Life in the US is complicated...
There is nothing like targeted marketing to make you feel stereotyped. When I first came to America, I was told that marketers in America had gotten advertising down to such a science that if you didn’t follow an ad on TV, you were probably not the right market segment.And so one lives thro ads that one feels are in completely bad taste, completely retarded, completely phoney, with the understanding that some poor loser someplace in America is probably getting wildly turned at the commercial that shows a young child turning into a jailbird coz he didn’t get any milk“.
But the point of extreme stereotyping was brought home by this young man outside my workplace, standing and waving a banner that said ”nerdbooks.com”. He was even wearing glasses & a skullcap. Really, Americans take this thing about being extremely earnest about their jobs too far sometimes. I guess with all the gay pride & black pride & other pride issues they assume other minorities like nerds would enjoy being called that.
Not that targeted marketing is bad at all times. After all, as a high income member of the society, I do get random mail everyday offering me money. Of course everyone wants it back at a really high interest rate, but once in a while, one feels good that people think you are such an upstanding citizen that they would like to lend you their money.
Until the day I discovered that the mail does not discriminate based on income levels. It just goes as randomly to the Hollywood video store guys” house as surely as it comes to mine. It’s the approval process that is the big differentiator. And putting together fifteen thousand documents so I can feel like an upstanding pillar of the society would just make me feel more like a misfit.
Another ad that I saw on TV was an ABCD woman & her Indian mother promoting the Dove underarm lotion. Hmmm’now what were they trying to say here? That Indian women have a BO problem? Or was it just the older generation, the set that came from India? And the new American generation was putting them on the right track?( If you get specifically picked out as a target for advertising, you worry about how it looks; if you don’t, companies wont know if you will buy their products). One of us is damned either way.And guess who gets to win? Certainly not some unknown unsure writer of Indian origin, whose hackles rise on being stereotyped.
And movies! American movies that are worshipped in other countries as the ultimate in entertainment, as close to reality as can get & as well-made as can possibly be under the limitations of modern technology-they perpetuate some stereotypes too. I saw this movie the other day that had a California girl being labeled as too frivolous while a Boston girl was labeled too serious. I’m sure the Bostonians would have a problem with that. California, opulent as it is, lacking in some serious heritage as it is, is really not that far behind in a country that is completely behind on heritage in the whole world. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, a world viewer is likely to be bewildered going “what are these guys talking about? Americans.& classy? Furthermore ”discriminating between each other based on who’s classier? This is un-American, unreal & utter nonsense !!’
What stayed with you?
A line that lingered, a feeling, a disagreement. Great comments are as valuable as the original piece.