I understand the history, but I don’t want to have to repeat it. If my features are OK to sell cars, why aren’t Crazy Horse’s features OK to sell cars? Does every advertising image have to look like Prince Charles before it’s not offensive? That seems really wrong. I liked Lilo and Stitch, it’s one of my favorite movies, and I like Lilo’s flat little nose. I don’t want it replaced with Prince Charles’s germanic honker for advertising purposes.
I gotta go, so I won’t see any more posts tonight. But I think I already said everything I had that was worth sharing, and perhaps some more besides ;). G’night all.
I personally am not worked up about this–and would totally donate to and visit a sign museum as mentioned–but here is teh thing: if you were part of a group that got thoroughly destroyed by another, and they used a caricature of you to sell cars, would you consider that an act of friendship or admiration? My colloquial voice response is, “stop being a turd” (the car lot, not you )
But the faces of the majority aren’t used the same way. Lets take a look at professional sports logos, for example. Here are the teams that have some sort of human representation in their logos.
NHL (30 teams)
Only two teams use humans in their logos: the Blackhawks and the Senators.
There are 4 NFL teams with some sort of human representation (Redskins, Raiders, Patriots, and Vikings).
That makes nine teams between for leagues that use human logos to sell their teams. Of those nine teams, three of them use natives (I’m pretty sure that less than one-third of the actors and models used to sell other products are native americans). Five of the remaining six teams use anachronistic or fantasy characters (Roman generals, pirates, war of independence fighters, leprechauns, Vikings). Only the Raiders use images that could be mistaken for contemporary man.
So I’m not sure that your average caucasian face is good enough to sell things the same way that depictions of American Indians are. The only time they’re used to sell anything is in caricature, as an exaggerated expression of a white man’s fantasy. They are not used in photographic representation: the models there are virtually all white. If you want people to be proud of different nose shapes, hair textures, or facial features, why not use photographs of actual people instead of crude depictions of them?
Exactly what about it is offensive? Yes, it’s a bit cartoonish, but it’s advertising. His dress and appearance is not unlike what you can find in hundreds of historical photos of Native Americans from the 1800s. He’s not shown doing anything particularly offensive or stereotypical. It’s not like it’s a cartoon Mexican snoozing under a giant sombrero, leaning against a cactus. He’s not waving a tomahawk. There’s no word balloon saying “Me make heap big bargain for you!”, or something equally idiotic. He’s just pointing, and waving hello. So what are you offended by? The waving, or the pointing?
I didn’t realize they’d changed their logo, since I moved out of San Diego more or less permanently a long time ago, and I never was a baseball fan anyway, but I do remember the old Padres logo:
It’s not a particularly flattering caricature of a Franciscan friar, but after all, he’s a conquistador and an intruder and nothing at all like a member of an oppressed minority. Before Serra and his gang showed up, Alta California was a pretty bucolic place, peopled entirely by the brown-skinned natives. A handful of generations later… well, look at us. And listen to current self-styled California natives bitching about the influx of (wait for it) brown-skinned foreigners. It’s amazing.
But anyway, I think the Padres must have changed the logo just because an orange and brown cartoon of a chubby bald dude swinging a bat in a bathrobe doesn’t exactly inspire a hell of a lot of civic pride and team spirit. It was just an awful logo. I don’t think anyone (not even Franciscans) ever got offended by the old logo. It may have made the chubby old friar look ridiculous, but it’s not like descendants of those European invaders don’t own the team, the stadium, and all the valuable real estate in the city itself. It takes much, much, much more than a goofy cartoon character to dehumanize us white folk and rob us of our dignity. Whether we deserve it or not (we don’t), we think we own this world, and it’s just indicative of our stranglehold on popular consensus that it has taken us so very long to get to the point where we currently are, being dragged kicking and screaming to a realization that our “harmless” dehumanizing depictions of others are actually wrong and objectionable and racist and troglodytic.
I think all forms of cartoon and caricature should be banned, as let’s face it, a caricature will always offend someone.
All comics should now have factually accurate anatomy, and all cultural references should be researched and portrayed fairly.
RIGHT! LET’S DRAW!
That’s not racism. It’s not expressing that black people can’t be Republicans; it’s expressing amazement that they would want to be, given the Southern Strategy the party adopted and the fact that it’s full of racists.
I mean, if someone said “I can’t believe he’s in the KKK! He’s black!” that wouldn’t be racism, would it?
I saw this on a family vacation to South Dakota when I was fifteen. It doesn’t look like they’ve made a whole lot of progress in the last twenty years. I guess it’s been in the works for a long time, but funding has been an issue.
I don’t think it’s that, its that the depictions are stereotypes and not being employed by the people who they are supposed to represent.
I don’t think anyone is saying that Lilo and Stitch are offensive, or that all depictions of people of color are offensive, but that THIS particular one is… You may disagree, but some do.
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