It has become extremely disconcerting witnessing an ever
increasing parade of black people being paddled as ‘the market of black
diamonds’, well financed and ripe to be usurped through rampant consumerism. It
is even frightening seeing black infants dancing for diaper adverts and other
pseudo-nutritional foods and bath soaps while half the nation’s children live
in desperate poverty. Local media and its incessant minstrel shows has become
the hectoring handmaid of the corporate social structure that keeps people
enslaved to debt obtained through addictive moral panic caused by
not-having-the-in-thing. The class envy that is spawned by most featured individuals
depicted in enviable affluence in ads, has strangely manifested traits of
narcissistic individualism among black youth, and is happening with preposterously
ingratiating absence of pretention.
Enraged liberals might call this an advent characterising
the destruction of youth, a dissipation of diverse identities or even a commodification
of such identities in the grand project of creating a homogenous identity,
therefore ‘market’. But what irks me most is this democratic zeal with which
blacks always want to smile and dance on any cathode platform for pretences
paid with crummy bills and rusted coins? I understand the psychology elicited
by a child seen on an advert, but will all mental response to all devices of
brand consumption be met with hungry gullibility?
Of course advertising agencies are arduously looking for
provocative material that form representations of black people that can justify
white condescension of black people as well vindicate their ‘micro-aggressive’
behaviour that has been rampant of late. This I say because most depictions we
are inundated with lack authenticity of any kind, from characterizations based
on regurgitated stereotypes from apartheid era Blaxploitation films to polished
romantisization of squatter camps and filthy hostels. And considering that most
subjects in local adverts seem to be willing advocates of assimilation into
upward mobility, most merely resemble puppets that crave reassurance by canon
of style and cultured existence, and I wonder what dubious ideas of wealth are
harboured by many black people who are already or entering the present capitalist
work force.
Notwithstanding the reality that much of commonly advertised
retail products we consume are proven to be exorbitantly toxic and unhealthy,
are black people being pampered as a willing dumping yard for decayed reject
commodities of white affluence? Are we the ones to forever be relegated frozen
foods outdated before they reach pots and pans? Are we to be the eternal
custodians of factory rejects and knock-offs exposing an ingrained espouse
towards catwalk lifestyles we consumed from Fashion TV? That cannot be US, I
say. Such depictions of our being will sure fuel intractable social divisions
and prejudices which could inadvertently become fatally violent.
But what makes black people have such an insatiable
tolerance for such subversion of their representations by white supremacist
media? Are we now exhibiting the prophesized schizophrenia and warring
identities which Fanon postulated about in his many volumes analysing black
identities? I know, I am left with more questions than propositions that can
unravel many complexes and socializations we continue to suffer, but would what
we have been moulded into be the exemplary model of economic market
usurpation? What I can ultimately
conclude is that even though media clumsily appropriates various black traits
and cultural forms, from actors to plots and locations, their project is not to
advertise the black, but to the black, about what their ‘appropriate black
aught be’.
