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Thursday, July 06, 2006
Video Game Industry in Ad of Questionable Taste Shocker
You know, it's really, really hard to look at this image from a Dutch ad campaign for the PSP "white" and not see really, really objectionable cultural signifiers on display. It really does seem to be the height of disingenuous to try and claim that images of an angry looking white woman in borderline fetish gear physically dominating a black woman isn't a potentially racist image. Especially when the follow-up from Sony seems to be that the ads aren't racist, but a sexist play on "cat fight" imagery.
Additional: The more I think about it, there's some odd gender imagery going on here as well. Lots of people seem to have gotten the impression from the initial ads that the black woman was a black man, and she's wearing a hairstyle and shirt with very masculine cuts, while the white woman is very femmed out. In many of the images the masculine black woman is in a submissive pose, while the femme white woman is dominant. These dominant/submissive poses are heightened by the fact that the dark background makes the white woman the more prominent figure, even in the images where the black woman is "beating" her.
Why, it's almost enough to make the sexism and racism of the comics industry seem quaint...