{"id":37825,"date":"2011-08-19T11:55:16","date_gmt":"2011-08-19T16:55:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=37825"},"modified":"2013-11-09T06:14:46","modified_gmt":"2013-11-09T11:14:46","slug":"a-critique-of-satirical-sexism-and-racism-in-tv-commercials","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2011\/08\/19\/a-critique-of-satirical-sexism-and-racism-in-tv-commercials\/","title":{"rendered":"A Critique of Satirical Sexism & Racism in TV Ads"},"content":{"rendered":"

Every once in a while we here at SocImages pick a fight and a couple of years ago we sunk our teeth into satire and didn’t let go. Satirical humor is often used to expose prejudice and bigotry and it can be damn effective, as many viewers of The Colbert Report will testify. \u00a0But it’s also a risky strategy. \u00a0It makes fun of by doing; so, for example, it exposes racism by being extremely, over-the-top, no-one-will-ever-believe-we’re-serious racist. Except for… someone might think you’re being serious. \u00a0In fact, a significant proportion of political conservatives viewing The Colbert Report believe that he is conservative like them<\/a>. They recognize that he’s trying to be funny, but they don’t think he’s joking<\/em>.<\/p>\n

In our effort to think more critically about satire, we covered Amy Sedaris’ hipster racism<\/a>, Ellen DeGeneres’ CoverGirl commercial<\/a>,\u00a0a New Yorker<\/em> cover depicting Obama as a Muslim<\/a>, covers of the National Review<\/em> featuring Bill Clinton and Sonia Sotomayor<\/a>, and\u00a0board games<\/a>. \u00a0We also featured Jay Smooth’s commentary on Asher Roth using the phrase “nappy headed hos.”<\/a><\/p>\n

Now Anita Sarkeesian, of Feminist Frequency<\/a>, offers another illustration of how satire doesn’t always work the way progressives would like it to. \u00a0She takes on TV commercials, arguing that ironic racism and sexism is still racism and sexism. Ironic advertising, she argues, allows marketers to “…use all the racist, sexist, misogynist imagery they want, and\u00a0simultaneously\u00a0distance themselves from it with a little wink and a nod.”\u00a0 You be the judge:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every once in a while we here at SocImages pick a fight and a couple of years ago we sunk our teeth into satire and didn’t let go. Satirical humor is often used to expose prejudice and bigotry and it can be damn effective, as many viewers of The Colbert Report will testify. \u00a0But it’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[55,2098,256,23703,283,285],"class_list":["post-37825","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-gender","tag-gender-prejudicediscrimination","tag-humor","tag-marketing","tag-prejudicediscrimination","tag-raceethnicity"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37825"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37825\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58733,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37825\/revisions\/58733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}