The Strange Commercial

[imomus]

My new piece for Design Observer is about some strange and beautiful old commercials you can watch on the web. It focuses on films by Charles Wilp and Serge Lutens for Afri-Cola and Shiseido.

Oh, and check out today's Art Harbour sound. It's a tiny morsel of buzz taken from one of the Shiseido commercials and run through some pitch and tempo effects so that it becomes an entire symphony. It's one I'm quite proud of.

Comments

[imomus.livejournal.com]

This is getting dangerously close to an entry logged on Neomarxisme (http://pliink.com/mt/marxy/) last November 1st. Marxy posted this photo



and commented: "This is a sign for the new restaurant Bushman - a generic ethnic joint with curry and pad thai. Who needs VICE-style ironic racism when the unironic variety still exists here in Tokyo 2004!"

To which someone responded, quite sensibly, that bushmen do exist in Africa, and look rather like the one in the picture. Does political sensitivity require that we never show any images of black people? Marxy seems to have agreed in the end, because he's deleted the entry. All that remains is the Google's cache (http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:fW3M2ppDSasJ:pliink.com/mt/marxy+This+is+a+sign+for+the+new+restaurant+Bushman+-+a+generic+ethnic+joint+with+curry+and+pad+thai.+Who+needs+VICE-style&hl=en).

[(Anonymous)]

I don't know whether it is necessarily racist, or ironic, though both thoughts occured to me, but mainly it just seems strange. Indeed that is the strangest element of that film for me.
So from my point of view this has only a superficial resemblance to the incident you mention above.

Buschbaby has quite a precise meaning in German. I don't understand what that meaning has to do with the contents of the film. Do you?

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'd imagine the line of mental association went something like this:

black woman Africa bush sex make babies call you baby jungle my inner panther hump hump primal expressive Matisse Picasso porn sex money exoticism John The Baptist the Other projection pleasure centres escape dull grey German city streets...

Whereas people educated after about 1980 would immediately get a stream of associations more like this:

black woman guilt repression de-link from Africa de-link from sex throttle inner panther treat with respect just one of many roles in control reparations stop stereotyping anyone can be anything reductive can't believe how sexily she's dancing exploitation blaxploitation PhD thesis orientalism dull grey campus outside can I masturbate now...

Underhanded!

[(Anonymous)]

Everytime I turn my back and don't read your site, you land a rhetorical sucker punch on me.

My problem with that sign is that the store sells "ethnic foods" like pad thai and curry, and the way the store signals to Japanese people "ethnicity" is with a African bushman. I understand why the Japanese call their tanning salons "Blackie's" etc, but I was a bit offended with the idea of exploiting images of Blacks to sell an idea of "primitiveness." As if the ad were saying, "Look at how totally exotic our foods our - we have a Black guy as our mascot!"

I know that you find great pride in your potshots on Political Correctness, but your assumption that Japanese logic is working exactly as your own is flawed. They may come to the same VICE-era "IN YOUR MOTHERFUCKING FACE" masturbatory post-PC self-righteous actions, but they're still working on a 1950s level of "we don't trust the coloreds" social perspective. But hey, keep attacking the liberals as the "real racists" - you love the easy target. Keep on fightin' the power.

Marxy