We have posted in the past about non-Whites being used as props in tourism and travel ads, there for the enjoyment and convenience of tourists, like other tourist attractions. Rhiannon J. sent in another excellent example of the residents of vacation areas being treated like just another amenity. In this ad for Travelocity, a White family enthuses about the many pleasures of their vacation spot — including the sun, the sand…and “the Rodrigo”:
As Rhiannon pointed out, the family discusses Rodrigo, who apparently loves carrying fruits for White tourists, the way you might discuss a stray dog.
UPDATE: Reader Chorda correctly points out that, while my use of race as the dividing point made sense when viewing these ads as a group, in this particular case “ethnicity” would probably be a more appropriate term to use.
Comments 14
mo — June 11, 2011
I have noticed that the last several times I've seen this commercial, that ending isn't shown anymore, like either they or the channel cut it off.
chorda — June 11, 2011
This post makes a fair point, but I'm a little troubled by the emphasis on "white" versus "non-white" and the implied racial focus. We know nothing of the racial background of the actor playing Rodrigo and he's relatively light-skinned and has primarily southern European features. If his character's name had been Antonio, Gaston, or Demetrios, it would be reasonable to assume he was playing a Mediterranean white character.
Latino does not equal "non-white". The othering of Latinos is one of ethnicity, not race.
forsythia — June 11, 2011
About 20 years ago, I was at a houseparty and an ethnic coworker was lounging in his mumu. He held up a pineapple and flashed a sweet smile, and I took a picture. Later, his partner stuck it up on a bulletin board, and someone captioned it "our friendly natives are here to serve you". It was howlingly funny to all because everyone had been at that party, and the phenomenon noted here is so prevalent: brown people aren't there for their own reasons - they are portrayed as there for your enjoyment. Too bad we haven't gotten past it yet.
Greg — June 12, 2011
That dialog is *painful*, even compared to the average TV commercial!
Small miracles: at least their daughter is an "architect"?
:] — June 12, 2011
Anyone else notice how the white people are portrayed as really really stupid tourists?
Malcolm — June 13, 2011
This is not quite what my first reaction to this ad was. (It crept in the second time I saw it, though.)
When we saw this ad on television at a hotel, my boyfriend and I were both like 'Oh, wow- you don't usually see even such coy representations of bisexuality in advertising. How interesting.'
It's mostly that both the man and the woman here seem totally swoony and enthused over their.. um, Native Companion? pet? servant? in a way that meshed well with the general vacation-stupor but seemed as much indicative of the same precise valence of crushy enthusiasm on the part of both of the adults.
We both were reading Rodrigo along the same lines as Chorda upthread, which kind of mitigated the ethno-racial squick a bit- I personally was reading him (cf 'A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, having never experienced a resort first-hand) as the sort of white-Latino/Iberian/Mediterranean service staff that apparently is pretty ubiquitous in these sorts of contexts: the kind of guy that meshes well with the USian fantasy of encountering exotic, glamorous, but approachable (or: white enough to not excite race panic, but just ethnic enough to be easily objectified as glamorously foreign) foreigners on vacation.
All of which is still pretty grotesque, but I think that particular valence kind of blinded us to the particular 'exotic-native-in-background' dynamic here.