BubbaNub: Hooks

     Racial difference, orientalism, gay window advertising, and our obsession with difference as a whole has recently dominated our society.  As Hooks observes, the media has become the forefront for promoting and playing off of these issues of not diversity, but difference.  Largely, these advertisements still radiate racist and decentralized cultures and beliefs.  There are numerous advertisements that contain white women wearing indigenous garments in everyday situations, therefore destroying the cultural significance and value along with it.  Even racism becomes subliminally acceptable in what are easily offensive messages.

         As I searched around for images pertaining to Hooks, I could not help but think back to my time spent in Japan.  Similar to our obsession with Japanese characters in the United States, Japan runs rampant with English phrases gone wrong.  Lost in translation, popular English phrases become skewed and lose all meaning when inducted into Japanese culture.  This is just as evident as the Japanese T-shirts sold that literally translate to "Stupid American" and yet numerous tourists purchase and wear them around with pride.

      Looking at contemporary examples such as these, it is clear that there exists a certain danger in our obsession with difference.  However, it is not the difference itself that endangers us, but the lack of substance we give it.  In our desire for assimilation we simplify, and remove the very things that spark our interest in difference in the first place.  After that, we are simply left with nostalgic images, ones that we can't remember why exactly we like/accept.

ChittyChittyBangBang hooks

As someone else mentioned, I too was introduced to bell hooks in a race & gender writing course my freshman year. By not capitalizing her name you can already tell she challenges our society’s ideologies. She has very interesting points and her writing style is clear and easy to follow. In her article, "Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance" she begins to analyze societies interaction with "the other" and our tendency to "Other" each other. We make assumptions about people we view different than ourselves everyday. Historically westerners have categorized othering by the west vs. the rest; the primitive "them and the civilized "we". Although hooks made an interesting and important point, "The message again is that "primitivism" though more apparent in the Other, also resides in the white self" (372).

In advertising there has been a history of representing people in certain ways in order to advertise to mainstream white culture. Although overtime the desire for exotica has increased, even from white culture (if not especially from white culture). Representations of the "other" are fantasies. Sex is what sells and is what drives the advertising business therefore most images are in a sexualized manner. When I think exotic I think sex, I think minimal clothing, and I think of animalistic seductive images. Exotica also means purely different, challenging the norms such as the picture I posted of the bald woman. The picture of the gothic girl also is a representation of someone trying to be socially different and establishing their own identity. They turn something that might be considered weird beautiful. People want to see new and different things although this doesn’t mean they don't still conform to cultural norms. "To make one's self vulnerable to the seduction of difference, to seek an encounter with the Other, does not require that one relinquish forever one's mainstream positionality" (367). It is like a secret pleasure for a lot of white culture.

"Now that sophisticated market surveys reveal the extent to which poor and materially under-privileged people of all races/ethnicities consume products, sometimes in a quantity disproportionate to income, it has become more evident that these markets can be appealed to with advertising" (371). Images are not only satisfying white cultures fantasies; other cultures like to be and are attracted to images of their culture represented in mainstream media.
I think it is a positive step for many reasons to add diversity to our media, although stereotypes are often involved and do not represent cultures accurately. Therefore as hooks stated, we need to approach all of these images critically.

Bella (bell hooks )

bell hooks is probably one my absolute favorite writers. I first encountered her work in my freshman writing course Race, Class and Gender. I was fascinated that she did not capitalize her first or last name, a statement meant to neutralize herself in the world. Her name is no more important than anyone else’s name…why should it be capitalized? Her writing captivates me and I hang on every word. In her essay titled “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance”, she discusses the modern world’s obsession with race, difference, and ‘Othering each other’. She argues that we have no other way of understanding the universe than by understanding what we are not. Race has become not only a source of difference, but rather a source of entertainment. She writes, “The commodification of Otherness has been so successful because it is offered as a new delight, more intense, more satisfying than normal ways of doing and feeling…withing commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture” (hooks 366) Our obsession with the ‘primitive’ sheds light on our ‘nasty fantasies’ hidden beneath white supremacy, namely, our obsession with the Other. She says that difference is seductive, a spicy, sexualized distraction for the white bread and butter people in American modern culture. We will take the Other, distort it, mute it, make it “whiter” and then regurgitate back into the culture as a more ‘acceptable’ form of Other. This version has been swept clean, Americanized, polished to perfection. Think of famous ethnic singers or actresses: Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, Halle Berry. These women are successful, beautiful, and different. They have a claim to ethnicity that my Northern European heritage is not truly able to claim. They are seen in society as “Others”. However, they all have one thing in common-they are light skinned. They have lighten the color of their hair, straightened out any curls or give-aways to “Nappy Roots”. They have had plastic surgery to make their noses smaller, lips bigger, eyes rounder. Everything about them is manipulated. We accept them in society because they are no longer Other…they have become Us.

hooks DetectiveDanny

In my other Critical Media core classes, I have found an interesting subject in advertising, especially the ads for high fashion displayed in magazines such as Vogue and W. Ive analyzed the content of ads and I am working on researching how college aged women process these ads. The bell hooks piece on the other brought an interesting perspective to this, looking at ads in regards to critical theory and “The Other”
“The Other” is a familiar concept with our group of Critical media students. We have learned of the commodification of the other that hooks speaks of in the context of Ota Benga and Ishii. Both of these primitive people were literally kidnapped and put on display for the white American public. The ads use our xenophobia and fear of the other to provoke deep desires as “the ‘real fun’ is to be had by bringing to the surface all those nasty unconscious fantasies and longings about contact the Other embedded in the secret (not so secret) deep structure of white supremacy”.
This Tecate Beer ad assumes that all of us dream of the proposition of having relations with a ‘spicy latina’, but their beer may offer us the same pleasure without bringing the caliente attitude.
Another Other is the homosexual, and Dolce and Gabanna is notorious for bringing the consumer homosexual imagery in their ads. These three men can be looked upon and one wonders if they are homosexual. The mystique and taboo nature of homosexuality raises our interest as we let the image into our heads and project ourself into it.
United Colors of Benetton has taken a more socially critical road. Here we see the white man chained to the black Other, and we interpret that painting of race relations any number of different ways.

NewYorker - Hooks

Despite there still being a hegemonic want for the "all-American" looking model when it comes to modeling, more and more different cultures are becoming more appealing and attractive. Sometimes advertisers want to take a different angle, and will hire a different race. I have seen a lot of black, Asian, and Indian models lately. As a few people had commented on America's Next Top Model, I want to add something too. They always have contestants of different races, and always take them to another country. On the last season, the two finalists were a black woman, and a blonde American. I totally thought the blonde was going to win, but it turned out that the black model won. I feel this show is trying to show people that models can look different, because every season the winner has not been the mainstream hegemonic look.
The want for a specific looking model will always be in flux, because consumers want to see people in the ads that look like themselves, that they can relate to. However, I think here is where stereotypes come into play, and exotica/Other, because sometimes when an advertiser wants to represent something different, they immediately go to a stereotype, because they feel that will get the message across and that people will be able to identify it (such as getting an Indian model that completely looks Indian, not something in between, or a mix. Or to have a black woman sporting an Afro.) This relates to the paragraph on the Tweeds catalogue that Hooks spoke about (372).
Further this article just made me think of many of the commercials that are out right now for such items like vacuums, cleaning fluids, and plastic bags. It is always the woman of the house vacuuming, or feeding the kids the proper cereal, and the mother disinfecting the bathroom. There is not one commercial that shows men doing this! A typical commercial where the man of the house is the star, is for things such as credit cards, electronics and garbage bags.
Here are some examples I have found:
http://www.suite101.com/view_image.cfm/266188
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7NUA6ivmBPs

booboobear Hooks

bell hook in Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance that "Mass culture is the contemporary location that both publicly declares and perpetuates the idea that there is pleasure to be found in the acknowledgement and the enjoyment of racial difference"

As I began to think about this comment I couldn’t really think of an example of this, until I realized the music that most high school and college students listen to is from the Other. Rap music is from (or at least perceived from) lower class urban individuals. But the astonishing thing is the statistics show the majority of album sales are to upper class suburban white kids. All rap songs are about shootings, drugs or sex. Because most rappers are black, we have come to associate rap music with black people. These black rappers have become the Other that bell hooks is talking about. Most of the consumers of this music look at rappers and the subjects they sing about as primitive and not relative to there lives. But they seek pleasure from this music because the topics are taboo for their upper class lifestyles. This is a perfect example of how people are seeking pleasure from the Other.

For some reason I couldn’t get the picture on here, I couldn’t figure it out. But the picture I was going to use is a rap music advertisement. The advertisement has a picture of the rapper 50 cent. In this picture the rapper 50 cent is holding a gun, pointing the gun right at the camera acting like he is about to shoot the camera. 50 cent appears very primitive and urban in this picture because he is standing with a mean look on his face with his shirt off. His body is covered in tattoos and gun shot wounds.

romulus hooks

"It was commonly accepted that one 'shopped' for sexual products in the same way one 'shopped' for courses at Yale, and that race and ethnicity was a serious category on which selections were based."

Biologically, this makes complete sense. Everyone is ultimately a brand. Through the choices we make, everything from appearance, intelligence, ideology, etc., we cultivate an image, an identity that we present to the world. Some of the aspects of our design are shaped by genetics and cannot not necessarily be altered, by race and gender. With the amount of exposure one can have in his lifetime free to reach great heights, its important for us to stand out. The advertising I predominately consume is hyper sexualized, and there is only one gender involved. Being of persian Indian descent, I used to but not anymore wonder if I was a desired race. There is an emphasis on physical appearance that all ethnicities of men included share, but obviously most of the ads are dominated by whites. The male models I see in fashion ads all share the more refined and beautiful of western masculinity. High cheek bones, slender noses, wide eyes, and strong jaw lines for the face. Tall, lean muscles, toned body, perfect abs, wide chest and much more.
The image above is of Cas, a model and good friend of mine. His pictures in his portfolio are ideal, they embody a number of aspect of the male beauty in fashion advertising. The picture got my attention. After watching so many seasons of America's Next Top Model, I have learnt a multitude about high fashion modeling. Tyra Banks has taught viewers much about the industry as she finds that 'one'. That one is what everyone desires. Cas is that one. He's also Japanese, which I never could of guessed. This brings me back to my point of race being a reason for consideration when determining who is attractive, but physical appearance is the deal breaker. Those who have those qualities becomes desired, they become aware of this and improve their image or 'brand'.