I was one of the liberal snowflakes who cheered when Roseanne got her cushy ABC sitcom snatched away for using old-school ethnic slurs for the millionth time. I woke up today to a Twitter firestorm over Samantha Bee (of Full Frontal with fame) referring to Ivanka Trump as a "feckless [redacted]" in a recent episode. The redacted word was the c-word, in case you don't know.
Naturally, conservatives are calling for her termination and the cancellation of her show, because, in their eyes, to let the comment slide would be a double standard. Here are my thoughts, from a 20-year-old idiot whom you did not ask!
First of all, we can't really call it a double standard even nominally. Bee and Barr are coming from two different networks, TBS and ABC, respectively. ABC is one of the biggest broadcasting corporations in the world. TBS, while obviously extremely powerful, doesn't have the same clout. More to the point, ABC's programming is usually marketed more towards families and universal audiences, while TBS's content--at least its original programming--is usually adult-oriented, and rarely has the sanitized, people-pleasing vibe as ABC. To that end, the Roseanne reboot was a sitcom, and Full Frontal is a comedy news show in the style of The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight, both of which have long been known for coarse language and political controversy--frankly, it's part of their branding. But perhaps the most important point to be made in the discussion about technicalities is that Bee used that phrase during her show, as part of a scripted comedy act in an exaggerated persona, while Barr's horrific commentary was presented on her own time, on her own Twitter account, where she is, ostensibly, her real self.
Now that those topics are out of the way, let's address the severity of the comments themselves. Barr's slurs were issued in a conspiracy theory Twitter thread with some of her equivalently unhinged followers. From what I can gather, the thread was more about far-right political lunacy than outright racism, but Barr decided to kick it up a notch and make what she called a "joke" in "bad taste," describing Valerie Jarrett, a former Obama aide, as an ape. There are loads of articles on the history of these racist comparisons--white people calling black people apes is nothing new--but suffice it to say, this comment was more than just a dogwhistle. It was practically a mission statement. Channing Dungey, the current and first black American president of ABC, did not stand for it. There's a lot to unpack about why Dungey would even allow Roseanne a platform in the first place (most likely that her bigotry could be tolerated until it interfered with the bottom line), but that's not what I'm here to talk about.
Bee's comments were, as I mentioned earlier, a part of a tirade against Ivanka Trump for not doing more to affect her father's policymaking. She was specifically critical of the younger Trump's hypocrisy; on the campaign trail, she frequently spoke of her intention to support mothers and children, and to give the older Trump her opinion when she felt it was necessary to his political actions. In light of the horrors perpetrated by ICE against immigrant families, Ivanka's true alignment is rendered in perfect clarity: it's her family she wants to protect, and families like hers. Not poor ones, and not brown ones. This isn't new information, but after she posted this absolutely "tone deaf' tweet, it reminded all of us how much she could be doing, and how much she's letting everyone down. Bee criticized her for posting the photo ("that's a beautiful photo of you and your child, but let me just say, from one mother to another, do something about your dad's immigration practices, you feckless c***!") and made jokes about the President's unhealthy, seemingly sexual obsession with his own daughter ("put on something tight and low-cut and tell your father to f***ing stop it").
Looking at the controversial quotes in context, it's easy for me to make my mind. The two are not equivalent. We're kidding ourselves if we think they are. Bee and Barr are both comedians, but "comedy" is not a catch-all excuse for every time a professional stand-up gets themselves into hot water. Barr's comments were made on her own time, lack critical thinking and nuance, rely on old-hat racism, and are coming from a place of ignorance and hatred. Bee's comments, on the other hand, were made for a network, for a specific purpose, and contain the one-two punch of shock value and intelligent critique (note the use of the word "feckless"--had she merely called Trump a c*** the joke would have considerably less merit) that turn a simple schoolyard taunt into a solid political burn.
Bee using the c-word on her television show was definitely a risk. The risk is reminiscent of when black people use the n-word. In trying to reclaim it, in leveling against one another in endearment or in insult, marginalized communities are gambling on their own degradation, i.e. the possibility of another community co-opting the word and using it for its original intention. All of this is to say: there are definitely male comedians (and men in other professions) who will probably point to Bee and say that if she can use it, anyone can. And they'd be wrong, but they'd probably still make the point.
I stand with Samantha Bee, and I stand with TBS, and I stand with ABC for firing Roseanne and canceling her pandering, pathetic reboot. Here's hoping she's not any ballots any time soon.
Thursday, May 31, 2018
Sunday, April 22, 2018
Third Time's The Charm
Hello again, it's been a while.
So my junior year at USC is wrapping up, which means it's high time I tell you what I've learned. This has been a peculiar year for me, a year of things slowing down, a year of watching things happen to and for other people, a transition in which it felt like everything took place only in hindsight. People told me how hard sophomore year would be, so I severely underestimated junior year's difficulty. I put in more effort than I probably needed to in some of my classes. I put a lot of pressure on myself to attain a perfect GPA, for no reason other than personal pride. I set expectations for other people that they could never meet.
But I also pushed myself, socially and academically and professionally. I learned things about myself. I made new routines and laid groundwork for my future. I did heavy lifting now so next year and the years afterward will hopefully be a little less stressful. I made some great new friends, a feat I thought was impossible this late in the college game. And as always, I learned a few tips and tricks that I hope will help you out--rising juniors, college hopefuls, adults who are overcome with nostalgia just reading this, and everyone in between.
1. I'd like to see the good in everyone, and for the most part, I've gotten better at doing that. But some people are toxic, or predatory, or abusive, and they don't need me defending them. Sometimes you have to listen to your gut, to the red flags being posted at every mile marker, to the stories about what that allegedly good person has done to hurt other people. Just because someone is good to you, that doesn't make them a good person.
2. If being somewhere makes you uncomfortable, you are allowed to leave. Does the party give you bad vibes? Time to call that USC-sponsored free Lyft. Is someone in your session making comments that make you feel unsafe? Maybe don't write with them again, or at least don't go alone. Is a first date going south fast? Make up an excuse and hightail it to your best friend's place. Don't worry about being polite. Don't worry about being nice. Get the hell out.
3. Clean your room. When I get stressed by schoolwork or sessions or any of my other obligations, I tend to let my apartment turn to chaos. After I do my laundry, clean my shower, wash my dishes, put my clothes back in the closet and my books back on the shelf--you get the picture--I feel a lot more calm, and like I can tackle whatever tasks I have ahead of me. Now, if you've got two papers and three charts due tomorrow, maybe skip the cleaning for today and get your work done. But if you're mostly done with your schoolwork and you have a couple hours to spare, clean your room. If you live in a shared space, clean the common areas, too. Your roommates will thank you.
4. Throw your own parties. I don't know about my peers the same age or older, but junior year is the year I started feeling like an old lady at parties. I can't hang out in a sweaty, loud house with a few dozen (or couple hundred) freshman and sophomores and expect to have a good time. Most of my friends feel the same way. Our solution? Apartment parties. Keep the attendance to close friends only. Eat snacks. Play music you know you like at an appropriate volume. Or if you feel like going out, hit a restaurant in downtown. Eat outside so you can laugh as loud as you want. I felt so much pressure to go out my first two years of college, pressure that I mostly put on myself because I didn't want to "miss anything." You've done enough. You aren't missing anything.
5. You can change your mind. After two years in college, you may think you know who you are and what you want. Or you may have no idea. Both are okay, and both are temporary. We still have so much time to become who we choose to be.
6. Stand up for yourself. It's hard. I know it is. You don't want confrontation. You don't want to be marked as "difficult," especially if you're in a small community like Thornton. And you never know if you're picking your battles right. But kid, you never know if you're right until it's over. I've said it before in this post, but listen to your gut. Speak out about what you think is right, whether it means sticking up for your friend or getting political or just getting a little bit loud if no one is listening. You're a grown-up now, even if you don't always feel it.
7. Enjoy the last year you get turned away from bars. I'm one of the youngest of my friends, and almost everyone has already turned 21, at least among the people in my class or older. It upsets me sometimes to watch them go out without me, even though I don't care about drinking or dark rooms or loud music. I mainly just feel bad about not being able to go to people's gigs. And there's also the philosophical underpinning of feeling "left behind," however irrelevant or false. But here's the truth: sometimes I get nostalgic for high school. Yeah, that's right, the years I felt miserable and outcast and stressed out and misunderstood. Because in my memory, it's blurry and watery like a photo on a disposable camera, warm and soft and not as bad as it seemed. Even though I was powerless, even though I was lost. Eventually, being 20 will be a distant memory, and the feeling of being turned away from bars and clubs will just be something I laugh about. Something I miss. If you're 20, or 19, or any age that's too young to drink in the U.S., just enjoy it. Blow bubbles and go to the park and eat cookies and go to sleep early. You can still do all that stuff for the rest of your life, but you get the picture. Be a kid. Soak it up. It doesn't last.
8. Make time to read. I was a voracious reader as a child. I've fallen in and out of rhythms with reading over the years, not because I didn't feel like it, but because I didn't think I had time. This year, I've been setting aside a lot more time to read books. Reading makes you wiser, calmer, more observant, more empathetic. And if you're a writer of anything--songs, poetry, prose, screenplays, anything--reading will make you better at it. Some of my favorites: The Idiot by Elif Batuman, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
9. Text your friends out of the blue to tell them you love them. Sometimes I just text my good friends or my family telling them everything I love about them. It might be motivated because I know they're going through a hard time, or it might just be that I haven't seen them in a while and I feel the need to remind them that I'm here, that I always will be. It always brightens their day, and it always brightens mine. Tell the people in your life that they matter to you, and not just on birthdays or holidays or anniversaries. Let them know on a random Tuesday in March that you heard a song or saw a dog and it made you think of them.
10. Pretty isn't everything. Like many people, I can get fixated on my physical appearance. I become consumed with Pretty, an elusive force or beam of light, if only I could harness it, if only I could channel it, if only I could become it, then all my problems would be solved. I wouldn't be sad because pretty people aren't sad. I wouldn't be stressed because pretty people don't have to be stressed. I would get where I need to be in my career because pretty people get ahead. Right? Right? Wrong. It turns out that beautiful people also have depression and anxiety and self-doubt. It turns out that you are probably more beautiful than you think. Stop chasing pretty (and this is not targeted at a specific gender, either, this goes for everyone). Chase ambition and hard work. Chase honing your craft, chase being kind, chase being strong and badass. I swear to God if you do you'll start glowing. You'll be that beam of light. You will become that force.
11. You have time. The toxic combination of a rise in youth culture and the ubiquity of the Internet can make millennials and Gen Z feel like you have to be rich and hot and famous and brilliant and an activist by the time you're 18 or you're a failure. Like being in your 20s and still working on yourself means you're all washed up. It's not true. I promise. I'm 20 and I forget it sometimes myself, but I know in my heart that it's a lie. Across every single field, with the exception of maybe professional athletes and Olympians (and even then there are people who break the mold), you're not supposed to be at the top of your game until at least your mid-30s, and probably even later than that. Doctors have years of med school and residencies, lawyers need several years as associates before they make partner, professors don't get tenure until lots of publishing, most chefs work for years as line cooks before they open their own restaurants--you get the picture. If you're 20 or 25 or even 30 and you're still not where you want to be, relax. You still have time. Life's not even half over. You'll get there.
12. You are not alone. If you're young like me, I'm sure you experience days where you feel like you're the first person in the world to go through your particular brand of trauma. That everything you are feeling is happening for the first time in the hurricane laboratory of your heart. But it's happened before. I'm not saying you're not special (although special is overrated). I'm just saying that someone else has been through it. Someone else is probably going through it now. If you were looking for a reason to go on living or some sign from the universe that tells you it's gonna be all right, this is your sign.
So that's all I've got for you this time. In a year, I'll be preparing to graduate, and hopefully I'll have learned a few more things about myself in the world. Until next time, friends. To the graduating seniors: bon voyage. To the classes coming up behind me: buckle up. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.
So my junior year at USC is wrapping up, which means it's high time I tell you what I've learned. This has been a peculiar year for me, a year of things slowing down, a year of watching things happen to and for other people, a transition in which it felt like everything took place only in hindsight. People told me how hard sophomore year would be, so I severely underestimated junior year's difficulty. I put in more effort than I probably needed to in some of my classes. I put a lot of pressure on myself to attain a perfect GPA, for no reason other than personal pride. I set expectations for other people that they could never meet.
But I also pushed myself, socially and academically and professionally. I learned things about myself. I made new routines and laid groundwork for my future. I did heavy lifting now so next year and the years afterward will hopefully be a little less stressful. I made some great new friends, a feat I thought was impossible this late in the college game. And as always, I learned a few tips and tricks that I hope will help you out--rising juniors, college hopefuls, adults who are overcome with nostalgia just reading this, and everyone in between.
1. I'd like to see the good in everyone, and for the most part, I've gotten better at doing that. But some people are toxic, or predatory, or abusive, and they don't need me defending them. Sometimes you have to listen to your gut, to the red flags being posted at every mile marker, to the stories about what that allegedly good person has done to hurt other people. Just because someone is good to you, that doesn't make them a good person.
2. If being somewhere makes you uncomfortable, you are allowed to leave. Does the party give you bad vibes? Time to call that USC-sponsored free Lyft. Is someone in your session making comments that make you feel unsafe? Maybe don't write with them again, or at least don't go alone. Is a first date going south fast? Make up an excuse and hightail it to your best friend's place. Don't worry about being polite. Don't worry about being nice. Get the hell out.
3. Clean your room. When I get stressed by schoolwork or sessions or any of my other obligations, I tend to let my apartment turn to chaos. After I do my laundry, clean my shower, wash my dishes, put my clothes back in the closet and my books back on the shelf--you get the picture--I feel a lot more calm, and like I can tackle whatever tasks I have ahead of me. Now, if you've got two papers and three charts due tomorrow, maybe skip the cleaning for today and get your work done. But if you're mostly done with your schoolwork and you have a couple hours to spare, clean your room. If you live in a shared space, clean the common areas, too. Your roommates will thank you.
4. Throw your own parties. I don't know about my peers the same age or older, but junior year is the year I started feeling like an old lady at parties. I can't hang out in a sweaty, loud house with a few dozen (or couple hundred) freshman and sophomores and expect to have a good time. Most of my friends feel the same way. Our solution? Apartment parties. Keep the attendance to close friends only. Eat snacks. Play music you know you like at an appropriate volume. Or if you feel like going out, hit a restaurant in downtown. Eat outside so you can laugh as loud as you want. I felt so much pressure to go out my first two years of college, pressure that I mostly put on myself because I didn't want to "miss anything." You've done enough. You aren't missing anything.
5. You can change your mind. After two years in college, you may think you know who you are and what you want. Or you may have no idea. Both are okay, and both are temporary. We still have so much time to become who we choose to be.
6. Stand up for yourself. It's hard. I know it is. You don't want confrontation. You don't want to be marked as "difficult," especially if you're in a small community like Thornton. And you never know if you're picking your battles right. But kid, you never know if you're right until it's over. I've said it before in this post, but listen to your gut. Speak out about what you think is right, whether it means sticking up for your friend or getting political or just getting a little bit loud if no one is listening. You're a grown-up now, even if you don't always feel it.
7. Enjoy the last year you get turned away from bars. I'm one of the youngest of my friends, and almost everyone has already turned 21, at least among the people in my class or older. It upsets me sometimes to watch them go out without me, even though I don't care about drinking or dark rooms or loud music. I mainly just feel bad about not being able to go to people's gigs. And there's also the philosophical underpinning of feeling "left behind," however irrelevant or false. But here's the truth: sometimes I get nostalgic for high school. Yeah, that's right, the years I felt miserable and outcast and stressed out and misunderstood. Because in my memory, it's blurry and watery like a photo on a disposable camera, warm and soft and not as bad as it seemed. Even though I was powerless, even though I was lost. Eventually, being 20 will be a distant memory, and the feeling of being turned away from bars and clubs will just be something I laugh about. Something I miss. If you're 20, or 19, or any age that's too young to drink in the U.S., just enjoy it. Blow bubbles and go to the park and eat cookies and go to sleep early. You can still do all that stuff for the rest of your life, but you get the picture. Be a kid. Soak it up. It doesn't last.
8. Make time to read. I was a voracious reader as a child. I've fallen in and out of rhythms with reading over the years, not because I didn't feel like it, but because I didn't think I had time. This year, I've been setting aside a lot more time to read books. Reading makes you wiser, calmer, more observant, more empathetic. And if you're a writer of anything--songs, poetry, prose, screenplays, anything--reading will make you better at it. Some of my favorites: The Idiot by Elif Batuman, The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz, Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.
9. Text your friends out of the blue to tell them you love them. Sometimes I just text my good friends or my family telling them everything I love about them. It might be motivated because I know they're going through a hard time, or it might just be that I haven't seen them in a while and I feel the need to remind them that I'm here, that I always will be. It always brightens their day, and it always brightens mine. Tell the people in your life that they matter to you, and not just on birthdays or holidays or anniversaries. Let them know on a random Tuesday in March that you heard a song or saw a dog and it made you think of them.
10. Pretty isn't everything. Like many people, I can get fixated on my physical appearance. I become consumed with Pretty, an elusive force or beam of light, if only I could harness it, if only I could channel it, if only I could become it, then all my problems would be solved. I wouldn't be sad because pretty people aren't sad. I wouldn't be stressed because pretty people don't have to be stressed. I would get where I need to be in my career because pretty people get ahead. Right? Right? Wrong. It turns out that beautiful people also have depression and anxiety and self-doubt. It turns out that you are probably more beautiful than you think. Stop chasing pretty (and this is not targeted at a specific gender, either, this goes for everyone). Chase ambition and hard work. Chase honing your craft, chase being kind, chase being strong and badass. I swear to God if you do you'll start glowing. You'll be that beam of light. You will become that force.
11. You have time. The toxic combination of a rise in youth culture and the ubiquity of the Internet can make millennials and Gen Z feel like you have to be rich and hot and famous and brilliant and an activist by the time you're 18 or you're a failure. Like being in your 20s and still working on yourself means you're all washed up. It's not true. I promise. I'm 20 and I forget it sometimes myself, but I know in my heart that it's a lie. Across every single field, with the exception of maybe professional athletes and Olympians (and even then there are people who break the mold), you're not supposed to be at the top of your game until at least your mid-30s, and probably even later than that. Doctors have years of med school and residencies, lawyers need several years as associates before they make partner, professors don't get tenure until lots of publishing, most chefs work for years as line cooks before they open their own restaurants--you get the picture. If you're 20 or 25 or even 30 and you're still not where you want to be, relax. You still have time. Life's not even half over. You'll get there.
12. You are not alone. If you're young like me, I'm sure you experience days where you feel like you're the first person in the world to go through your particular brand of trauma. That everything you are feeling is happening for the first time in the hurricane laboratory of your heart. But it's happened before. I'm not saying you're not special (although special is overrated). I'm just saying that someone else has been through it. Someone else is probably going through it now. If you were looking for a reason to go on living or some sign from the universe that tells you it's gonna be all right, this is your sign.
So that's all I've got for you this time. In a year, I'll be preparing to graduate, and hopefully I'll have learned a few more things about myself in the world. Until next time, friends. To the graduating seniors: bon voyage. To the classes coming up behind me: buckle up. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.
Wednesday, January 31, 2018
This Is Exactly What It Looks Like
Perhaps the most recent advertising controversy was low-budget fashion giant H&M releasing an image of young black boy modeling a sweatshirt bearing the slogan "Coolest Monkey in the Jungle." The Internet, as it often is, was outraged. Celebrities chimed in, breaking contracts with the company (Diddy purportedly offered the boy a contract with his own line). But of course, the hot-button topic quickly unraveled, seeing backlash from those who didn't see the problem and from those who did. Rachel Dolezal, most famous for wearing blackface and presenting herself as a black woman when, in fact, she's white, released a hoodie that reads "Coolest Prince in the Hood," positioning it as the "woke" alternative to the offensive article in question. Of course, the Venn diagram of "people offended by the H&M hoodie" and "people who are offended by Rachel Dolezal" is approximately a single circle, so a negative response ensued. Then, to top it all off, the young model's mother stated that she is fine with the hoodie, and thinks the surrounding controversy has been blown way out of proportion.
Because the social media news cycle functions at such a breakneck pace, this has already been more or less forgotten. But it will be replaced by another problematic advertising campaign (the Dove campaign in which certain shots make it look like their soap is designed to turn you from a black woman to a white one? The Pop chips campaign where Ashton Kutcher dons brown face?) and we'll have the same debates. It boils down to this: the side in defense of the contentious images will claim that "it's not what it looks like."
And I'm here to say, once and for all: visual content is what it looks like. Literally.
Advertising, television, and film are all visual mediums. They have internal context--the narrative of the images and sounds they're presenting--and external context--the sociopolitical narrative of the environment in which they air. Similarly to how words and symbols (the n-word, the Confederate flag, the swastika) can't exist in a vacuum, divorced of their perverse and traumatic meanings, so too must ads, TV shows, and movies function with the weight of their ideological predecessors. In essence: everything is happening all at once. We'd like to think that what we say and do is only happening in the year we're in (2018, in this case, which still sounds like a fake year from The Future), but in fact it's also happening in 1918, and 1818, and all the years that came before this one. Human beings assign meaning to things, and just because we assign new meanings doesn't mean the old ones immediately go away. I think a lot of the people on the side of "it's not what it looks like" think that slavery and the Holocaust and the suffrage movement and Stonewall all happened, like, a thousand years ago. In reality, it's only been the last 150 years that all of those things ended. In the history of humankind, that barely registers as a blink of an eye.
Speaking of eyes (ugh), as I was saying before, this controversial content is defined by how it looks. While "Coolest Monkey In The Jungle" is a fun, whimsical hoodie design on its own, you can't have a young black boy model it in a year where hate crimes are on the rise for the second year in a row. Ashton Kutcher darkening up his complexion and attempting a deeply offensive accent to play a Bollywood director (also--to sell chips? Who the %^@# came up with that one?) may not have been intended to hurt people, but it came in an era where brown people were (and are) still not represented, underrepresented, and misrepresented in the media. That Dove ad, when put into its larger context, clearly didn't have racist intentions. But if you can pull a couple of sequential screenshots from an ad campaign and make it look like a #woke soap company is trying to sell black people skin whitener, then you need to fire your marketing guy.
Just as there are SO many non-racist Halloween costumes for you to choose from, there are SO many non-racist ad campaigns you could come up with. When ESPN anchors debated whether their network's real-life fantasy draft mimicked a slave auction (black athletes standing on a stage and being more or less auctioned off to a mostly white audience), the conservative commentator offered the same plea that every other conservative offers in these arguments: "It's not what it looks like."
But that's the thing about a picture. It's got a lot of jobs. But its first job is to be is what it looks like.
Because the social media news cycle functions at such a breakneck pace, this has already been more or less forgotten. But it will be replaced by another problematic advertising campaign (the Dove campaign in which certain shots make it look like their soap is designed to turn you from a black woman to a white one? The Pop chips campaign where Ashton Kutcher dons brown face?) and we'll have the same debates. It boils down to this: the side in defense of the contentious images will claim that "it's not what it looks like."
And I'm here to say, once and for all: visual content is what it looks like. Literally.
Advertising, television, and film are all visual mediums. They have internal context--the narrative of the images and sounds they're presenting--and external context--the sociopolitical narrative of the environment in which they air. Similarly to how words and symbols (the n-word, the Confederate flag, the swastika) can't exist in a vacuum, divorced of their perverse and traumatic meanings, so too must ads, TV shows, and movies function with the weight of their ideological predecessors. In essence: everything is happening all at once. We'd like to think that what we say and do is only happening in the year we're in (2018, in this case, which still sounds like a fake year from The Future), but in fact it's also happening in 1918, and 1818, and all the years that came before this one. Human beings assign meaning to things, and just because we assign new meanings doesn't mean the old ones immediately go away. I think a lot of the people on the side of "it's not what it looks like" think that slavery and the Holocaust and the suffrage movement and Stonewall all happened, like, a thousand years ago. In reality, it's only been the last 150 years that all of those things ended. In the history of humankind, that barely registers as a blink of an eye.
Speaking of eyes (ugh), as I was saying before, this controversial content is defined by how it looks. While "Coolest Monkey In The Jungle" is a fun, whimsical hoodie design on its own, you can't have a young black boy model it in a year where hate crimes are on the rise for the second year in a row. Ashton Kutcher darkening up his complexion and attempting a deeply offensive accent to play a Bollywood director (also--to sell chips? Who the %^@# came up with that one?) may not have been intended to hurt people, but it came in an era where brown people were (and are) still not represented, underrepresented, and misrepresented in the media. That Dove ad, when put into its larger context, clearly didn't have racist intentions. But if you can pull a couple of sequential screenshots from an ad campaign and make it look like a #woke soap company is trying to sell black people skin whitener, then you need to fire your marketing guy.
Just as there are SO many non-racist Halloween costumes for you to choose from, there are SO many non-racist ad campaigns you could come up with. When ESPN anchors debated whether their network's real-life fantasy draft mimicked a slave auction (black athletes standing on a stage and being more or less auctioned off to a mostly white audience), the conservative commentator offered the same plea that every other conservative offers in these arguments: "It's not what it looks like."
But that's the thing about a picture. It's got a lot of jobs. But its first job is to be is what it looks like.
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