A fair few companies at the moment are producing adverts
with *gasp* actual GBLT content, whether it’s JC Penny’s and their gay families
or Oreos and their rainbow cookies or some bank suggesting 2 men are buying a
mortgage together – we’re starting to creep into this field.
And it is a big deal. That gasp alone says that. It is
unusual. After all, including us at all instantly sets of a shit storm from the
usual suspects who are outraged, OUTRAGED that you acknowledge we exist. Just
ask this spokesperson from One Million Moms
Quite.
So including us has been and still is risky – and since
the very nature of advertising is to get as many people to open their wallets
as possible, it’s not been a risk many people have taken. In fact, advertising
is one of the most GBLT erased media forms out there unless it is specifically
aimed at and appearing in GBLT media (only a little ahead of children’s media
and, probably, computer games I think). Reduction of erasure is generally good
(though not enough – and in some cases a bad portrayal is worse than no
portrayal at all) simply because there is such a push to deny our existence and
deny our place in society. So, yeah inclusion is a positive.
And it’s a positive that these companies are willing to
risk the wroth of the haters, either because they genuinely want to do a good
thing (*urk* oops, sorry, my cynicism just tried to strangle me) or because
they think that GBLT people and people who like us have more buying power than
the haters.
These are positive things.
And yet, and yet – I’m much more comfortable with, say, JC Penny’s adverts that are adverts that just happen to contain GBLT people than I am with Oreo’s use of the rainbow to reach the GBLT movement and/or culture. Maybe it’s nitpicking, but one to me says “inclusion” and the other says “we’re friends so give us money” which, as I’ve said before, I find a very fraught ideal. It’s including the people rather than co-opting the culture.
Not that I don’t think JC Pennys and those with GBLT
people aren’t playing “we’re friends, so give us the money” as well – but it
has a different feel.
But let’s be clear, if you’re trying to use these adverts
as an attempt to
rainbow-wash then that is way out of line. Throwing out pro-GBLT adverts
while, at the same time, discriminating against GBLT people, allowing bullying
of GBLT people in the work place and/or supporting anti-GBLT organisations is
so far out of line that you can’t even see where the line is. And no, a pro-gay advert is not an
apology
And, in the end, no amount of adverts can – or should –
get you hailed as the number 1 super gay ally of wonder, the gay corporation to
which all our loyalty is eternally owed. It’s an advert, you want our money,
you don’t (probably) hate us. Great and there are positives there, but it’s no
more impressive than when a politician gives a pro-GBLT speech. I’ll smile, but
I’m not going to cheer.
