See the Black Man in the top image? Ooops! Now you don’t see him in the same image below. Both images are Microsoft advertising. The grinning “Black Man” is for the American market, while the goofy “White Faced Dude with the Black Hand” is for advertising market in Poland.
Kathy Griffin can be a talented comic, but lately, she’s a bit too full of herself as she tries to go mainstream from the D-List. On the latest edition of her Bravo television show, she made a Racist and Bigoted and stereotypical remark and she was rightfully banned from the Apollo theatre for life because she refused to own her words.
Saartjie Baartman was considered a South African sexual freak by Caucasian culture. In 1810, when she was 20, she was convinced to leave her homeland for fame in England. Her traditional Khoikhoi body type was considered freakish in Western Culture and she was put on sexual display. Her bare breasts and genitals were open for the gaping. She was given the nickname “Hottentot Venus” for her presumptive beauty, though in Khoikhoi, “hottentot” means “stutterer.” Saartjie was dead at 25 and her genitals and brain were pickled for continued, public, display.
Gray is not a color.
Barack Obama turned the world Blue. Red Republicans claim there is no Obama mandate, but we who won the world — know the United States is forever changed — but how can we semiotically prove the provenance of the Blue Mandate?
The “Calaca Obama” cartoon seen below is frightening on several levels. First, “calaca” is a colloquial term for “skeleton” in Spanish. Calacas — human skulls representing joyous dead figures in “Day of the Dead” celebrations — are supposed to suggest that even the dead deserve a celebration of their lives. Next, we need to understand in Guatamala, “calaca” means death and there is no mistaking graves for happiness in that cultural context. Finally, for those who have no idea what a “calaca” is — we all recognize a skull is not a living soul and so we must wonder what insidious semiotic is being spent on us in the name of Barack Obama. Halloween is tomorrow in the USA, but do we really want to be making disconnected, editorial cartoon, attributions of death against Barack Obama any time during the year?
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