I have been reading up on this whole Ashton Kutcher debacle in the last couple days. This 'popchips' ad that came out reminds me of some studies that we talked about in a recent sociology class. There was one particular study which was conducted on a college campus in which the researchers observed their peers' opinions about or reactions to racially themed Halloween costumes. Mostly, the verdict seemed to be that if you were portraying another race in a respectful manner (e.g. a woman wearing a traditional geisha costume) then it was acceptable. Also, many subjects expressed the opinion that on Halloween, "anything goes"; they felt that for the sake of humor, the blatant exploitation of racial stereotypes was permissible. On the one hand, I keep wondering what the 'popchips' firm was thinking! But on the other hand, I noticed that no one is crying foul for the Swedish-sounding, uber-pale diva that Kutcher portrays in the same ad. I think that had they not used the skin-darkening make-up for this one character, the ad might not have raised so much ire. I know that sounds silly, but what I've come back to whenever I think about this is that the use of "blackface" (and for the same reasons, brown face) is simply too touchy a subject. Blackface was most often used to portray all of the least flattering stereotypes for entertainment, especially in the 19th century (e.g. pre- Civil War and Civil Rights). The things that Kutcher says in this ad were not what people found so offensive, and certainly this character's lines, etc. were not any worse than the other three characters included in the same commercial. It seems like such an obvious statement, but I think when developing an ad of any sort, you have to take into consideration all of the ways in which your intent might be misconstrued- popchips and Kutcher were obviously going for lighthearted and funny, but they chose an insensitive method that clearly missed the mark.
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