The car company is once again in trouble after the release of an ad widely condemned as racist.
Volkswagen has withdrawn a Golf car advertisement posted on its official Instagram page that the company admitted was racist and insulting, saying it would investigate how it came about.
…The advertisement features a woman’s large, pale-skinned hands seeming to push and then flick a black man away from a shiny new, yellow Golf parked on a street. The man is flicked into a cafe called “Petit Colon”, a name with colonial overtones. In the background, jaunty music plays, along with sound effects resembling a computer game.
German television noted that the hand could be interpreted as making a “white power” gesture, while letters that appear on the screen afterwards briefly spell out a racist slur in German.
Juergen Stackmann, the VW brand’s board member for sales and marketing, and Elke Heitmueller, head of diversity management, apologised. “We understand the public outrage at this. Because we’re horrified, too. This video is an insult to all achievements of the civil rights movement. It is an insult to every decent person,” they wrote.
Here’s the ad.
Even apart from the racial overtones, I am baffled by the ad. What exactly is the point that is trying to be made? And how do such things slip through the cracks in a huge company where presumably there are many layers of bureaucracy that must sign off on it before it is released?
Where is the racist slur? Surely not ‘spoilerz’?
Well, I watched it. I didn’t notice that the hand was a woman’s (how is that relevant?), nor that the flickee was a black man.
If that’s racist, it’s far too subtle for me to detect — even upon repeat viewings.
re “while letters that appear on the screen afterwards briefly spell out a racist slur in German”, the only ones I saw there (on the slowest speed possible) were “Der neue Golf”. That’s a racist slur?
re “the hand could be interpreted as making a “white power” gesture””, I certainly am not sufficiently versed in such to make a determination.
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I do think VW responded properly, however. Any protestation of innocence would be fuel for the fire.
@1,2 the order in which the individual letters of “DER/NEUE/GOLF” fade in at the end is the problem. You first get one letter from each line R, E, G. Then the two preceding letters from the first two lines at which point you have the N-word in German. Given the way the lines are offset from each other, it’s actually more pronounced that you might expect.
Whether it is a woman’s hand or not is not relevant to the problem: no one said it was, it’s merely descriptive. Just as the car is described as a yellow car, which is again, not the actual problem.
I can’t tell for sure if it’s definitely a black man, but it looks like it could well be. Surely even if it only *could* be, you can see that a white hand treating him as a puppet to be manipulated, and more so, something to be kept away from your car, is deeply problematic.
I think I have deciphered complaint against this ad. The ‘racist slur’: if you pause at the exact right moment, the letters for “Der neue Golf” have only partially appeared. They appear in this order: R E G simultaneously and across three lines, then N E. If you rearrange those, you can spell ‘neger’. The ‘white power gesture’: when preparing to flick, the hand forms the OK gesture, which ninnies caused to be declared a white power symbol.
In other words, a series of ridiculous over-interpretations from someone with too much time on their hands during the quarantine.
“A woman’s large, pale-skinned hand” -- just say white, jeez.
!
Thanks, Holms. Your explanation, I understood.
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As for the point of the advert, I think there’s none in particular. The only thing many ads need to do is to feature the product prominently, and make it memorable somehow.
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As for this “n-word” business, I’ve always been bemused by it. If anything, such trepidacious tabooing gives it more power.
(“Mummy, what is the n-word?”
“Can’t tell you that, son. It’s too racist”)
PS (can’t resist)
xohjoh2n:
Why not similarly claim that whether the hand is pale-skinned or not is not relevant, nor whether the man is black or not, since both are merely descriptive?
@5 John Morales
Yeah but you’re not (I presume) in the group to whom it refers.
I used to think the same thing, that we all know what the word is so why be so silly as to not spell it out. But I heard from enough black people that it is never okay for white people to use that term in any circumstances. So I revised my view.
Surely it is appropriate to defer to a marginalised group as to whether or not it is okay to use a term that refers to them.
Silentbob:
It’s not that simple — it depends on the context/referent.
If I wrote “Jane is a typical nigger”, then sure.
If I wrote “nigger” is a very offensive term which is used by racists, I don’t see how so.
(Which was the point of my parenthetical above)
Does anyone recall the early episode of Last Week Tonight where John Oliver covered the VW emissions faking scandal, and he made a fake VW ad? It was a great ad. I liked how he had them say: if you drive your VW off the bridge, you will not die. You will be immortal.
Then it got even better.
Good times.
Perhaps I’m cynical, but I can’t help wondering if VW got what it wanted, even if it’s bad publicity.
😉
It’s the N-word in German, appearing while a black man is being flicked off by a white hand in front of a shop called “petit colon” (small colony, In France and Germany shops where you could buy goods from the colonies were called this, I knew what a “Kolonialwarenladen” was long before I knew what a Kolonie was). Given that nothing in ads is just a coincidence, yes, that’s fucking racist, and yes, black people in Germany (you do know there’s black people in Germany, right) are rightly upset over it. Or as Holms says, “a series of ridiculous over-interpretations from someone with too much time on their hands during the quarantine.”
Giliell:
Nope. It’s, at most, a partial anagram.
John, go learn about how reading works. We don’t actually read left to right, we read whole words at once. Actually, proficient readers read phrases. There’s a billion of funny pics where the letters are all jumbled up, but you can still reads the text just fine. I understand that this is not as obvious for somebody who does not speak German, because in a language you are not proficient in you actually need to read more slowly and need a standard representation, but believe me, Germans can see what those letters form, especially when paired with the image of a black man.
thanks for the explanation, Giliell.
It’s not racism, pure and simple.
It IS racism, pernicious and carefully and subtly constructed so as to be deniable or debatable enough that bad-faith debaters can plausibly (at least in their minds) have conversations just like this. Which keeps VW in the conversation, and keeps people watching their ad.
The second one is much, much worse. If some ad agency wonk had made an ad with a tag line like “Polo -- too good to be letting n****rs near it”, they’d have been fired and VW would never have seen it, much less the public. As it is, they’ve done a great job of making the racism *just* far enough below the surface that all we can see are the ripples. There’s definitely still a fucking shark there.
#11 Giliell
Er, many many things in ads are just coincidences. Things coinciding is the very definition of this! What you are suggesting is that there was intentionality in hiring a black person for the on-screen part, hiring a white person for the hands, choosing the letters to appear in staggered fashion starting with R-E-G then E-N-L (giving ER NE GL on screen), and selecting a particularly named store for the filming location… all to stick it to black people for a couple of frames. How has intentionality been established?
But perhaps more importantly, why would this be intentional? This is on par with a conspiracy theorist claiming that the government is engaging in some massive cover-up of aliens or whatever, yet can’t help but give off intentional clues for the eagle-eyed to spot.
I wonder how many Germans spotted that, even amongst the black population.
sonofrojblake
Look at how well it#s working here. Well said.
Because it’s advertising? Look, there’s a couple of people who work in big brand advertising who confirmed that nothing, really nothing in such an ad is a coincidence. It’s not a badly voiced radio ad by the local flower shop for the local radio station recorded by a nervous florist.
Yeah, racism exists, subtle, carefully constructed as to be deniable racism exists, that is just as outrageous a claim as saying the government covers up alien invasions.
And here we have the claim that those black people who did sot it and brought it to the attention of folks are just overreacting, seeing racism everywhere. Better let some white folks decide what is and is not racist, right?
Well, whether inadvertent or intentional, factual or imagined, it demonstrably came across as racist.
Me, I still don’t see it, but as I noted, I do think VW did the right thing in apologising, for the reason given above.
(though I’m still not gonna worry about writing ‘ginger’ in case it’s offensive)
Compulsory Tim Minchin reference.
@John Morales
Most car ads do that by showing the car driving or showing off what the interior looks like. Not by implying that it’s too nice to let colored folks get near it.
Yeah, beat off that strawman real good!
There’s a world of difference between explaining the term in private to someone ignorant of its history (as a child would be), and uttering the word in public for any reason. But I suppose understanding the distinction requires some empathy and social wisdom.
AFAIK, Giliell is a native speaker of German. If she says she saw the word “Neger” thinly disguised in the ad, I’d take her word for it over people who are not. (I don’t view on-line videos, so I can’t say how a non-native speaker of German would see it.) I do know from having lived in Germany for a few years that at least at that time (around 1980) racist attitudes were endemic. It was normalized to the point that nobody (well, nobody who mattered) made a big deal over. Rather like anti-black racism in the USA before about 1960. If things are at the point where being caught at it is seen as something to be embarrassed about rather than just blown off, I’d say it’s something of an improvement.
As for “is it racist?” The kind of discussion we see in this thread is what happens all the time here in the USA. As long as people who are comfortable with the status quo can pull a fig leaf of plausible (or implausible) deniability over some racist act or statement or policy, they’ll insist that people are just overreacting. They’ll swear up and down that they are not racist, because they don’t think of themselves as racist. But all it takes is for “good men” to see nothing and do nothing in these situations in order for systemic and overt racism to fourish. (See also: Hannah Gadsby’s talk about “the Jimmys”)
@11 Giliel: “black people in Germany are rightly upset over it”
Fortunately not only black Germans (btw in Dutch “zwart”, which literally translates as “black”, is more offensive than “neger”; ask any Afro-Surinamese person) are upset. As a Dutchman I can read both English and German plus a little French.
https://www.krone.at/2158495
Colon is also French for large intestine. As the article explains:
“Über dem Hauseingang steht „Petit Colon“. Colon heißt Darm, die Person wird also sinnbildlich in den Darm geschoben.”
“Above the entry we can read “Petit Colon”. Colon means intestine, the person hence symbolically gets shoved into the intestine.”
Kronen Zeitung is an Austrian tabloid.
The Frankfurter Allgemeine (a German conservative newspaper) has about the same report.
https://www.faz.net/aktuell/feuilleton/medien/vw-werbung-in-der-kritik-rassismus-bei-instagram-16781107.html
So let’s see.
Black Germans feel offended.
Newspapers in German language that are far from radical left side with them.
Why should I care about some English native speakers expressing some doubts?!
#18 Giliell
Who? They’re wrong. To believe that there is no unintended coincidence is to believe that the advertising agency fully intends every bit of symbolism which might be wrung from every frame. Nothing is missed, no matter how obscure or brief. So, they chose the letters R E G then E N L to fade in first specifically to put
ER
NE
GL
on the screen first, so that they can pat themselves on the back for sneaking neger(l) into an anagram on screen for a couple of frames? That is far more elaborate, and thus less likely, than simply choosing a scattershot fade-in without reading symbolism into every frame.
So you’ve gone with the conspiratorial intentionality. “Hey guys, great idea for this car ad: the (German) words ‘the new Golf’ contain the letter to spell (German) nigger, so let’s put them up first! White power!” *high fives*
No, what I expressed was scepticism for the notion you appear to be espousing -- that that is no such thing as someone over-reading symbolism and deciding that it was intentional. Pareidolia is a real thing -- sometimes people over-analyse, you seem to be dismissing that possibility.
But I agree with Morales’ statement in #2 -- those po-faced types that read intentionality into every coincidence and dismiss unintentionality as an impossibility, would only be confirmed in their minds that they were right all along if there was any protest from VW.
This discussion reminds me of the dustup over a banner celebrating a Yorktown, VA high school’s graduation, which depicted the school’s logo made up of portraits of graduating seniors. Unfortunately, as one black student said, ““Wait a damn minute. They really used us as the shading.”
It was probably not intentionally racist, but it was still thoughtlessly racist, in the way that racism is so often invisible to white people.
Instead, the response of too many is, “I didn’t even notice, and it’s not offensive to me, so it’s not offensive. Period.”
Volkswagen seems to be making a habit of plumbing those depths. In 2018, reeling from the fallout of the diesel emissions scandal, they sought to demonstrate their claims by having test subjects, including humans, sealed in a room into which car exhaust was being piped.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/29/vw-condemned-for-testing-diesel-fumes-on-humans-and-monkeys
I don’t think anyone at VW sat down and deliberately put this together as a “fork you” to POC.
I also don’t think black people in Germany are “overreacting”. They’re saying, quite reasonably, “this is how the ad came across, and that’s not cool.”
I think VW is doing the right thing by listening and pulling the ad and admitting they forked up. We’ll see if they manage to do better in the future.
Mark @21:
Strawman? (BTW, I use straw dummy for a reason)
I quote Silentbob @7, with my own emphasis just for you:
“But I heard from enough black people that it is never okay for white people to use that term in any circumstances.”
Ahem. I now quote myself: “It’s not that simple — it depends on the context/referent.”
I wonder if this isn’t the equivalent of seeing the Virgin Mary’s face in a piece of French toast. I’m not saying that it can’t be interpreted as racist, but if so, the message is almost subliminal. Not being hep to the new cultural symbologies, I never would have seen the “message” if it hadn’t been pointed out to me. Maybe it’s an inside “joke”.
#26 TGAP Dad
I somehow missed that one, Holy fuuuuuuuuuuuuck!
Yeah, it’s all just a coincidence. Or, I don’t know, a full handful of coincidences. Who could have thought that a white hand (after making a white power sign) snipping away a black man into a shop called “petit colon” while an (perfectly readable) anagram of the n-word was showing on screen could be seen as racist? Really, those black people see racism everywhere. Just like those uppity woman folks always see sexism. They both need to listen to white men more who are way more objective in these matters.
Giliell, you seem particularly exercised because not everyone is in accord with your personal opinion that it’s intentionally racist.
I personally accept that others do see it as racist; do you accept that others don’t likewise see it as intentional racism without concomitantly thinking black people see racism everywhere or that women always see sexism?
You’re the spokesperson for black people, now?
You think no white men share your personal opinion about this?
(Me, I speak only for myself)
Good thing they didn’t use the actor and politician Arnold Schwarzenegger as the male being flipped into the shop.
It would have been doubly obvious.
Wow, John, seriously? I’m being too emotional about it? You really seem to be running low on arguments here.
Well, from trying to dismiss me for being “particularly exercised” (full points for avoiding “hysterical”) to a complete strawman (or is it just being dishonest) to a what, complete non sequitur?
No John, I’m not claiming to speak for any black person, let alone all black people. I’m repeating the arguments and claims of black Germans. The ones directly affected by anti black racism in Germany. Do you want me to link to them?
But honestly, saying that white men aren’t the arbiters of what is and is not racism is not particularly new
or radical.
Hm. This is one of those instances where I feel further discussion will be futile.
So I desist.
The hand did not make a white power sign. The hand prepared to flick, and you read it as a white power sign, thanks to overserious ninnies declaring the OK sign a white power gesture. The ‘perfectly readable’ anagram lasts for a tenth of a second, and even for that brief moment has an extra letter, spoiling the anagram.
Again, the pushback was over the idea of there being intent.
…Earlier, I made the point that people can over-read things, seeing intent where there is coincidence, akin to pareidolia. Now, You are reading the words “you seem particularly exercised”, an observation, and arrive at “being too emotional”, declaring it a dismissal.
You’re right.
This thread, and the USA (and probably a lot of other countries) as well, are full of white people who, even if the racism is so blatant it smacks them in the face, will insist that it isn’t. They’ll always find a way to redraw the line so that whatever it is is on the other side of the line from what they would define as racism.
“Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining.”
Of course it was intentional. Giliell already explained why it is simply not credible that it was unintentional. (I wonder how hard they had to look to find a shop with that sign. I lived in Germany for 3 years, and I don’t think I ever saw one.)
And I’ve known plenty of people who would think of it as a really cool prank. I’m sure they imagined nobody but their frat-boy-type friends actually catching on, so they could snicker at how they’d managed to put one over on the “politically correct” crowd.
Sometimes they grow up. Sometimes they don’t.
Allison:
As usual.
Brilliant marketing strategy; make a deliberately racist advert, then withdraw it and apologise extravagantly.
That’s because it was shot in Buenos Aires, and the shop is near Teatro Colon (which term is Spanish for Columbus).
<snicker>
#38
Nothing was ‘explained’. Giliell baldly asserted that no coincidence in an ad is unintentional. This implies that advertising execs have flawless knowledge of all cultural references and symbolism, and that they freeze-frame the footage looking for any accidental reference to such. This assertion was found wanting; “what can be asserted without evidence can be feruted without evidence” sort of thing.
In addition to Morales’ retort above completely disarming your point, even if it had been shot in Germany, it is entirely plausible that the agency simply scouted for a street shop with a clean look and an open street suited to the shoot they had in mind.
And I’ve known plenty of people that are far too professional to bother with such pranks, even if they knew the symbolism. You are leaping to an assumption that the ad agency is staffed with Nazi frat boys, and not reasonable professionals, despite the latter vastly outnumbering the former in professional circles.