How racist is this Intel ad?
Six cloned black sprinters (they indicate speed, get it?) surround a white man who is centered above them so that it appears they are bowing to him/rowing a slave ship.
Intel, give your marketing department a raise for tapping into the (not-so) subconscious racism of corporate America.
I bet your boss just ordered Intel Core 2 Duo processors and sprinter's blocks for the whole damn office.
- Also for consideration, is it racist to set Resident Evil 5 in Africa where a white protagonist has to mow down hordes of infected African zombies?
I can see the Al Sharpton getting up in arms already but on that one I have to say nay. if CJ from Grand Theft Auto IV can murder Californians of all colors at will I say let that fight go and save the energy for this next issue.
- ABC's upcoming show "Cavemen."
The pilot leaked to the intertubes (download the .torrent file here) and "Sweet antebellum south Batman!" is that shit racist.
If you've seen the Geico commercial you may think you know what's coming but you really don't.
The whole show is really just a thin guise to tell the most hackneyed black jokes you can possibly drudge up on network television. Replace "Cavemen" with "nigger" in any of the show's jokes and you have the show's premise laid out for you.
The show stars 3 "cavemen" who fit the 3 categories of
1) Unaware minority
2) Angry radical "Free Mumia" type minority
3) I-Just-Wanna-Fit-In minority
The caveman who is trying to fit in has a white girlfriend whose parents don't accept her relationship and the whole pilot episode involves them trying to attend the white girlfriend's rich parents BBQ without embarrassing their friend.
One joke refers to reclaiming the word Cro-Magnon as a term of endearment (cough, cough **N-Word debate** cough cough.)
Another joke involves a white girl at the BBQ who wants to fuck one of the caveman's friends because she thinks it will be pretty wild and freaky.
There is also a scene where the completely unaware friend, who is a great dancer, leads the white folk on a magical dance-along at the end of the show.
The jokes go on and on expect they don't actually make you laugh. And the backlash is already brewing.
This is building up to be a modern-day "Bamboozled."
ABC has a shitstorm in the works if they air this show as is. If they are smart they will take the L on this garbage and scrap whatever they've produced thus far.
If you're going to make an racial allegory at least be funny.
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Ho-lee shit. That Caveman show sounds like the brand new Desmond Pfeiffer.
ReplyDeleteI keep feeling that the Resident Evil thing is more offensive than I expect it to be. On a certain level, there's no reason why you couldn't have a zombie game set in Africa, but everything about the actual execution feels awful.
That said, many more important battles to fight.
This blog entry just goes to show that white people just dont get it.
ReplyDeleteThey have racism down pat to the degree that they do it as a reflex and dont even know that they do it.
To paraphrase Michael Eric Dyson: "Youre intentions didnt mean you havent done me wrong."
Basically, you can chalk it up as "Who the f**k do you think you're fooling?"
Did they ever make a video game based on the movie "28 Days Later?" Like the movie, they should have a black woman chopping up zombies in England.
ReplyDeleteIf it makes you feel better I beat a 19 year old black kid in a street sprint for the sake of defying stereotypes.
ReplyDeletehttp://slamonline.com/online/2007/08/links-the-slamazing-race-video/
Real life caveman from China.
ReplyDeletehttp://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070731/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_olympics_beijing_kingkong
wow
"I bet your boss just ordered... sprinter's blocks for the whole damn office."
ReplyDeleteOk, that statement is funny as hell!
L
I remember reading about the caveman show in Time a few months back; the writer kept talking about how it was such a fresh and original social commentary, yet every example he gave was chock-full of the most horrible hackneyed racist shit imaginable, like cavemen calling each other "Cro-Magger" and then having to explain to a non-caveman that "it's okay for us to say it".
ReplyDeleteWhile I generally don't fuck with the white guilt crowd, the fact that there are members of my race who not only find this lame, easy, ignorant shit funny but actually consider it to be some brilliant insightful satire... it's kind of sickening.
I am so happy that someone caught on to those caveman comercials.
ReplyDeleteThe comerical where the cavemen are arguing with the shrink about the intelligence of cavemen reminded me of the early 90s when we would see black intellecuals arguing with the writers and defenders of the Bell Curve.
What many black people don't get is that the joke is on us in that many white people are now comfortable(once again) to make fun of us in a open forum. I believe that shows like Dave Chapelle(u don't agree, I know), black rappers, black youth using the n-word openly, and the six o'clock news are equal players in this change of events.
I've heard whites make comments of how during the civil rights period blacks were a more respectable group.
I don't think we should shape our lives around what white people think but I think we need to be concious of our image.
I don't know if I mentioned it before but your blogg is one of my favorite.
Damn...it don't stop.
ReplyDelete