{"id":4386,"date":"2009-07-16T20:50:29","date_gmt":"2009-07-17T00:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=4386"},"modified":"2009-07-16T20:50:29","modified_gmt":"2009-07-17T00:50:29","slug":"racially-slurred-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/?p=4386","title":{"rendered":"Racially Slurred Speech."},"content":{"rendered":"

\"chicagolakebillboards\"<\/p>\n

Is this series of billboards, above, coupled to a complementary set of commercials by the same company, below, racist?<\/p>\n

You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video<\/em><\/object><\/p>\n

As a non-drinking New Yorker, I’d never heard of Chicago-Lake Liquors<\/a>, the 50-year-old, Minneapolis, MN-based retailer of wine and spirits. It was only with recent posts on Racialicious<\/a><\/em>, then Kiss My Black Ads<\/a><\/em>, that I became aware of their recent campaign, overseen by ad agency Brew Creative<\/a>, also in Minneapolis.<\/p>\n

In each of the three commercials, as in the billboards, white Chicago-Lake Liquors patrons, overjoyed at their savings, are moved to celebrate the buys in “hip-hop” or “ghetto” slang, or style.<\/p>\n

\"screen21\"<\/a>In one, after giving the cashier a pound, a white, gray-haired, bank chairman type flashes a set of diamond-encrusted fronts, right. In another, below, a pudgy white soccer dad strips down to his undershirt, dons gang colors, and tattoos his knuckles with a marker.<\/p>\n

It might escape non-Minneapolitans how<\/em> white these patrons are, though, until you note, in the billboards, which suburbs each model represents (and at whom, by extension, the pieces are aimed): Edina, Eden Prairie, Wayzata, Minnetonka, and Bloomington.<\/p>\n

\"screen1\"<\/a>Of the five, Bloomington is both the Blackest\u20143.42% African-American\u2014and the least white\u201488.12%. Wayzata (Why-zet-ta), home of Dick (“Check this, playa”), above, is listed on Wikipedia<\/a> as “one of the top three wealthiest communites within Minnesota,” 96.11% White, 0.41<\/em>% African American.<\/p>\n

What do these ads mean, however, and why take this approach?<\/p>\n

Kiss My Black Ads<\/em> say its “just co-opted blackface.”<\/p>\n

Simply stated; it is the minstrelization of caricatures that wrongly represent African Americans. A less than flattering imitation of an already too often accepted demoralized view of Black people in America.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Some would disagree, adding that, with the TV spots’ tagline\u2014”At least the prices are for real”\u2014the pieces are clearly joshing white people. To that, though, Racialicious<\/em>\u2019s guest blogger, Tami, of What Tami Said<\/em><\/a>, notes<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t think the ads are making fun of the dominant culture, though it seems so at first. The ads are making fun of behaviors and language deemed \u201cblack\u201d by showing white people indulging in them. They are highlighting \u201cotherness\u201d using the mainstream as a backdrop. If you think the joke is not about blackness, but about poking fun at urban, street lingo and style, consider why none of the ads feature a straight-laced, middle class, black guy. Why? Because all black men are expected by the dominant culture to talk jive. It\u2019s not funny when a black person says \u201cpimp tight\u201d and sports gold fronts, cause you know, that\u2019s just what we do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the end, though, Tami admits that<\/p>\n

I am stymied by what message these ads are trying to send. The prices at Chicago-Lake Liquors are so low that they make even good, white folks indulge in coonery? I suspect there is no message; this is one of those aggravating campaigns that seek to raise awareness of a brand through nonsensical, \u201cedgy\u201d ads that draw a lot of heat for a moment in time. The flash point? Race. I have no doubt some hipsters in a Twin Cities ad agency are sitting around right now, fist bumping and congratulating themselves on a job well done. \u201cWe rock, yo!\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It’s hard for me, as well, to figure out what these spots mean. Do they, as Tami urges, possess “no message”? Are they, as Kiss My Black Ads<\/em> says, just results of the “quintessential lazy day at the office…when dumb jokes go wild,” and “under-active imaginations fixate on poorly developed ideas”?<\/p>\n

\"screen41\"<\/a>I don’t think so.<\/strong> I’m guessing that these ads are designed to let white suburbanites in the local Hennepin County<\/a> area, right, know that it’s cool, safe, and fun to visit Chicago-Lake Liquors.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to say this with certainty, as a New Yorker, without knowing more about the local area, or, even more, perceptions there of it, and I could be wrong. But I think the spots are making fun of concerns or misapprehensions many suburbanites may have about shopping in certain neighborhoods, even parodying things white people may have said\u2014”I wouldn’t go there unless I was in a gang!”<\/p>\n

\"screen101\"I think Chicago-Lake, right, figured they were leaving money on the table, and, with a little advertising, they could pull in a lucrative clientele that wasn’t shopping there, but would. By exaggerating that group’s fears or fantasies\u2014whoa, going to Chicago-Lake will turn even the WASPiest patrician into a homeboy!\u2014the ads not only get attention, but also humorously dissolve the mental obstacles prospective clients might have about shopping there. (On their web site<\/a>, Minnesota\u2019s self-described largest volume liquor retailer adds that they are “an urban wine and spirits establishment without metal bars on our windows,” whatever that means.)<\/p>\n

It’s interesting to me that none of the ads are set at night, despite the fact that this is a time during which a lot of liquor is bought. If my theory is correct, I’m guessing that suggesting to some people they go to Chicago-Lake when it’s dark could have been seen as pushing it.<\/p>\n

\"screen6\"<\/a>In a way, the spots remind me of of the famous “Oh, Stewardess: I Speak Jive” sequence, right, from 1980’s Airplane<\/em><\/a>, in which a senior-aged white woman translates the ebonic utterings of two Black passengers. I’ve always found this scene hilarious. I did so, long before I knew that the jive translator was actor Barbara Billingsley, the mother from Leave It To Beaver\u2014<\/em>a show so white it makes Friends<\/em> look like Soul Train<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"airplane\"Part of what made the bit funny may have been seeing it when I was still a teen, and at an impressionable age. Airplane<\/em>, right, was the first time I’d ever seen anything like that. (Check out the poster’s way pre-9\/11 tag line: “Able to hit tall buildings.” Not. Happenin’.) I specifically remember cracking up loudly as soon as I saw the subtitles. Another part of the humor may have been my willingness, then, to be part of the joke, or even the object of it, before I acquired any dimension of race consciousness.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, part of why I still think the scene is so funny is it’s set within the cohesive walls of a robust parody, one full of all kinds of plays on language. (“Can you fly this plane and land it?” “Surely you can’t be serious.” “I am serious…and don’t call me Shirley.”)<\/p>\n

To me, the real humor wasn’t just that those dudes were being subtitled, as though we’d come across them on safari. It was that their slang was so, well, jive.<\/em> It was nothing that any Black person would recognize as meaningful Black speech. The actors gave it the right rhythms, but the words were all wrong. “Pretty jay, I get the samo-samo”? Gimme a break.<\/p>\n

\"screen7\"<\/a>For years, I’d often thought this was my own private interpretation. But actually, in this clip<\/a>\u2014which I found while researching this very post\u2014the actors, Al White and Norman Alexander Gibbs, right\u2014backed by writer\/directors Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, and Jerry Zucker\u2014talk about how they put together the dialogue, forging their vision, says White, of “jive as a language,”<\/p>\n

which it is not. Jive is only a word here, a phrase there. But then, when you put it all together, in a supposed language, it comes out very humorous and funny, as it did.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"screen9\"Perhaps it’s that level of wit the Chicago-Lake ads lack: Not just that some old white woman was translating Black speech, right, but that she was doing it so inauthentically, tripping over words and syllables with her insistent purr.<\/p>\n

The Chicago-Lake pieces, by comparison, have one level of joke: White People Act Like Blacks. Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha. The End. No art, no nuance. It’s almost as though this denial of Black complexity\u2014the kind which White and Gibbs clearly relish\u2014is itself what makes the ads racist: You think so little of us that you don’t feel bound to tell a better, smarter joke.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Is this series of billboards, above, coupled to a complementary set of commercials by the same company, below, racist? You need to a flashplayer enabled browser to view this YouTube video<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[22,15,8,20,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4386"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8046,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4386\/revisions\/8046"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/harryallen.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}