Elmo, 12/5

Something I found really interesting this week in class was our conversation that went along with our reading of Bell Hooks. Her essay on the “other”, and our conversations following, brought up a lot of issues that I hadn’t really previously spent much time contemplating. I guess being brought up in America we are all used to seeing everyone who isn’t like us as “others”. It seems that many Americans goal in life is to over come the other and dominate them, in more ways than one. The issue of being avant-garde with regard to the other is something we talked a lot about and how a lot of times bringing race to the forefront is seen as new and different. At the end of class we started to look at the United Colors of Benetton ads, which have stirred up a lot of controversy around the world. Having discussed these ads in other classes, I found them quite interesting to look at again. The ads usually portray people of different ethnic backgrounds being together in harmony. This to us is seen as “shocking” or “different” we see these people as others and are caught off guard when they are in images with Caucasians; for example, the ad with the white woman and the black woman holding an Asian baby. (http://www.hyphenmagazine.com/blog/asianbaby.jpg) This ad gets a lot of people talking. First it plays into the issue of same sex couples which is very controversial in itself, and second it plays into the same sex couple adopting a baby, furthermore, all of these people are of different races, which many people think is “not normal”. Another ad of theirs, which I really like, is the one that shows three hearts with the word “white” on one, “black” on the next, and “yellow” on the next. (http://linda03.files.wordpress.com/2008/01/media-blog-nenet.jpg) I think this ad is really touching on something interesting and important, showing us that while we all may have different skin colors we truly are all the same at heart. Overall I think we need to get over the fact that we all are a little unique and stop labeling each other as “others”, it really isn’t helping us anywhere. What really could help is being unified and realize that no one is the same and no one ever will be the same and this just needs to be accepted.