Pride and Prejudice
A selection of '70s ads depicting African-Americans.
by Hank Willis Thomas
"Unbranded" is a series of images taken from magazine advertisements targeting a black audience or featuring black subjects, which I digitally manipulated and appropriated. In this work-in-progress project that will ultimately span from 1969 through the present, I have removed all aspects of advertising information, e.g., text, logos, in order to reveal what is being sold. Nothing more has been altered. I believe that in part, advertising's success rests on its ability to reinforce generalizations around race, gender, and ethnicity that can be entertaining, sometimes true, and sometimes horrifying, but which at a core level are a reflection of the way a culture views itself or aspirations. By "Unbranding" advertisements I can literally expose what Roland Barthes refers to as "what-goes-without-saying" in ads, and hopefully encourage viewers to look harder and think deeper about the empire of signs that have become second nature to our experience of life in the modern world.
This is tight.
This is tight.
Interesting indeed!
I recognize just about all these peices from various ads I've seen all my life. It's amazing what lengths corporate propagandists will go to flatteringly glamorize our otherness to sell us products. If only they would do that in the nightly news, instread of criminalizing and bastardizing everything about our ethnicity they can't understand or as handily manipulate to impede out free thoughts. We're pretty when our wallets are required. We have horns, cloven hooves, a pointed tail, and a double row of razor sharp yellow teeth on the nightly news, starting with President Obama.
New pictures, but I've seen the frames before...
Not much in the way of a true African-American frame here. That is, these folks, except for certain racial features, could be white! (Well, maybe not the pimp with two white honeys, an image that promotes black male sexual stereotypes) Why, they have families, just like whites do, they love their children, just like whites do--there ain't no difference!
But they don't look like most black folks I see walking around Detroit. There I see a variety of colors, do's, body types, and clothes, and ways of presenting themselves that are definitely not white.
But then, why should we expect anything different? After all, whites aren't presented as real people either. Reminds me of the masked Carnevals of Venice in the 1700's, except those costumed souls were covering their faces for hanky-panky and not for increasing commerce.
He’s not a pimp.
In the above post drosera describes these photos as people who “could be white” except for one photo as being a “pimp with two white honeys.” Take a closer look. He’s dressed more like some kind of plantation owner or safari hunter. And, are there no White pimps?
Sorry to use you as an example, drosera, but your quick and unintentional reading of these images makes the case for what the artist is doing with them.
Peter
Blog: Middling to Fair
Racial Inequity is a White Issue
We’ve Come Far but Not Become Fair
http://middlingtofair.blogspot.com/
I'm not sure if it's just a
I'm not sure if it's just a problem with my computer, or others as well, but the images show up at the bottom of the screen, and scrolling down only scrolls the page behind the photos, and not the photos themselves. For me, the only way to see them was to zoom out 50%, and by that point, I still couldn't see the pictures because they were too tiny!
That's a shame, because the concept itself and the thumbnails were very enticing!