http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/02/05/business/1194817108385/super-bowl-ad-uses-indian-stereotype.html
After a series of ads by salesgenie.com, this company came under scrutiny for its ads which seemed to construct racial stereotypes of races. You can watch the commercial in the link above in order to analyze the commercial yourself. As the commercial begins we see a little man portrayed with Napoleon complex, driven by his height to be more aggressive, begins yelling at his salesman for his lack of performance. Ramesh, pleads for his job as he has to take care of seven children! He searches for methods to raise his sales and comes across salesgenie.com where he finds the solution he needs. He then wins an award for salesman of the year and his success causes his boss show gratitude. While the end of the ad serves as a way to soften the stereotype and bring in a fairy tale ending; there is still stereotyping in this commercial. The first I noticed is how the boss is portrayed as rude and aggressive and of course he is white. In most cases you don’t have a black or Latino CEO, rather you have white man dressed in a business suit. In many cases I believe that managers or supervisors are portrayed as aggressive, heartless and bossy which may bring in the belief to younger viewers about how harsh they can be. Being a manager myself, I lack all of these features presented and its interesting to see how Hank was illustrated. His insenstitive tone and careless remark about his children may mislead the American population influenced by advertisements. Since the commercial is a cartoon then this ad would attract or capture a younger viewer’s attention. A racial stereotype portrayed would be the name and look of his employee Ramesh. Ramesh is a dark brown color, looks Indian and is performing poorly as a salesman. I noticed they didn’t use a typical Caucasian race which may cause belief that Indians can’t perform well in the workplace. Furthermore he has an accent as well as seven children. Anybody who has take a world history class would know Indian is very overpopulated. Instead of using the average number of children which would be around two or three they choose seven, more than double most people have. Thus this further concludes the statement that Indians over reproduce, can’t perform well in the job and rely on consumerism in order to survive a difficult ordeal. Omi reading mentions how many minorities have been portrayed as less than human at one point. I don’t think it was that extreme in this commercial however, the Indian man was portrayed inequality. Rather than wearing a business suit like his boss, Ramesh wears pants and a polo. His hair slightly untamed and has a shadowy beard coming in which looks un kept as it is uneven. Omi states that each race has its own stereotype such as blacks being stronger but dim witted, or Asians being sneak and evil. Often people give Indian the strong accent and lack of ability to speak clearly. Accompanied by the dark skin one can often identify someone with those traits as Indian. All in all racial stereotypes continue to portray other races as unequal to the white race and this commercial definitely presents this image at first.
I completely agree with what you just said. First off, I did a different commercial but it also had a part where an Indian/Pakistani man was portrayed. After seeing your commercial, its obvious that both of them were portrayed in the same sense. They had some characteristics that "had" to be there in order for them to be considered Indian. Indians are always portrayed as being hairy, wearing glasses, and having a thick accent. Several of the characters Indians portray are always made to seem harmless, funny and stuck in an arranged marriage. I believe that this is consistent with Omis idea of racism. We all try to limit each race down to a few characteristics so they are easily recognizable. In this case, Indians are rarely portrayed as light skinned people although a lot of them are as light as Caucasians. All in all, nice summary of the racial stereotypes taking place. I like that you mentioned the little boss because since his characteristics are stereotypical too. CEOS are normally not portrayed as minorities. Finally, I really like that you mentioned the 7 children. India, being a 3rd world country is completely overpopulated and this was obviously used so people would be familiar to the character. I also believe that his children were another way of saying that he was struggling financially. The children can be a symbolism of his struggle and so the commercial shows the company as a life saving solution regardless of race.
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