240MC Week 6 Cultural and Semiotic Analysis of Advertising Race and Disability John Keenan

1. 240MC Week 6 Cultural and Semiotic Analysis of Advertising Race and Disability John Keenan john.keenan@coventry.ac.uk

2. Labelling • Ethnicity Commodified • Symbolic Anhilation • Stereotypes • 3 Reasons for portrayal of race/disabled

3. Kate Moss

4. Labelling We are all ethnic We are all disabled

5. Labelling What lies behind the way we structure the world is, ‘not directly available to the senses … non observable … unconscious’ Strinati D 1995 An introduction to theories of popular culture London: Routledge p96

6. Labelling

7. Labelling

8. Essentialist: Is it natural, anatomical, chromosomal or hormonal? Judith Butler

9. Non-essentialist: identities...are constantly in the process of change and transformation Stuart Hall

10. Labelling Who is ‘black’?

11. Labelling 100% English?

12. Labelling EVIL DEATH Black BAD TROUBLE

13. Labelling I waz whitemailedBy a white witch,Wid white magicAn white lies,Branded a white sheepI slaved as a whitesmithNear a white spotWhere I suffered whitewater fever.Whitelisted as a whitelegI waz in de white bookAs a master of white art,It waz like white death. People called me white jackSome hailed me as a white wog,So I joined de white watchTrained as a white guardLived off the white economy.Caught and beaten by de whiteshirts I waz condemned to a white mass,Don’t worry,I shall be writing to de Black House. — Benjamin Zephaniah (1958 - )

14. Labelling Such a white soul, they say That noble preacher had. His skin so black, they say, His skin so black in colour Was on the inside snow A white lily, Fresh milk Cotton. Still it might be said another way: What a powerful black soul That gentlest of pastors had. What proud black passion Burned in his heart. What pure black thoughts Were nourished in his fertile brain What black love. So colourlessly Given. After Martin Luther King’s Assassination His skin was black But with the purest soul, White as snow Yevtushenko

15. Labelling Labelling Who is disabled?

16. Labelling Solutions: ‘differently abled’; caucasion not ‘white’ People are not disabled, society disables. However, we need labels for identity we need labels to redress the balance ‘Logic dictates that if disabled people are perceived as ‘normal’, then there is little need for the introduction of policies to facilitate their integration into ‘normal’ society’ Colin Barnes, Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination, 1991, London: Hurst and Co, p.203 ‘Being black in Britain is about…a process of consciousness, when colour becomes the defining factor about who you are…to be black in Britain is to share a common structural location; a racial location’ H Mirza, 1997, Black British Feminism, cited in Chris Weedon, Identity and Culture, 2004, Maidenhead: Open University Press, p.74 ‘the emphasis on ‘ability not disability’…is a denial of the status of the disabled person…’ Colin Barnes, Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination, 1991, London: Hurst and Co, p.203

17. Labelling Foucault Althusser ethnicity Discourses Play

18. Ethnicity Commodified

19. Ethnicity Commodified ‘When race and ethnicity become commodified as resources for pleasure, the culture of specific groups, as well as the bodies of individuals, can be seen as constituting an alternative playground where members of dominating races, genders, sexual practices …affirm their power over .. the Other’ Bell Hooks, p.23

20. Ethnicity Commodified ‘recurrent patterns establish and continually reinforce ideas about social relationships and intercultural exchanges...At the core of this discourse are lessons about dominance and hierarchy, subordination and inequality. In their own time and place, these messages about otherness embedded within contemporary advertising are no less important as a form of public instruction than were the biblical teachings .. in other ages’ O’Barr p.75

21. Ethnicity Commodified ‘Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture’ Bell Hooks (1992) p.21 ‘It is within the commercial realm of advertising that … Otherness finds expression’ Bell Hooks p.26

22. Ethnicity Commodified

23. Ethnicity Commodified

24. Ethnicity Commodified

25. Ethnicity Commodified

26. Symbolic Annihilation Gaye Tuchman ‘There are two ways in which the advertising industry contributes to the discriminatory process. First, disabled people are excluded…Secondly, some advertisers, notably charities, present a distorted view of disability’ Colin Barnes, Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination, 1991, London: Hurst and Co, p.201

27. Symbolic Annihilation Cultivation Agenda Setting

28. Symbolic Annihilation

29. Symbolic Anhilation Symbolic Annihilation (in the USA) ‘Magazine advertisements from the 1920s to the 1960s hardly disclose any glimpse of a model whose skin color differs from the hue of the white majority’ Leonard J Davis, 1997, The Disabilities Reader, New York: Routledge, p.180 ‘Visibly disabled persons did not appear in advertisements until a few television commercials containing a brief glimpse of individuals using wheelchairs were released in the 1980s’ Leonard J Davis, 1997, The Disabilities Reader, New York: Routledge, p.181

30. Symbolic Anhilation Symbolic Annihilation ‘The complaint in British advertising has been that we’re just not there. That sends out the message we’re not part of society’ Laurence Clark cited in The Invisible Force, The Guardian 27/11/02 Maria Eagle

31. Stereotypes Year 2000 USA 30% of adverts contained black people Matthew P McAllister, Television Advertising and Textual and Economic Systems, Chapter 11 of A Companion to Television, Janet Wasko (Ed) Oxford: Blackwell, 2005, p.23 3 Black Stereotypes 1. Musician 2. Athlete 3. Low-paid worker But, ‘we have moved beyond the point where we can say that a single set of media images represents African Americans - or any other racial group’ David Croteau and William Hayned Media Society (3rd Ed), 2003, London: Pine Forge Press, p.10

32. Stereotypes ‘Charity advertising fails. It does not directly generate enough money. It confuses ‘disability’ (which is the product of social discrimination) with impairment (which is the product of a medical condition). But mostly it fails because it is the visual flagship for the myth of the tragedy of impairment. It is the higher ground to which all non-disabled society looks to unburden its guilt and its able-bodied anxiety’ Disabled Lives - Fear for Sale, David Hevey http://newint.org/issue233/fear.htm

33. Stereotypes 10 Disabled Stereotypes in the Media 1. Pitiable and pathetic 2. Object of curiosity and violence 3. Sinister 4. Super-cripple 5. Atmosphere 6. Laughable 7. Her/his own worst enemy 8. A burden 9. Non-sexual 10. Unable to participate in daily life Contact No.70 Winter pp45-8 1991 Discrimination: Disabled People and the Media

34. Stereotypes ‘the disabled person as pitiable and pathetic is probably the stereotype most commonly used by charities’ Colin Barnes, Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination, 1991, London: Hurst and Co, p.202

35. Stereotypes Bad

36. Stereotypes Better

37. Stereotypes Bad

38. Stereotypes Better

39. Stereotypes Missing Best

40. Reason 1: Deliberate Exclusion Coca-Cola ‘L’Oreal…sought to exclude non-white women from promoting its shampoo’ The Guardian 7/7/07 http://www.guardian.co.uk/france/story/0,,2120789,00.html

41. Reason 1: Deliberate Exclusion Whereas the subjugation of women and immigrants appeared to be directly related to the impetus for mass consumption in a capitalist society , the social and economic subordination of black Americans …(and) disabled persons…was accomplished through subtle and indirect means’ Leonard J Davis, 1997, The Disabilities Reader, New York: Routledge, p.182

42. Reason 2: Economic Low income among non-whites However… 8.6 million disabled people in UK £45,000,000,000 spending power http://www.poverty.org.uk/03b/index.shtml Low income among disabled people http://www.poverty.org.uk/28/index.shtml

43. Reason 3: Meaning ‘using disabled people is seen as making a statement’ The Future’s Ad Fab, Nuala Calvi http://www.disabilitynow.org.uk/search/z04_01_Ja/future.html

44. However... Companies who have used disabled people in adverts: B&Q Nike Adidas Sony BT Coca-Cola Target Co-op The brand as a good person: ‘customers respond more positively to adverts if disabled people are featured’ Campaign to get Disabled in Adverts BBC News 24/5/99 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/351353.htm

45. However... ‘positive images’ of disabled people fail to reflect the racial, sexual and cultural divisions within the disabled community as a whole’ Colin Barnes, Disabled People in Britain and Discrimination, 1991, London: Hurst and Co, p.203

46. However... Less pressure: ‘White consumers…have had to bear the burden on seemingly impossible standards of physical appearance’ Leonard J Davis, 1997, The Disabilities Reader, New York: Routledge, p.182

47. However... Today (in USA): ‘middle-class blacks have become mainstream in prime-time entertainment programs. Epitomized by The Cosby Show of the 1980s, these programs portray African-American families who have succeeded in attaining a piece of the traditional ‘American Dream’. On the other hand, news coverage and documentaries about blacks tend to focus on poor African Americans…mired in drugs, crime and violence. One implicit message in these contrasting images may be that, since some blacks have clearly succeeded, the failure of other blacks is their own fault’ David Croteau and William Hayned Media Society (3rd Ed), 2003, London: Pine Forge Press, p.10