. Does anyone here think they’re cute? Doable even?…Hey Japan, news flash: We have a word for people over here who dress like cartoon characters… Losers. We send people with puppet dogs to ridicule them.
There’s a back-and-forth in the comments, and clearly a lot of sarcasm, but I wouldn’t say the reactions would make me very optimistic about the effect of the Ambassadors of Cute.
Inspired by a recent post about a T-shirt where an Asian stereotype was saying I SPEAK ENGRISH, I thought of the perennial online popularity of “Engrish” in general. Engrish.com, one of the oldest such compendia on the Web, offers a selection of photos from clothing, packaging, menus, signs, etc., largely from Asian companies. All of these photos have been collected for their supposed humor value because they contain text poorly translated into English, English text that seems incongruous with whatever it’s describing, and/or place names that sound taboo in English. Examples below the cut [some taken from the Adult Engrish section and thus possibly NSFW]. (more…)
Here are some great World War II-era comic book (graphic novels! Whatever!) covers and/or posters (all found at Superdickery’s Propaganda Extravaganza page, thanks to Krystal-lynn M.). They all combine patriotism, pro-war sentiment, and racist images:
The Black kid on this next cover is named Whitewash:
Breck C. sent us this link to a collection of photographs of Harajuku Girls. Harajuku is a style for teenagers in a region of Japan (here is the wikipedia entry). I can’t think of a way to describe them that does them justice, so here are some pictures (found here, here, here and here):
In 2004, Gwen Stefani began touring with four women posing as Japanese Harajuku girls. Stefani’s Harajuku Girls serve as her entourage and back-up dancers. Here she is with four (Japanese?) women that she hires to be her Harajuku Girls (found here and here):
In the comments, Inky points out that Stefani says this about them in her song, Rich Girl:
I’d get me four Harajuku girls to
Inspire me and they’d come to my rescue
I’d dress them wicked, I’d give them names
Love, Angel, Music, Baby
Hurry up and come and save me
Stefani also has a Harajuku Lovers clothing line and a series of perfumes, one for her, and one for each Harajuku Girl:
I think that Stefani’s use of Asian women as props (they may or may not be Japanese) fetishizes Asian women and reinforces white privilege. The Harajuku Girls serve as contrast to Stefani’s performance of ideal white femininity. It makes me think of both this poster on colonial-era travel and this fashion spread.
Yet, Stefani’s been at this for four years and I can’t remember hearing any objections to her Harajuku Girls, even in feminist and anti-racist alternative media. Further, if her fashion line, perfume, and continued employment of the Harajuku Girls are any indication, people seem to think the whole thing is awesome. In the meantime, I bet she’s making bank on her clothing line and perfume. Where’s that money going?
Do you think my reading is fair?
And, if so, why do you think there’s been so little outcry?
For good measure, here she is performing with her “Girls”:
In our comments, SG asks that we include the following clarification:
This article is really misrepresenting a whole fashion scene and I would like to ask that you correct it- It is just perpetuating the idiocy and ignorance surrounding these styles. “Harajuku is a style for teenagers in a region of Japan”. “Harajuku style” Is a term coined by western media because they are too ignorant to actually research the names of these actual styles. Harajuku is not a style. It is a location. The females you have pictured are in Decora (and two in Visual Kei). The only “harajuku style” that exists is the fictional one made up by Gwen Stefani and the western media.
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