In response to the Hilfiger discussion

When I told the class last week that I would argue for my analysis of the Hilfiger ad until all of you agreed with me, one of you--I can't recall whom--protested, "Hey, but I thought we were allowed to have our own opinions in this class!" Others of you in your blog postings have referred to my "opinion" or my "belief" about the ad; many of you are positive that I must have "overanalyzed" it or proposed an interpretation that was invalid. Now, it is time for me to answer you all.

First, you are entitled to your own opinions, both in this class and as guaranteed to you by the Constitution of the United States. As some would claim, "this is a free country" after all. Although if you work at Walmart or Starbucks or any other corporation or business I wouldn't be too free with my opinions or ideas if I were you, for these institutions, in most cases, are not run democratically and are not interested in their workers’ free self-expression, which if exercised might result in termination. In this class, by contrast, I hope for you all to feel free to have a voice, to make your thoughts and ideas known, and to feel safe in your self-expression. I also expect that, both here in the Blog and in class, that you extend that right and courtesy to one another as well. You can do this by showing mutual respect and thus creating an atmosphere that extends the greatest freedom to the most. (It would limit the voice of your classmate, for example, if you called him or her "a pencil-necked, swamp-drinking platypus" or talked over someone with a quieter voice.) You should expect the same from me. So far, our discussion has been lively and interesting and respectful--I am very pleased--yet I know it can get even better. How? If we all try to manage to withhold our opinions.

"What?" I can hear you all say, "I just thought he said..."

I don’t mean to limit your freedom of expression; I’m just not so interested in these:

o·pin·ion (-pnyn)n.
1. A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof: "The world is not run by thought, nor by imagination, but by opinion" Elizabeth Drew.

I want to see you rise to support your ideas with evidence, positive knowledge, and/or proof whenever you can. I’m looking for well-developed ideas, supported with illustration and explanation. Without this, you will have to resort to verbal trickery, your personal authority, strength of voice, or weaponry to manipulate your audience with or you will fail to meet your objectives.

One kind of evidence is derived from careful observation and analysis, and this I have tried to provide in my interpretation of the appeal of the Hilfiger ad.

It is my mere opinion that the ad is “offensive”--you don't have to find it offensive yourself. But if you want to dismiss my argument that the rape narrative I described exists in that Hilfiger ad, I expect a counter argument from you. Warning: these, for example, don't work:

Tommy would never do that!
It's just sex. Sex sells.
English teachers always "overanalyze" everything.

Now, I just don't know how clear we were on the question. Were we concerned with whether the ad demonstrates that the marketers intentionally portray this woman as a rape victim? whether it establishes that Tommy is a racist? whether it exposes that such a narrative is a part of our collective, unconscious understanding of things, that we expect this is the way the story goes? or whether such a narrative could ever sell product?

There are so many questions here; here’s my attempt to make my argument more precise:

• I have no knowledge of who conceived of this ad or its different elements, so I make no claims about the intentions of its creators. Without evidence about a conspiracy to propagate racist ideology of commercial or political purposes, I will refrain from making any such accusation.

• This ad, like many, succeeds in an unexpected way: rather than focusing on the attributes of the product itself--advertising is far more complex than that in how it manages to motivate us to buy--it makes us feel insecure in ourselves, at least, subconsciously and that insecurity drives us then to spend money in an effort to compensate for our perceived weakness. Why else show skinny people when advertising for weight-loss pills?

• How can an African-American woman make a “declaration of independence,” move into her rightful place at the diner’s lunch counter, and advance in mainstream America? Easy, by buying Tommy products. Beware, however, that these products are so expensive as to sap a young person’s income to such a degree that she must work excess hours at a low-wage job rather than studying in school, run up credit-card debt, or beg her parents to direct their scant resources to Tommy rather than to her and her development as a student and a citizen. Her “independence” looks like freedom when in fact it is only another, more subtle kind of enslavement.

• Our reality is the stories we tell about ourselves and those others tell about us. Most ads retell stories, usually ones we’ve heard many times before, so many times that they lurk in our unconscious where they serve to construct our expectations about the way things will happen in our lives. Boy meets girl and they live happily ever after. We are all happier when we are sailing. Girls will get what they want if the wear scanty clothing to show off their skinny bodies. Men will get what they want if they drink beer with their buddies. In the Hilfiger ad, African-American girl gets raped, (Did you ever consider the historical fact that black slave women who bore the children of their masters bore more slaves, making rape an economic tool and these women factories of slave labor.) White men will understand that the woman is receptive to the white phallus.

My point is that it doesn’t matter so much whether some ad agency actually thought this all through--although if they did, I should like to know about it! What matters is that the racist story I exposed does retell a historical story in a way that perpetuates the racist imbalances of the period rather than condemning them. Is this something we, as a society that claims to stand for freedom, justice, and equality, can tolerate? How about selling cigarettes to kids using cartoon characters?