But wait.... what's that on the side? Let's look at a close-up:
Remember kids, just because your grass-skirted, coconut-bra'd, sharp-toothed grimacing/ gormless "natives" are robots doesn't make them ok.What is the TV ad like I wonder?
"Hey, Doris, I feel like I'm just a cog in a machine, hey maybe we need some EXOTICISM in our lives, yeah, I keep reading in our manufacturer manuals that all our problems can be solved under a palm tree."
"Hey Wayne, just eat some of this cereal, it apparently contains a TROPICAL fruit."
"Thanks Doris - hey wow I feel like I've been transported to palm PARADISE and all my worries are gone because I am now PRIMITIVE. Let's make sweet primitive metal music together."
That's the exact conversation that went through my head when I saw that photo.
ReplyDeleteMel Gibson traces detected - brilliant!
thanks dude! or maybe eating the cereal turned the natives into mechanical robots, better suited to fit into modern society... for SERIAL, maybe that's what happens.
ReplyDeleteI don't get it.. is it racist? Personally I think it fails because it hasn't made me hungry, and those robots look a bit old and rusty so I hope they haven't been involved in the manufacture of the cereal. In fact I can't work out what the robots have to do with anything.
ReplyDeleteYes, it's racist. Basically, it's like the ad creatives knew they couldn't get away with putting real people in grass-skirts and looking fierce (because that's an obvious race/culture-based stereotype) so they dressed up robots instead. But the messages are similar: tropical islands are populated with near-naked people who make music and have sharp teeth (all the better to be cannibals with my dear). There's obviously an explanatory TV ad out there for the presence of the robots, but as we don't have a TV I see the print ads in what I like to think of as a pure, undiluted form.
ReplyDeleteWell then thats a comfortable level of racism for me.
ReplyDeletesigh.
ReplyDelete