Abstract
A basic contention in the politics of identity is that minority identities are underrepresented in mass culture. This paper examines the move toward inclusivity in the context of television ads for Febreeze and Gain laundry detergent which have, in the past year, especially focused on presenting Black performers sniffing laundry or ambient air with evidence of deep pleasure, pleasure bordering on the ecstatic. One concern is the ways that products that aim at “deodorizing” domestic space do so in a way that directly interfaces with human organs of olfaction. They do not merely “freshen” an environment, but directly interfere with the human capacity to smell. Aside from the potential long-term physiological impacts of this process, such products, working in domestic, and through attachment to our clothing, public spaces, arguably short circuit the functioning of one of the oldest regions of the human brain, a region deeply attached to long term memory. What is covered over are the scents of the world as marked by the passage of the human organism and its quotidian processes and activities. The presence of Black bodies in these ads likewise carries out a labor of effacement. While the humans present in the advertisements are in-arguably non-white, they are assuming postures and attitudes dictated by the norms of a bourgeois mass culture. The advertisements’ claim to diversity is throttled by their invocation of a middle class domesticity that resides outside of an organic world, entirely embedded in and co-opted by industrial interests.
Presenters
Mark HarrisonSenior Lecturer, Indiana University, Indiana University, Indiana, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2023 Special Focus—Images Do Not Represent Us, They Create Us: The Image and its Transforming Power
KEYWORDS
Identity, Mass Culture, Advertising, Blackwashing
