I can’t actually figure out if using racial (or musical genre?) harmony and Sly and The Family Stone to sell Smarties is completely adorable or totally horrifying. Thoughts?
I can’t actually figure out if using racial (or musical genre?) harmony and Sly and The Family Stone to sell Smarties is completely adorable or totally horrifying. Thoughts?
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13 comments
Totally horrifying.
Sly and the Family Stone were one of the most monumentally important bands of the past half century (and I'm not just saying this because they're my favourite band of all time). With seven members - five black, two white, two female, five male - they broke down sexual and racial barriers like no band ever before them (case in point: the drummer was white, fer crissakes).
Two reasons why this ad made me nauseous:
1. There is ONE black person in this ad. Out of TWELVE singers. Ahem. I think the last girl in the shot might be South Asian, and the pianist might have been Asian, but the dearth of African-American musicians is deeply disturbing given the origins of this song.
2. The song has had all the oomph, energy and spirit sucked right out of it. What was once fiery and funky is now bland and suburban. It's as though some rich corporate white guy chewed it up and spat it out.
Shameless readers: If you are unfamiliar with the glory that was Sly and the Family Stone, check out their performance at Woodstock.
BEHOLD!
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ig-6f0...
Now THAT is how its done.
Posted by Zoe
February 26, 2008, 4:10 PM
Thanks for the run-down Zoe!
Commercial definitely not adorable. Not necessarily horrifying though, just kinda silly. It's pretty irritating when massive multinational corporations try to pretend they're into social justice. Also, last I checked there were no blue, pink, green or orange people. Thus, a parallel between smarties and race? I don't think so.
It reminds me of how, in response to claims of racism, people sometimes say "I'm not racist, I don't care if people are black, white, or purple!" Which just kinda diminishes the whole thing, because nobody's purple.
Or in the words of K Chronicles:
http://www.salon.com/comics/knig/2007...
See
Posted by Thea
February 26, 2008, 4:28 PM
To be fair, Sly and The Family Stone were the ones came up with that "colourful" notion:
"I am everyday people, yeah yeah
There is a blue one who can't accept the green one
For living with a fat one trying to be a skinny one
And different strokes for different folks "
Smarties just "borrowed" (or appropriated) it. So do you think Sly and The Family Stone is being dismissive of race because nobody is green or blue?
Posted by Stacey May
February 26, 2008, 5:24 PM
I think it depends on the context. It was a pretty different context in the 70's (was it the 70's when Sly and the Family Stone wrote this? I'm sure Zoe could tell us...), it's also a pretty different context when it's articulated by a group that consists of people of colour. When it's in a commercial by a giant corporation, in our particular context of race and racism - or when it's iterated by someone in response to a serious claim of systemic racism - I find it dismissive.
Posted by Thea
February 27, 2008, 10:25 AM
I like the commercial. Its fun to see all the different music styles paired up. As for the skin color issue... well people are going to see what they want to see. You can make anything racial if you put your mind to it. If they had had a black guy beatboxing in the commercial instead of the white guy, people would have complained that it was stereotyping. You can't win. I for one will just continue to enjoy the commercial when I see it as light, fluffy and harmless.
Posted by Mike
February 27, 2008, 1:40 PM
I'm just a little unclear Mike. Exactly WHO is it that CAN'T WIN? You? And what exactly are you unable to win against? And I'm certainly glad that you, for one, will be able to continue to enjoy the Smarties commercial.
Posted by Jaye
February 28, 2008, 3:58 AM
I vote for semi-adorable. I love this song. I love Sly. So I'm happy to hear it in pretty much any context. That said, it's a sloppy handling of the original tune. But every time a company repurposes a song for advertising it's horrific. At least they didn't mess with the lyrics all that much... until the end. They totally re-engineer the song for the product shot.
As for the racial mix of the spot, I'll just say that 90% of the time you see diversity in an ad, it is a measure thing. That's to say the company or its ad agency has measured how many different races/genders/groups are needed to APPEAR diverse. Diversity is not genuine in ads. It's is used as a selling tactic; diversity appeals to certain consumer groups more than others.
For that reason, I mostly ignore this element of advertising.
Posted by Jeromy
February 28, 2008, 12:14 PM
Let me try to clear it up for you Jaye. Racism and discrimination are so rampant in this world that people don't need to scrutinize harmless commercials to find it. Exactly WHO can't win you ask Jaye? Society Jaye. Society can't win. If someone is bent on finding racism or discrimination in advertising or the media in general, they are going to see it whether it is really there or not. To paraphrase Freud, "sometimes a commercial is just a commercial".
Posted by Mike
February 28, 2008, 3:15 PM
Racism and discrimination are so rampant in this world…but…If someone is bent on finding racism or discrimination in advertising or the media in general, they are going to see it whether it is really there or not
Racism and discrimination are so rampant in this world…but…sometimes a commercial is just a commercial
Racism and discrimination are so rampant in this world…but…they are harmless commercials
Racism and discrimination are so rampant in this world(ie. society)…but…Society can't win
Posted by Jaye
March 2, 2008, 10:15 PM
Thanks for sharing this. This is yet another shameless exploitation of a music legend. Right before this I heard "Dance to the Music" in the commercial for the new Will Ferrell comedy "Semi-Pro." Unfortunately this is not this first time this has been done with Sly's music. I talk about this and who makes money off this kind of stuff in my book about Sly. I hope you'll check it out.
Posted by Sly StoneBio
March 5, 2008, 10:03 PM
Jaye, just because you have made it so that you're unable to enjoy harmless things, because you're forcing yourself to see pointless "racism" in everything doesn't mean you have to condescend towards people that can. Go be miserable somewhere else.
Posted by martha
March 6, 2008, 6:04 PM
Like, what are you getting at? Because there's racism in the world, we should never be able to watch anything that isn't geared towards being completely serious about racism? God forbid we ever laugh or smile at something, just because some jerks out in the world choose to be discriminatory.
And isn't a large portion of this ad supposed to be the mingling of music, not races...?
Posted by martha
March 6, 2008, 6:07 PM
Okay, so the Smarties commercial was trying to get at something...hmm...what was it?
Oh yeah.
Selling Smarties!
Smarties and Anti-racism are two things that include "different colours" so I guess they just decided to pair them off!
It's pretty funny how certain posts can just get to people, but recently I thought to myself...WAIT!!! If this is doubling as an anti-racism video (and I think it was because anyone with a brain takes the hints after a while) why is there one East Asian woman, one Black man and a woman at the end that looks somewhere along the lines of South Asian and South American?
But then again, there may be some kind of secret message and we were set up by Nestle to have this argument. Life, like anything in it, is just one complex argument.
For you, Mike, I think that people WOULD have said that it would be stereotypical of the commercial to feature a Black guy beatboxing. The thing is not the placement, but the placed...
Posted by Brianne
March 27, 2008, 6:46 PM
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