Hey kids, guess what? Sony got in trouble again! It is such a little corporate troublemaker. I think little Sony just craves attention. All those horrible things that it has done to it’s loyal customers are just desperate cries for help. It just wants to be loved. And by loved, I mean showered with large amounts money.
This time it’s not a rootkit! It’s not spyware either! It’s not even an overpriced, crappy console or a BlueRay. Nope, this time Sony decided to trash it’s already tarnished record by getting involved in some good old racism. Because bad PR is like crack – they just can’t get enough of it.
Why am I writing about this 4 days after the fact? Well, the truth is my staff member has sent me the internet on the 4th of July, but I didn’t get it until today. Something must be clogging those damn tubes again.
When I finally pulled out my internet from the tube, it just wouldn’t shut up about this image. It was on every blog I went to and every website I visited. I get it! It’s enough already.
So I decided to be original, and do the same fucking thing that everyone else is doing. Hating on Sony is such an entertaining way to spend your time. But as much as I love to shit on these rootkit peddlers, I actually decided to be objective for once.
If you will, please recall the Season 4 South Park episode titled “Chef Goes Nanners”. It’s the episode in which they had a dispute about the towns flag which depicted a group of white stick figures hanging a black stick figure. The children of South Park totally missed the point of the dispute because they didn’t notice the racially charged overtone of the flag. They assumed that it was controversial, because it depicted a person being hanged. Good tasty knowledge can be sometimes found in strange places – even on South Park.
Now take this newly gained knowledge, insert it into your brain and shake it up. Then apply it to the PSP advertisement. Is it really racist? Or perhaps the artist picked an albino looking woman and a very dark skinned black lady to create interesting composition? Perhaps the choice was purely artistic, because the author was so un-racist that he/she didn’t even notice the racist subtext. Just like kids on South Park…
Perhaps the racism depends on the point of view. One person sees an interesting composition, another sees violence, and yet another racial oppression. It is all in the eye of the beholder.
Or perhaps Sony decided to beat the Wii publicity machine, by posting super-shocking billboards in Holland, where they can get away with this type of stuff?
Just for kicks, Ctrl+Alt+Del created a brilliant spoof on the PSP add. I find it hilarious. :mrgreen:
Yes, this isn’t racism. If someone sees racism, they are reading into things that aren’t there. It’s still a bad choice as an ad because it is something that people are likely to misinterpret as being racist.
What I think is interesting is this: remember when someone made that collage of Bush pictures next to monkey pictures where they are making the same face? Try to do the exact same thing with Obama and see how far it goes. It would be taken as something racist.