Why
yes, in case you were confused, this is a White woman lying on a bed of
naked, contorted Black men, in an advertisement for luxurious handmade
bedding.
"Merge
into the colours of the south. Feel the beating heart of the city of
light at night. Breathe the scent of the forest. Feel the briny of the
breakers on your skin." Funny, I don't associate any of those things
with the naked, contorted bodies of Black men. Do you?
My
first question is whether these men are intended to be interpreted as
being alive or dead. I'm not sure which is more problematic: If they're
alive, every single stereotype about the hypersexualized savage Black
man out to rape and ravage the pure White woman comes into play here. I
realize this is 2011 where interracial relationships are no longer
condemned and denigrated to the degree they once were, and could perhaps
be less of a big deal in France than they are here (this is a French
ad), but...anyone who knows anything about the history of race relations
should recognize this damaging trope and not try to replicate/propagate
it. Or if I'm supposed to view this from the liberated empowered woman
standpoint, are they her playthings? I can't get behind that either. If
they're alive, are they/their work supposed to represent the labor that
went into creating this luxurious bedding? Dozens of Black men working
to make something for one White woman...do I have to say the s-word?
(Their contortion does make me think of the arrangement of certain
ships...) At the very least this smacks of all sorts of oppression.
If they're corpses, which I hadn't considered until someone pointed it out in the comments on the Sociological Images post that alerted me to this ad,
then we're dealing with the Black-body-as-disposable notion that
society has never really seemed to shake. They almost look as if they
were tossed into some kind of mass grave. Were they worked to death to
create the luxury this White woman desires so? Were they sexed to death
in some crazy orgy that created the "heavenly" aura the woman finds
herself in?
I
suppose the best possible way to interpret this is that Black men's
bodies are supposed to be a luxury, which is at the very least a kind of
rare positive association. But even that has objectification written
all over it. PEOPLE cannot be luxuries. THINGS are luxuries. Black man =
person. Sheets = thing. Let's not equate the two, okay?
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