Sunday, October 16, 2011

Bad Advertising?




This is an advertisement for the Intel Core Duo 2 processor. It promises to give your workforce sprinter speed, but what I, and most of the population see, is six African Americans bowing to the "superior" white body. Even in the caption it talks about the white guy, front and center, being the boss or the superior in the work place. Another interesting thing I read from this advertisement is the the runners are not even completely ready to take off. When a sprinter is completely ready for the gun to sound, he or she will have their head up and resting more on their legs rather than leaning on their arms and upper body. This poses the question why photograph the minority runners with their head completely bowed to the white body? Another interesting thing is that all of the straight lines in the picture point to the white guy and completely over look the runners. This is similar to the Mona Lisa, where when you look into the background, your eyes are directed back to the main focus of the picture. The lines on the windows, the cubicles, and even the light fixtures point back to the white man standing at the helm of his subordinates. With this not being a difficult "raced body" read, it makes you wonder who lost his job over this ad.

1 comment:

  1. I thought you did an excellent job at reading this image and describing how the African Americans were "bowing" down to the white superior male. In my opinion this shows how in the culture of the United States, it comes natural to think of ourselves as superior and "in charge". It has been forced upon us that whites are the dominant race in our culture and that as whites we need to remain in charge. When Obama took office I feel as though our culture finally made a change and instead of other significant races such as African Americans feeling underneath everyone, the balance of the once known and strongly believed form of culture was disturbed. I agree with your closing comment of wondering who lost their job over this ad because it clearly oversteps boundries of racist profanity.

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