A Christmas Commercial

A particular Christmas Commercial caught my eye:



The point about the commercial is how little controversy it creates. It is an article of faith that 85% of all Branded Purchases are made by women. Car companies in particular are targeting women. Certainly this ad does. What is the ad targeting? The Kardashian fantasy.


Keeping Up With the Kardshians is a female-targeted reality show featuring the daughters of the late (O.J. Simpson lawyer) Robert Kardashian, as they navigate various Black Athlete celebrity boyfriends/husbands, paparazzi, fame, fabulous parties, and the like. Another princess fantasy, as Virginia Postrel writes about in the Wall Street Journal. Now the Prince Charming is a Black Athlete. Famous. Rich. Powerful. Privileged. [See Michael Vick. A White Athlete who had done what he'd done, would be out of the NFL forever.] And critically, allowed to be masculine in a way that most (Beta) White guys are not.

Its not just this Christmas Commercial either. This Levi's Commercial spoke to the same desire:



Apparently Walt Whitman was a fervent proponent of Levi's Jeans. Who knew? But the point is obvious. The Black guy is presented as the far more desirable choice than the skinny, "kind of gay" White guys, and the kids doing athletic tricks are all Black.

This is not surprising. Show "Joe Average White guy" as a doofus, or icky Beta guy, and there's no place else to go in ads, for a masculine presence. Other than a Black guy. When the commercial is aimed at White women. As nearly all are.

Whatever the reality or myth of Black comparative sexual/romantic masculine advantage (and ahem, "attributes"), there is no question that culturally, Black guys don't have the diffident, nerdy, deferential manner that most White guys adopt as a matter of workplace survival in most workplaces and certainly in the "White Guy hostile" University environment.

Carlton Banks from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air (who did the "White Guy Dance" to Tom Jones "Its Not Unusual"):



Is funny because it is untrue. He's a fantasy character just like Urkel from "Family Matters". The equivalent to Vanilla Ice or Eminem. Characters adopting the extreme cultural characteristics of another race, that usually has oppositional characteristics. I.E. most Blacks are not nerdy, and disapprove of nerdiness (hence the Will Smith bit at the end of the Carlton Dance bringing an end to the Tom Jones-foolery). Or most Whites don't adopt the mannerisms and behavior of Black rappers like Vanilla Ice or Eminem, and consider both kind of jokes.

Indeed the existence of these four characters, Urkel, Carlton Banks, Eminem, and Vanilla Ice, point like arrows to the characteristics around race, at least the way the mostly White female audience of TV consider the characteristics of race (most TV viewers are and have been for some time, White women). Black guys, excluding the comic exceptions, are not nerdy. And White guys, excluding the few (somewhat comic) exceptions, are not uber-macho rappers. Certainly Vanilla Ice is viewed as a comic character, a suburban guy posing as tough rapper.

Clearly, Advertisers are in point of their own making. They have no way to portray, in ways that move emotionally, the target female audience, in association with a product and desirable, high-status, macho White guy. Absent a few celebrity pitchmen and such. The point of the Levi's Commercial is that "the jeans come with a hot boyfriend." Indeed, it is patriotic, and Walt Whitman approves, of your Black Boyfriend! Because Advertisers (and popular entertainment) have mostly pushed the line that Beta White guys are icky, and nerdy (unsexy), that hot boyfriend must be Black if he's not a White Alpha celebrity (see the ads with Ashton Kutcher, very absent Demi Moore). Same with the car commercial. The Lexus comes with the rich, (likely Athlete) and sophisticated (the house is a modernist dream) husband. Right straight out of the Kardashian's reality show.

Ashton Kutcher only sells Nikon cameras. Advertisers seeking that "hot guy with the product" vibe have to go beyond the limited Alpha A-hole celebs.

This has moved the culture in ways unimaginable, before. You'll note that there are no commercials featuring a White guy and "hot Black girlfriend."



The point of the above ad being that the White guy is so clueless he doesn't get that Beyonce is right there in front of him. This being the second attempt to show a clueless White guy and Beyonce, the (now defunct) Circuit City commercial with the clueless White clerk drooling over Beyonce being the first attempt.

Which is not surprising. The commercials are in all cases, aimed at White women. Who tend to find the commercials, portraying White guys as doofuses, amusing and "accurate." Very likely, the very diffident, mild, and unassuming manner that White guys generally adopt in the multicultural workplace, with its White-guy-hostile attitudes, create a repellent effect on their female peers. It doesn't get them hit with sexual or racial harassment lawsuits, or counseling from HR. But it does not win them respect from their female peers as "real men" either.

Advertising (and popular entertainment) is pushing the idea that (Beta) White guys are doofuses, the only appropriate Prince Charmings being outside that group, are either White Alpha A-holes (paging Ashton Kutcher) or Black guys. Don't underestimate the power of advertising, or reality TV (catering to princess fantasies) to move the culture.



Ashton Kutcher's Nikon commercials all hit the same button. Alpha A-hole doing whatever he wants (crudely, but you get the point). The longing look by the chick with the doofus male companion tells it all. Of course the Lexus commercial is more sophisticated, the fantasy of being basically a "cultured Kardashian."



The above Star Trek scene was considered controversial (the first inter-racial kiss on TV) in the 1960's when it aired. The sad thing is, the same pairing would be considered controversial today, which is why it has not been repeated. The pairing of a White guy kissing a Black woman, is just impossible. Black guys object, just as Black women don't like the Black guy and White woman pairing much either. But that's not the reason you don't see White guys smooching up Beyonce.

It is that White women, who form the target of the commercials and reality shows and most of TV, object. If Black women had cultural power, their objections would have killed the Lexus commercial and the Levi's Commercial. Lexus and Levi's don't care. They're selling to White women, and basically no one else. This is why, more than forty years since Kirk kissed Uhura on TV, it is almost impossible to find a White guy and Black woman pairing. While the other way around sells jeans or luxury cars. It is certainly "funny" to mock clueless White guys ("Hey, Beyonce is right THERE dummy!") in female-oriented commercials.

[Interestingly, there are a few commercials featuring a White guy and Asian wife/girlfriend. Almost none of the other way around, Asian Guy and White Wife/girlfriend. It would appear the losers in the way the sexes are depicted inter-racially are Asian Men, and Black Women, most of all. The SWPL blog entry entitled "Asian Women" generated thousands of vituperative comments from Asian men, complaining about the disparity and how they are viewed in the ruthless sexual marketplace. So diversity tends to produce winners and losers. Asian men find the White guy / Asian woman pairing no less disagreeable than Black women find the Black guy / White woman pairing.]

Is it likely that these commercials will generate a mass wave of inter-racial marriage/kids? Nope. Most people marry and have kids within their own race, and this is unlikely to change, being quite stable over time. While there are solid advantages to mating across races (hybrid vigor, disease resistance among some groups, avoiding genetic bottlenecks among some groups, attraction of the "forbidden" and even racial preferences for not being White), the question of who your in-laws will be remains large. Marriage and family is not merely a question of passion and romance. There is the question of a whole host of people who are now related to you, and to whom you have mutual obligations. Mass immigration also tends to suppress marriage across groups. Hispanics after mass immigration, as well as Asians, tend to inter-marry less where there is a large pool of people of the same race (like Southern California). It makes family life easier, juggling in-laws and grandparents and the like. Only among the military (where the civilian/military divide looms larger than that of race, try being deployed for two years in Iraq) is inter-racial coupling anything other than rare. Jewish enthusiasm for out-marriage is probably the anomaly, and likely explained by a desire to avoid considerable genetic bottlenecks (it is not fun to have a kid with Taysachs disease).

It is entirely possible, however, for the natural disdain that White women have for White guys who adopt the typical Beta male posture (diffident, non-aggressive behavior that "keeps heads down" in the multicultural wars) can be accelerated by this advertising and reality blitz. The beneficiaries won't be rappers, or Black athletes, but rather the few men, mostly White, who can create "soft harems" by appealing to their inner Ashton Kutcher. Acting like a self-centered jerk. Which is the whole point of the Kutcher commercials. "Of course he's a jerk ladies, but you still want him, BECAUSE he's a jerk. And his camera!"

Which is a dagger aimed right at the heart of the West. Most women can't marry Reggie Bush. Or even be his girlfriend/mistress on the side. Even Tiger Woods could carry only a few hundred or so. But the rest can be the shared, part time girlfriends of would-be-Kutchers. Instead of generally happy wives/mothers in a relationship like that of their grandmothers at least. One that produces the next generation of people.

The end result is not widespread inter-racial marriage. But a sterile, San Francisco/Portland/Seattle playpen for adults. No children present, save the one designer eugenic baby by IVF at age 41, by a single mother. Beta White guys are already not very popular. It won't take much to make them even less popular.