 |
"22 Shockingly
Racist Ads." Neat Designs.
N.p., 2013. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. <http://neatdesigns.net/22-shockingly-racist-ads/>.
|
MDSB62 Media Portfolio Entry #2—Image from 20th Century no later than 1980s & Commercial advertising
By: Annie Duong
By: Annie Duong
Racial Advertising against Blacks in 1930s
Advertisements from the 1930s are seen today as
extremely appalling and unspeakable due to anti-racism. As years passed by,
discrimination against race has changed drastically. We no longer see racism
depicted in advertisements, although stereotypes of certain characteristic
traits still exist in the media. In the 1930s, there were advertisements for
“blackface make-ups”. These were to be used for theatrical purposes. Blackface
make-up are usually made from burnt cork or black grease paint that are applied
to the face and body and their lips would be thickened with red or white paint
(Padgett). The “Nigger Make-Up” is deemed racist for many reasons,
such as the choice of language that was used and the man’s physical
characteristics.
In the advertisement, words such as “nigger”,
“burnt”, and “blacking” are racist slurs because it separates white people from
black people. The language that were used also conveys a sense of white
supremacy in a way that white people are able to “change” their appearance or
skin colour to look like a black person as a form of mockery. Whereas, if a
black person were to change their appearance or skin colour to look like a
white person, it is unacceptable and is punishable, especially in the era of
1930s. For example, “[w]hen black women actresses like Lena Horne appeared in
mainstream cinema most white viewers were not aware that they were looking at
black females unless the film was specifically coded as being about blacks”
(Hooks, 119). Hooks explains that in order for Lena Horne to be accepted as a
black woman playing a white character is if the audience does not know that.
Since racial segregation still took place in the 1930s, it is unlikely that
cinemas will tolerate black characters pretending to be white or even black
characters in general.
Another point that makes the advertisement racist is
the fact that the physical characteristic traits are exaggerated. The “Nigger
Make-Up” comes in the form of a mask instead of using burnt cork or black
grease paint in order to prevent the skin from “blacking”. In the ad, it
suggests that the mask can be “slipped on or off in a minute” and it also comes
with a top hat, which draws on the element of stereotyping the way black people
dress. The man in the ad is wearing a mask that exaggerates the dark skin tone
and the whiteness of the teeth and eyes, depicting the character as abhorrent
and unattractive. Stuart Hall argues that “[s]tereotyping deploys a strategy of
‘splitting’. It divides the normal
and the acceptable from the abnormal and the unacceptable. It then expels everything which does not fit,
which is different” (247). The blackface mask in this advertisement establishes
the strategy of splitting by creating
a distinction between what it looks like to be black compared to being white. The
mask acts as a division between the normal and the abnormal.
Works Cited
Hall, Stuart, Jessica
Evans, and Sean Nixon. Representation. 2nd
ed. Los Angeles: SAGE
Publications Ltd, 2013.
Publications Ltd, 2013.
Hooks, Bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation.
Boston: South End Press, 1992.
Padgett, Ken.
"History of Blackface." Blackface.
N.p., 01 Nov 2013. Web. 10 Feb. 2014. <http://www.black-face.com/>.
"22 Shockingly
Racist Ads." Neat Designs.
N.p., 2013. Web. 10 Feb.
2014. <http://neatdesigns.net/22shockingly-racist-ads/>.
2014. <http://neatdesigns.net/22shockingly-racist-ads/>.
