When Curmie first saw the image you see here, it had been
posted to Facebook by a leftie site: maybe it was one he follows, but he thinks
it was one FB thinks he should follow.
Anyway, it came with a heading that Curmie will attempt to re-create or
at least paraphrase reasonably closely.
It said something like, “If you don’t
know about the controversy surrounding this Converse ad, good. Just tell us, unprompted, what you see.”
Ahem.
There are, of course, three
prompts there. It’s a post from a
political site, not a personal friend.
It tells me there’s a controversy.
And the very act of telling me they want my unprompted reaction made me
start thinking about what might be the problem.
Thus forewarned, Curmie
immediately (yes, immediately) saw what the OP wanted him to see. Would he have noticed anything problematic had
he just seen it without any introduction? Not necessarily, but, he suspects, probably.
What’s actually being shown
here is a model—Curmie is told it’s K-Pop star Karina and he nods as if he
knows who the hell she is—in a white skirt, holding a pair of sneakers in her
left hand. If you look closely, you’ll
see that this description is accurate.
But the key phrase here is if you look closely.
At first glance, however, the
lighting does form a vertical triangle on the white skirt resembling a KKK
hood. And yes, the dangling sneakers do
suggest that they’re attached legs rather than a hand if for no other reason
than that’s what we expect to find in shoes.
The fact that Karina’s wrist and lower arm are in deep shadow, and even
the narrowness of her ankles and lower legs, which we see below the skirt, also
contribute to the effect. Without a
readily apparent reason why the image looks the way it does… well, Curmie
understands how a lot of folks, especially but not exclusively black people,
got rather upset. Looked at from a
certain perspective, the suggestion of a lynching does indeed present itself.
The ad has, of course, now
been removed, but an archived image of the original can be seen on the
Snopes page. It was posted to a Converse social
media page, apparently their website,
as well, with the cutline “A Chuck 70 upgrade for all day and all night. Our
newest Chuck is the icon reimagined with a more comfortable feel. As seen on
KARINA.” That is, the company did indeed
intend the image to be a stand-alone.
We’re not talking about a screenshot of a instant in a video or anything
like that.
Curmie has a few questions,
to some of which he sees no indisputable answer.
1). What, exactly, is the
intent of this ad? Sure, it catches
attention in a film noir sort of way, but Curmie confesses that he doesn’t
understand how this image is going to convince anyone to buy those shoes. Of course, there are a lot of ad campaigns
that similarly baffle Curmie. (Insurance
ads seem to be the worst offenders.) And,
to be fair, the lighting does draw our eye to the shoes rather than the
model. But that lighting also
contributes to what we can only hope is a misreading of intent.
2). How could anyone looking
at that image not see the potential for a problem? There had to have been a good many people,
from the photographer to the ad agency to Nike (who owns Converse) execs who
just nodded and moved on. Did none of
them see what so many others saw?
3). The story on the WWD site
references another Converse ad, which showed: “a man is climbing up a ladder
while holding on to a pair of shoes that are dangling above him and hanging
from a tree, while another man is looking up.”
They quote an irate post on Threads, describing this as even worse than
the Karina ad, calling it “Abhorrent. Unfathomable. Repugnant.” Is this relevant? At least Curmie was able to track down an
answer to this one: No, it isn’t, as the sneakers in that image are clearly uninhabited.
4). Why would anyone intentionally
alienate a considerable part of their clientele, or allow anyone else to do
so? Being “edgy” is certainly an
insufficient reason.
5). Given that the image
apparently appeared on the website in late August and on social media on
September 3, why did the story not appear until a week or so ago? This is one that sort of undermines the
outrage, although it doesn’t render it irrelevant or insignificant.
Converse (of course) issued
an apology: “We’re sorry. We understand why this image is deeply upsetting and
recognize that we got this wrong. We removed it from our channels and are
working to remove it everywhere it appeared. This should not have happened, and
we will do better.” Like virtually all
such statements, this one has been criticized from one direction as inadequate
and from the other as cowardly.
There have, of course, been allegations
of intentional racism from, let’s just say, predictable sources. There are plenty; here’s one, from Rep. Troy Carter (D-LA):
“Do not insult our intelligence by dismissing this as an unfortunate
misunderstanding. An advertising campaign does not just appear. It is
conceived, photographed, reviewed, approved and distributed. At every stage,
someone had the opportunity—and the responsibility—to say no.”
Equally predictably, there
are those who choose to ridicule the ad’s detractors. Over at Ethics Alarms,
Jack Marshall declares the furor an example of “crap from the race-baiters and
political correctness thugs,” and cites with approbation a Substack post by “Holly Mathnerd,” in which she suggests facetiously that she has
committed a hate crime by hanging her own sneakers by the laces on, one
presumes, a doorknob or something similar.
Yawn.
As you have no doubt guessed,
Gentle Reader, Curmie visits Ethics Alarms, where he was once a frequent
commenter and occasional columnist, a lot less frequently now than he once did. But this incident reminded him of a variation
on the theme from back in December of 2022.
The story was about a New York Times crossword puzzle which some
people thought showed a swastika design.
To some, that image virtually leaped off the page; others, including
Curmie, struggled to see the problem even when we knew what to look for.
Curmie is not generally noted
for being a peacemaker, but he was then, even being granted “Comment of the Day” status for suggesting that, “We all find it difficult to believe that someone
could fail to see what to us is obvious, or that someone could make a serious
accusation based on what we fail to see at all. Maybe we should consider that
none of us is omniscient.”
Perhaps it’s time for Curmie
to follow his own advice. He was about
to launch into a full-throated screed about how irresponsible Converse was, but
then he remembered that incident with the crossword puzzle. Is there any real evidence that Converse intentionally
posted a racist image? Of course
not. Does that mean that those who saw
something nefarious or at least problematic were wrong, or delusional, or
paranoid? Again, no. Was Converse’s apology appropriate? Yes.
Will it be accepted by anyone on either side of the issue who’d rather
shout than think? Not a chance. That’s a shame, but it’s reality.
Everybody needs to take a
breath, here.
And now: a change of subject
that isn’t really a change of subject.
Gentle Reader, you know how sometimes when you get an earworm, there’s a
logical reason (you just heard it on the radio or as background on a TV show,
or whatever), but sometimes you just start thinking about a song you haven’t
heard or even thought about in weeks, or even years? Often, it’s not the whole song that gets
stuck in your head, but that one guitar riff or the moment the percussion jumps
in volume, or those couple of lines of lyrics.
Curmie’s latest earworm is
from singer/songwriter Chris DeBurgh’s “The Getaway.” The lyrics stuck in his head are, “Let's
stick ‘em in a room together and make them fight it out, until they see nothing
from nothing will leave nothing at all.”
Oh. That’s why I was thinking
of that song.
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