Racist, or my overactive imagination?

I’ve devised a new game solely for this blog entry, called: Racist, or my overactive imagination? ™ In this blog, we take a normal looking piece of mediocre, at best, advertising and determine whether it is blatantly racist, or if I just have an overactive imagination. Somewhere in this entry is the picture. If you can’t see it, look harder. It’s a picture of Maria Sharapova laying in a somewhat seductive pose on a tennis court in paradise, dressed in an all-white, somewhat skimpy tennis uniform. She’s been touched up in Photoshop to the point where her boobs look way bigger than normal and she of course, looks absolutely flawless. The only copy reads: “Keep It Pure,” and there is a K-Swiss logo in the ad, which leads me to believe that it is an ad for K-Swiss tennis shoes.

Now, there are two things inherently wrong with this advertisement: one overtly racist, the other a simple fact of poor execution; both of which were easily preventable by somebody somewhere taking a second and thinking before doing.

Of course, here come the qualifiers: I am not a minority, nor have I talked to any minorities about this ad, so I have that working against me. I’m looking at this ad as a white guy predicting how a minority would react to it knowing what I know about the history of this country and it’s unfair (to put it mildly) treatment of minorities. (As an aside, my people, Italians, were discriminated against in the 40s and 50s, but that’s really no comparison). On the other hand, I am a student of advertising, which gives me some credibility in determining whether this ad should’ve run on the side of a building on Broadway in Manhattan, as is. It’s just not a good idea. Here’s why:

All of these things separately are not a big problem, but when you put them together, bad things can be thought. First, you have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed bombshell of a white woman lying in a sexy pose, dressed in all white, with the line “Keep It Pure,” written to the side of her. Maybe “keep"ing, white and “pure” don’t come together in your mind as anything offensive. Maybe if I did a random poll of people, most would say they see nothing wrong with the ad. Most people would probably tell me they never even noticed the ad, because most people don’t notice ads. The point is, someone working to develop this ad, at some point during the process, should’ve said to him or her self, “Hey, while advertising shouldn’t always be politically correct, this ad is a little dicey in terms of the race issue. Perhaps we should change the copy or something.” That same person should’ve then told someone else, “Hey, while advertising shouldn’t always be politically correct, this ad is a little dicey in terms of the race issue. Perhaps we should change the copy or something.” And then the copy should’ve been changed. Am I making too much out of this? Perhaps. I do have a fairly decent imagination…

The second issue this ad brings up is the fact that it makes no sense. A tennis player like Ms. Sharapova does the exact opposite of keeping the sport of tennis pure (which I’m assuming is the message in the ad, unless it really is the racist message mentioned above, in which case K-Swiss is racist). The fact that Maria Sharapova is supermodel-hot and a celebrity in her own right to the point where paparazzi follow her and people actually care who she dates and the like is not keeping the sport of tennis pure. Perhaps K-Swiss would’ve done better with a less attractive tennis player actually playing tennis, or training to become a better tennis player, or even going with a no-name tennis player to nail home the point that to those that love the game, there is nothing else: no photo shoots or commercials or endorsement deals, just the pure, raw intensity of the game. So kudos to you, K-Swiss, on completely missing the point, and potentially offending just about every non-white person that happens to glance upon your ad. You may have lucked out if the only place that ad ran is on Broadway & W. 31st in Manhattan. Somehow I doubt that’s the case.

Many a wise advertising guru have said that if you’re going to invade someone’s life with a message a person never wanted to hear in the first place, you better make it worth his or her time, lest you will be hated and despised even more for wasting time and space.

The truth of the matter is that is applies to just about everything, at least in terms of media…I think. I can recall several movies I sat through (cough cough, Closer), in which I wanted, neigh demanded my two hours back afterward. It applies to books, albums, art, just about anything that can be construed as portraying a message. Even this blog, as well as the hundreds of thousands of other blogs out there, are held to such scrutiny; which is why I’ve been so apprehensive about writing a blog: who in the hell is going to want to read about what I think on any sort of regular basis besides my mom and my girlfriend? Yet here I am writing my first public blog ever (I wrote a few on MySpace, but my profile is set to private and I think two, maybe three people actually read any of them). I figure at the least it’s a way for me to practice writing, as that is the profession (via advertising) I’m trying to get in to. At best, somehow my blog will become famous and someone will want me to write a book or movie or some crap and I’ll make lots of money and blow it all on fancy electronics and beer. The point is, I’m turning this into my little corner of the Internet and plan on doing my best to not waste your time, loyal reader(s). Feel free to point a laugh.