Image is Nothing. Obey Your Thirst.
-- Sprite
There's some jabber going around about alleged racial stereotypes in PSP advertisements. Obviously they're not taking direction from Sprite. Or maybe they are, and they're just thirsty for nonsense. It's all over this ad and some like it. Joystiq has the other two as well.
I see what the big deal is, I guess. It's controversial. Why? Because it's using a black woman to represent a videogame. What nerve! I mean black women (tm) are only supposed to be represented in ways and means approved by the Black Women's Collective. I know they have an address on K Street but I left it on my other PC. For the time being we have to listen to every loser with a laptop express their concern for the images of black women.
But seriously, you can only give folks so much time with this kind of silliness. The serious criticism is pretty much the same as I made against the Washington Post, people are always ready to substitute new stereotypes for old ones about blackfolks. Why? Because they don't know enough black diversity to subsume those fictions. The only 'real' blackfolks they know are those who conform to some racial stereotype, and thus provides a robust set of embarrassments and false platitudes about black capability. But this is not about black people at all, but a black colored video game.
So the people who should be the least upset about these are blackfolks themselves. Why? Because we know more than enough real blackfolks to dismiss stereotypes. But what exactly is the stereotype here? Black submission? I'm really not going to guess, because anybody who wants to take the symbolism out to that level needs to have their head checked. You can't do that without recognizing that (gasp) the first PSPs, a killer product, were black. Blacks were here first! Big whoop. This is all about fashion, not sociology. No amount of whinging can change that.. or maybe it already did.
Speaking of fashion what is going on with sunglasses? I mean here in California, all the rage is these big fat Jackie O looking goggle-riffic wraparound sunglasses? It's so 80s. I'm kinda wishing I had a big vocab about the pieces and parts of glasses. You know where the over the ear part meets the front part of the frame. Usually they're skinny, now they're as fat as the kind geezers with cataracts wear. Basically, you can't see people's eyeballs any longer, not even from the side. I think that means people are basically getting more insecure about being seen in public. It's the perfect accessory for the Hummer crowd.
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