Just a random thought that I was wondering if anyone else has noticed.
Have you noticed that, in your average everyday commercials representing pretty much anything, there are almost never any interracial couple whatsoever? For a Tide commercial, it is always a perfect little Asian family, or a perfect little white family, or of course a perfect little black family.
I wonder why this is so prevalent. Especially considering that 7-10% of married couples in America are from different races (see, e.g.: Obama, Parents of). Heck, I’d venture to say that something like 50% of couples in Hawaii are in some way interracial. I wonder if the local advertising there would reflect that…
Thoughts? (besides of course the simple answer of advertisers just wanting to create milquetoast vignettes with the broadest appeal)
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(THE GRAPEVINE
and my question is why arent there any couples with one pakistani or indian person and the other black even in real life in america? i mean seriously me and my boyfriend have not seen one couple like us in USA or UK. People even look at us funny like we r some aliens from outerspace
A very good question. Its something that always bothers me about media culture.
i mean not just in media , we have seen hardly any couples like us even in real life . Everytime we have been out in public , both people of my culture and americans stare us down or give us angry looks
If you think that the media is going to make itself targets for the hate groups you have another think coming. Unless they are trying to stir up hatred, like Fox Cable News, they are not going to bring up interracial marriages or even living together. Not only because of the USA bigots but the pure bloods in Asia, Southeast Asia, and the rest of the world. We have become so focused on the racial bigotry in the USA that we have a tendency to forget that there are worse areas than ours.
Sure, entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
hmm, that is kind of responsive :)
But, to explain the broader appeal itself:
Families appear healthiest when the kids look like their parents, which is less the case when the parents themselves are dissimilar. That couples of similar ethnicity seem more aesthetically appealing is a 2nd-order consequence.
By the by, a prospective partner of another ethnicity has considerable ("exotic") biological appeal to us as a sex partner ("opposites attract") because hybrid offspring are stronger than inbred offspring. But sociologically/culturally and also biologically for long-term relationships (life partners), the appeal is different (and most often reversed) because it's more difficult for people of different ethnicities to get along and work well together. So there's a tension here…
FMI, here's an excerpt from The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright. The whole book is excellent.
um, k. i know you're all into genetic predispositions right now but i'm not sure how it relates to my query on why advertisers are so prone to avoid it. although i guess if you look at it from a full-blooded-childrens-look-"healthiest" perspective then…
Advertisers are prone to avoid it because of the simple "broadest appeal" explanation you already mentioned.
I was just looking into the mechanics of the appeal--biological dispositions being one part of it.
As for families with full-blooded children appearing "healthiest"…it's true, isn't it? Perhaps an uncomfortable truth according to some moral theories, but I don't know ground for denying it.
as to your last point, absolutely not at all from anything in my experience. maybe some blue hairs or Arkansans have that in their heads but i was around mixed race families throughout my earliest years and beyond (not to mention many different nationalities and races in their own right). never had the slightest inkling that a pure blooded family was somehow more healthy. in fact, i've personally always had the opposite gut reaction. whenever i see kids of a mixed race family, my instant reaction is always, "damn, they got a leg up [in the gene wars] that i didn't!" or "i wish i had olive skin!!" :)
btw, most all of the new generation in my family are mixed race. Laotian/White, Jew/White (kinda a mix), White/Japanese/Persian, White/Japanese/Mexican, etc.
Errrrrrm wait, I was thinking full-blooded in the sense of 1/2 genes from both parents, not full-blooded as in being of pure race.
There's nothing unattractive about mixed races per se, it's a group photo of kids who don't look much like either of their parents that's not as appealing.
So if two similar-looking mixed-race parents were a family with similar-looking children, I don't see advertisers shying away from it. In fact they'd be somewhat likely to desire it as appealing to the broadest spectrum possible.
hmm, i have no idea where you're going with this at this point. maybe its just a mental construct i have no ability to understand.
Ok, simply stated:
We like photos of families in which kids look like their parents.
We don't necessarily care about purity of race. (e.g. they could all be mulattos or 1/2 Japanese--we just like it when they all look similarly mulatto or 1/2 Japanese)
To take the most extreme example, a family in which one parent has skin black-as-night and the other has skin white-as-snow with the kids being a middle brown is aethetically jarring. Partly due to contrasts of color, but also because it takes more effort to realize that the kids are the biological progeny of the parents (which we tend to like and makes a family seem "healthy").
Now, racist cultural taboos against intermarriage might be a factor for some of your Arkansan friends. But presumably there exist at least some advertisers for whom offending racist people is not a concern. So I don't see this as the motivating factor.
huh. still not getting it.
I don't think I can lay it out any plainer. It might be helpful if you told me which part you don't agree with.
I've recently noticed Home Depot and other home-improvement-type places depicting an Asian female and a white dude as a couple in their TV ads. Is it because that's the most palatable racial-mixing? Argh! As a half-Japanese/half-white daughter of an Asian MALE and a white FEMALE, I am consistently ticked off that such a couple is never depicted in popular media. (Please don't mention the Gosselin, they do NOT count.)
ah, the honorable WGWAG. yes, i think that is what americans are capable of seeing just now
Well the biological reason for the discrepancy is straightforward.
Whether we wish to admit it or not, the typical male mind is essentially on the lookout for sex partners 24/7. Asians are exotic, attractive sex partners to whites.
The female mind, by contrast, is primarily interested in potential life partners--guys who will provide for them and their children and give them a good home (Sociobiologists call this Male Parental Investment, or MPI). Asians, due to their foreignness, are more difficult for whites to judge the long-term prospects of, and so generally less attractive life partners.
If you were in Asia, the most effective mixed ads might be the other way around (Asian MALE and white FEMALE as you desire). But also some regional Asian cultural norms and the international influence of Hollywood might be different and strong enough to ameliorate some of this effect; I don't know.
For more on the sociobiology behind this, I recommend The Moral Animal excerpt, and ultimately the whole book if you have time. It's fascinating stuff.
i guess i mostly just don't understand it. haven't tried really hard but am missing the point.
I think what he's saying is that stuff like this
http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2006/02/twinsGR2…
looks weird. When the kids don't look related to the parents, it strikes us in a negative way (which is, of course, the opposite of what advertisers want)
On the other hand, Gherald, I had a hell of a time looking through mixed-race family photos trying to find one that illustrated (what I think is) your point. Most mixed-race families seem to have kids that look like the parents.
and let us not forget that kids from parents of different races tend to be super cute
that is so true :)
Why do you (or anyone) feel the need to push interracial relationships in advertising? Are to trying to sell society into doing something? Your goal of making people think they must date and/or marry other races is needed to be considered independent thinking is wrong. Why is that your agenda?
If people want to do this on there own accord , OK. But to sell people on it (using money from the consumers buying products) is wrong.
The flyer mailed from Lowes dated 2-9-2012 showing a black man with a white women hugging while painting a wall is inappropriate. It must have been a black man making that decision to put that in there.
wow. just wow.
> to sell people on it (using money from the consumers buying products) is wrong.
Why is it wrong? No one’s saying you have to like it--anymore than they’d say you have to like a van Gogh painting--but why is it wrong ? Don’t buy their products if you’re so concerned about your consumer dollars going to pay for an ad you didn’t like. Simple as that. It’s a free country.
> The flyer mailed from Lowes dated 2-9-2012 showing a black man with a white women hugging while painting a wall is inappropriate.
Why is it inappropriate? Please explain. In detail.
> It must have been a black man making that decision to put that in there.
WTF? What the hell gives you any knowledge of the race and gender of those involved in deciding to produce the flyer, and why should it matter in the slightest?
Let us turn the question around and ask you why you feel the need to push a one race agenda on the rest of the world when you can look around and see many examples of interracial in the real world around us. If people want to keep there ideas of a pure race on their own accord I suppose it is fine but to use consumers money to promote it is wrong. This is an example of the kind of thinking that we have been fighting against since the early 30′s.