spaghetti, hooks

I found this reading very interesting and easy to understand. In cmc, I think we devote a large amount of time to understanding and studying the Other. While reading, I was constantly reminded of Kilbourne's video we watched in CMC100 called "Killing us softly." Although Kilbourne's main focus is on sex and gender portrayals in the media, she does touch on race as well. I distinctly remember her observation that when race comes into advertisements in mass culture, there is almost always a struggle of power. She then shows images of print advertisements in which the subjects are of different races. She makes note that the white subject usually is portrayed as asserting some kind of dominance over the subject of another race. She uses this example to show that when a man and a woman are in an advertisement, usually the man is shown as dominant. The only time a woman is typically portrayed as dominant, is if race is involved. She then showed an image which i will never forget of a white little girl standing tall above a black little boy, who is obviously younger and is looking up at her. When hooks states, "It is within the commercial realm of advertising that the drama of Otherness finds expression," he supports Kilbourne's point (370).
In advertising, different races, if present, almost always illustrate some kind of power relationship. By juxtaposing subjects of different races or ethnicities in images, advertisements perpetuate this predominant view of anyone not white as "other."