The following paragraph is an excerpt from the book "So Yesterday" by Scott Westerfeld.
It's a book about the inner workings of consumerism, a kidnapping, and a very cool pair of shoes (among other things), as told by a Hunter, a boy who works for 'the client', a major shoe company that Hunter refuses to name outright.
In this scene, Hunter and his friend Jen have attended a focus group that is screening an unaired commercial the cient wants to release. After watching said commercial, Jen makes a complaint:
" I was kind of bugged by the missing black woman formation"
Mandy blinked. "The what?"
Jen shrugged uncomfortably, feeling the eyes on her.
"Yeah I know what you mean," I said, even though I didn't.
Jen took a slow breath collecting her thoughts.
" You know, the guy on the motorcycle was black. The guy on the bike was white. The woman was white. That's the ususal bunch, you know? Like everybody's accounted for? Except not really. I call that the missing black woman formation. It kinda happens a lot."
The other members of the screening begin to name groups in pop culture that have this sort of formation, which is many.
my questions: Is Jen on to something? Should there always be a variety of races/ethnicities represented in TV shows/movies/books/ect. ?
Are we being racist if we have more/less of one race than the other?
For anyone wanting something fun, short, and quirky to read, I think you will like this book; it is fast paced and has a witty narrator, who talks about how things in our culture become 'cool'.
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1 comment:
I don't really think that Jen was onto anything. I think that the creator of a commerical or video has every right to choose who they want in the end product. There doesn't NEED to be variety, only if the creator wants there to be. That being said, it would seem that the creator is being racist if there is an overwhelming majority of one race. But there are always variables like availability of actors and quality of acting.
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