It doesn’t matter what the people in the image “really” are. The white computer guy could be an Islamic fundamentalist, the runners could be Nobel prize winners.
The problem is with the impact of imagery. People who are in the business of creating such things should know better.
Which gets us right back to what I said earlier — what impact? Everybody says, “Well, of course, I understand that it wasn’t intentional, but I could understand how others might be offended.” And those others are rational?
My only question is why no one at the ad agency saw it. Seriously, I can think of a half-dozen ways the same idea could be staged, and the first would be on an actual running track, with office workers of all types in the starting blocks in front of their desks. Conveys the same idea, turns your office environment into a true field of competition. If you want to illustrate doubling the computing power, digitally reproduce each person and show twins starting from each desk. Put a whistle around the IT guy’s neck. (I should be getting paid for this.)
We should be on the same team, because that’s the EXACT image I had. Remove them from the cubicle farm and make them actually look like office workers. And have the manager standing behind them, gun raised in the air, so that he appears to be rooting them on rather than smugly reveling in his superiority.
The concept isn’t bad at all, but every aspect of its execution is horrible.
You haven’t explained why it’s irrational to be offended. Something doesn’t have to be intentional to cause discomfort or unease. I accidently step on your foot and say “my bad”. Does that make the soreness go away? Or, I accidently put salt in your tea instead of sugar. Does knowing it was a mistake take away the bitter taste?
You’re basically demanding that people ignore the most salient message from the ad and read the intended message. That’s like saying, “Forget I put salt in your tea and just focus on the sugar.” Why should I go that extra mile for a stupid advertisement? If you can’t reach the reader at first glance, you’ve lost them.
I think that works. Perhaps the ubiquity will become obvious to you now that the phenomenon has a name.
Do you deny that imagery has meaning? Because there are a whole lot of highly paid professionals in advertising whose existence argues otherwise.
It ain’t about the text.
Racist!
There are rational interpretations of imagery, and there are irrational interpretations of imagery.
Walloon, if you were Intel would you pull the ad? Or do you think the ad is perfectly fine the way it is?
False dichotomy. I would pull the ad to avoid a PR flap, not because I considered it offensive.
You didn’t answer my second question. Do you think the ad is fine?
You know, this is an interesting point. I first looked at it and thought it was funny, but then I wondered why it’s funny. I think it’s funny because the person that’s in the middle, the focus, doesn’t look a like a business-type person, as the office setting would have you believe.
I was oblivious to the race subtext until I read the Snopes writeup, but my immediate reaction was “bowing down to the boss”.
Whoa. I immediately saw a bunch of black workers bowing before their white boss. I’m sure it wasn’t intended to be offensive, but as others have said, how could you not notice that?
Might be. Or maybe they’re racially sensitized, which could be for any of many various reasons.
True, in a worldwide historical context. Totally irrelevant in the context of this discussion. What possible bearing does that have on this ad and its particular audience?
I didn’t see the bowing thing, but I did within a second or two notice it was a white guy in charge of a team of black guys.
I’m not offended but I’m white.
If the ad had a black guy (or more probably, a black or Asian woman) in charge of a team of white guys I’d have thought “more affirmative action silliness. How many world-class white male sprinters are there these days?”
Oops, did I just say that out loud?
I immediately saw the image as representing a group of black men bowing their heads to a white overseer. I had to look a second time to recognize the black men as athletes, and to interpret the picture as it was intended by the ad agency.
I think this is key, and this is why Walloon and those who are arguing similar points of view are off base. There is no way Intel set out to produce a deliberately racist or offensive image as the centerpiece to their marketing campaign. None. Any argument that even flirts with the idea that Intel was trying to position itself as the corporation of the slave masters, or more importantly an argument that tries to represent those who dislike the ad as advancing such an idea, is a laughable strawman. But: the fact that this image is obviously so charged, and obviously so easily misread, and yet was approved anyway, is evidence that neither Intel nor its ad agency has anybody on staff who can sufficiently represent the point of view of a perhaps too-sensitive public. The complaint, ultimately, is not about the image itself; the complaint is about a system that could have produced, even innocently, such a loaded graphic.
It’s offensive on about 30 different levels. My measure being how it’s going to make various groups who have to look at it feel, not necessarily that the ad-writers intended some incredibly nefarious message.
But I wouldn’t let the ad-writers intentions completely off the hook either. They definitely intended to portray a satisfied white manager in charge of undifferentiated productivity drones. That alone is creepy, and starting from there it was a short stumble to evoking slavery, colonialism, classism and on down the line. It’s not like there’s no historical continuity between the exploitation of 150 years ago and the exploitation of today, and they “accidentally” made the links really obvious.
The press release says that, but the article also calls it a “proposed ad” in the first paragraph. The visual quality is so low that unless I see a copy of it actually printed in a magazine or newspaper, I’m going to have a hard time believing that a company with Intel’s ad budget (not to mention Intel’s extraordinarily stringent rules on how other companies are allowed to use their image) would greenlight this as a final ad.
Definitely. First, have all the runners facing the same way, and raise the camera angle so everyone’s more visible. Second, place the computers or servers behind them with a little spacing so that it’s obvious they’re sprinters in starting blocks. Better yet, just have one server behind with obvious cables running from it to their blocks to show that it’s what’s powering them. The IT guy/manager can then stand on the opposite side of the server looking as smug as he wants.
Clap, clap, clap