Apartheid Meets Teletubbies In Racist Smarties Ad

The first time I saw this Smarties advert on British television, my jaw dropped. Could they really be using segregation on the basis of colour in an ad for a popular children's sweet?

Synopsis: an idyllic, pastoral Teletubbies-style scene is shattered by the return of the Blue Smartie. The other Smarties run in fear, scooping up babies, and hide in the tube (homestead) and slam the door. Blue is excluded until he explains that now he has no artificial ingredients, he's safe. "He's one of us now!" they cry, welcoming him back.

The guy who is forced out of the Smarties tube to explain this eugenic-style decision, although he happens to be dressed in yellow, is played by a black actor.

This is in incredibly bad taste to begin with, but reinforcing the racism with this not-so-subtle touch really makes this advert the worst I have seen in a long while. I really find it deeply offensive, the more so since it is aimed at children. It reinforces negative racial stereotypes, and presents exclusion on the basis of colour difference as acceptable. Segregation has been banished in many countries such as South Africa and the USA which previously suffered terribly from this awful bias. I think it should be taken off the air.



For the record, I've asked several people "of colour" to borrow the modern phrase what they think and they agree with me.

What do you think? Let me know, and maybe leave a comment on their YouTube page. It's unlikely to appear there, but another (unofficial) YouTube thread does have some debate although it's on a typically crass level.

Or, you could do as I did and complain to the Advertising Standards Authority.

Ryanair Schoolgirl Scandal

Budget airline Ryanair are refusing to apologise for an advert which shows a "provocative" model dressed in school uniform on the grounds that this is "censorship".BBC ARTICLE

This is an interesting moment because I am a big fan of sexual openness and expressive freedom, but I can hear the fnaar! fnaar! of popular protest resounding loudly up and down our prurient land, as people jump on the non-PC bandwagon to defend Ryanair's right to use the image.

It will be nigh on impossible to have a measured debate about this - in tabloid Britain, we either snigger or scream when it comes to sex. Rational discussion of the issues is rarely an option. I remember left wing MP Clare Short once wanted to ban Page 3 of the Sun newspaper, with its time-honoured bare-breasted working man's titillation, and how viciously she was derided for being an ugly and unattractive killjoy with no attention to her socio-political argument at all. She was victimised along traditional male lines even by women - but that should not surprise us, after all, look at Thatcher - for daring to question the traditional view. Yet, this tradition sustains perfidious prejudice and ongoing female disenfranchisement.

We decry the national lack of success in prosecuting for rape, yet we defend the continual objectification of ever younger women without conceding that they are intimately, causally related. More and more cases of long term systematic abuse of women (and children) come to light, yet we do not make the connection between this widespread behaviour and our ingrained and hardened attitudes towards women as sexual commodities. This is a massive failure of thinking on the part of our culture, and our nation.

My view is that this is a human rights issue, and the way to show that is to translate the image from sex to race. In racial politics, over 200 years, the arguments have been won. Even Australia is finally apologising for the appalling treatment of its Aborginal inhabitants. If this image used ethnicity to illustrate "HOTTEST" in a similarly seaside cartoon fashion, using a native black women with, say, a bone through her nose, it would never have got past the ad agency drawing board.

We cannot legislate for respect, but we can show it, and we can demonstrate it to our children. I say, ban the advert, and kick reactionary Ryanair into the 21st century.