Meyer Media Portfolio Entry #5

I found this advertisement here.

This is an advertising billboard that Sony put up in the Netherlands last year. It depicts a white woman holding the jaw of a black man. The caption says “PlayStation Portable White is coming.” It is almost as if the white woman is coming to save us by defeating the black man, or the white PlayStation Portable is coming to save us from the black PlayStation portable. I chose this advertisement because I think it relates closely to the Richard Wright chapter that we read this week.

The theme of Richard Wright’s The Ethics of Living Jim Crow is that he had to learn very quickly how to racist treatment. He had to learn to accept that whites were going to treat him poorly, and if he wanted to avoid serious injury or death, he needed to accept the treatment he received from whites. Rising up against it would probably have been very difficult. This ad is sort of saying the same thing. The black person is in a submissive or inferior position in relation to the white person. This advertisement seems to be another example of the unconscious racism that is present. Sony probably did not mean for this ad to be racist, but as Johnson stated in his Getting off the Hook chapter, they still should hold themselves responsible. Saying they didn’t mean it is just another way of “getting off the hook.”

I am surprised that this billboard made to the street. It has such an obvious racial meaning behind it. Maybe they thought that it wouldn’t be a big deal since it was put up in the Netherlands. To me, it seems like a large corporation like Sony would be a little more sensitive to racial issues.

Block, R. (2006). Sony Under Fire for Racist Advertising. Retrieved July 15, 2007 from http://www.engadget.com/2006/07/06/sony-under-fire-for-racist-advertising/