At the moment Boots is running an advertisement in which a man watches with bemusement as two girls do their make-up while traveling on a bus. The camera pans back and forth between his confused face and the two girls who have changed their whole look (make-up and hair) while they were off screen. I have seen this advert on numerous occasions and I've been largely dismissing it as just more sexist, girls are shallow and obsessed by make-up while men are too rational for such things and sit on the bus reading newspapers and watching the women around them (seriously, even if they were rapidly undergoing such transformations, what business is it of his that he has the right to blatantly stare at them?), bullshit. At least one of the women in the advert is given a chance to give him a glare for staring.
But then I noticed something, there is a third woman who is transforming between shots. Unlike the other two women she doesn't get to be clearly visible in the picture, no dominating the mise-en-scene for her, she is, instead, crammed into a corner. She also happens to not be white.
Do you think this is a coincidence? No, me neither.
Interestingly there is one other non-white face in this advert and this time it is a man. He is also at the edge of the screen and disappears rather rapidly from view.
This really doesn't help persuade me that this literal marginalisation wasn't on purpose.
For your consideration, you can see the advert here.
12 years ago
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