Media Post 1

First I decided to go to the grocery store to look at products that represented different races of people. I choose to do this because I thought it would be a good way to see how people are portrayed today in comparison to the movie we watched in class, Ethnic Notions. I have to admit though, even though I do go grocery shopping and am in the store every week I never noticed until after the movie the way people were actually being portrayed in our everyday life, so I thought this would be interesting for this assignment because it is applying what is presented to us in class to life. The products that I chose to analyze for the assignment are Uncle Ben’s Rice, Land-o-Lakes Butter, Aunt Jemima Pancake mix, and Little Einstein’s Fruit Snacks. When I looked at the Uncle Ben’s Rice container, I didn’t see anything that portrays African Americans the way that the movie did. Uncle Ben looks respectable, and is in a suit. One ad I found online even puts Uncle Ben in an office setting. I could though say like in the movie, Uncle Ben can be portrayed as an African American would at the time, he does not look like he would threaten anyone, and he is older and in that sense not being portrayed as a sexual being as the slaves would be (I remember it being said that there was denial to the fact that there were affairs). Uncle Ben also looks happy, and in one ad at the bottom it says “Uncle Ben knows best”. In comparison to the movie slaves were portrayed as happy like Uncle Ben, although he is not a slave, and the “Mattie” was portrayed as the controller and always knowing what was best. I think that in comparison to the movie, Uncle Ben is not a bad portrayal of African Americans.
I looked at the Land-o-Lakes Butter and the Indian women on the front. The box makes the Indian women look welcoming, like they were when Columbus first landed in America. To me though she is kind of in a serving position, she is kneeling holding the butter out to us making it look like she is a servant. Also behind her is all land, no development or even other people. I am not even sure the girl on this box is an Indian. She is wearing makeup which I doubt the Indians had and Columbus had noticed that one of the only things that the Arawak Indians had were tiny gold ornaments in their ears which of course led him to believe there was more. The only pictures that I have seen of Indians have led me to believe that this is a bad portrayal because they hardly had any clothing and had a very developed agricultural system which I think would be present in the picture, besides that what about other Indians? In our reading it said that they lived in villages together. I also don’t think that the Indians at that time would have made processed butter.
I also looked at Aunt Jemima pancake mix. Different from Uncle Ben I think that Aunt Jemima may actually be portrayed as a “Mattie”, just a new age one. She looks very nice and happy and I would have never thought twice about it except when I came home I looked up other images of Aunt Jemima and found some that have Aunt Jemima with a bandana covering her hair, she is fat in others and she is talking in slang on some of the ads. I even found one ad from 1991 with both Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben is still in his suit and Aunt Jemima looks like she is going to clean the floors, not make pancakes. Comparing ads from even as recently as the 90s to now I can say that I feel they have come a long way.
Lastly, I looked at fruit snacks (which are a show) called Little Einstein’s. I chose this because there is one boy on the show who is African American. I have watched the show before because I have younger cousins that I baby-sit in the summer and I have only seen one episode where the kids have gone on an adventure and it could be taken offensively if someone were to look for it. In the episode the kids have a “Mississippi hoedown” and Quincy (the African American boy character) is in drab by clothes (as are the others) and his is playing a banjo looking instrument. Otherwise in the show one of the only differences between him and the other characters is that he is afraid of the dark. I was happy when I saw that the show Little Einstein’s portrayed all the characters in a good manner, teaching the children who watch the show that everyone is the same.
Overall I was surprised at what I noticed when I went to the store. Normally I wouldn’t look to interpret the butter or rice that I picked up off the shelf, and I think that some ads that do portray different races poorly only get away with it mainly for that reason; I just don’t feel as if people are looking for it. If everyone were to interpret the ads presented to us, maybe things would be different.