NetFlorist has a problem.

No, I’m not just talking about their ridiculously expensive flowers, or inability to deliver gifts on Valentine’s Day.

They can’t seem to put an advertising campaign together without using offensive stereotypes, and they have a particular fondness for marginalised groups.

Let’s start with the advert that got a lot of attention this past Valentine’s Day.

In the radio ad, a NetFlorist customer describes her husband as “half English and half Zulu”, with the latter “half” specifically situated “below the belt”.

Here’s a transcript courtesy of BusinessInsider:

A listener, Phil Manners, complained about the advert to the Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB) – and rightly so.

Manners’ complaint pointed out that the commercial “is gross in that it portrays two white people fetishising black male genitalia on public radio”.

The thing is, Manners makes a good point. Anyone who has studied the history of gender and sexuality in South Africa is aware of the fact that black men and women were often “hypersexualised” by the colonial settlers who saw black people as “other”, “less than”, and akin more to animals than humans.

Check out Wesley Morris’ incredible article about how pop culture (like the “pop culture” that NetFlorist is supposedly drawing on) “just can’t deal with black male sexuality” for how this profoundly racist idea evolved during the slave trade and eventually made its way into contemporary “humour”.

This same “humour”, and in particular “the use of a humorous SA stereotype”, is so common that a majority of the ARB decided that the advert was not in any way offensive.

To their credit, a smaller, more enlightened number agreed that the “commercial does indeed fetishise black male genitalia and is therefore offensive”.

The ad body went on to stipulate that “there are certain stereotypes that can never be joked about, but there are others that form acceptable fodder for humour”.

So where do we draw the line? Apparently, the ARB doesn’t believe in lines – at least not when it comes to NetFlorist.

This isn’t the only instance of offensive stereotyping in NetFlorist commercials that they’ve let slide.

If you refer back to that transcript from earlier, you’ll notice that the interviewer is a character called Harold.

Harold and his entire advertising campaign have been the subject of multiple complaints to the ARB, none of which have gone further than NetFlorist simply removing the advert, and making another one using Harold.

Here he is in all his glory:

Let’s look at one more:

Harold is an obvious parody of homosexuality that perpetuates problematic stereotypes associated with queerness and gay-identifying men in particular.

As one complainant wrote:

Harold is a caricature of homosexual stereotypes and exists purely for the entertainment and comedy of heterosexuals. I shouldn’t have to be faced with that type of homophobia when I turn on my radio in 2017.

In response to the above complaint about the 2017 Mother’s Day ad featuring Harold, the ARB replied with the following via email:

The long and the short of this particular matter is that we have received unequivocal confirmation from NetFlorist that they will not use this commercial again.

Practically speaking this means that we no longer have a role to play in this matter, because the advertising at issue has been removed with permanent effect, which is as far as our mandate/jurisdiction allows us to take matters.

When asked whether the character of Harold could be disputed, the ARB insisted that they can only deal with one advert at a time, and not campaigns as a whole. This provides a loophole in which NetFlorist can continue to use the character, and simply delete individual ads when someone lays a complaint.

What we’re seeing here is a pattern. NetFlorist uses stereotypes associated with groups of people who have had to fight, and are still fighting, oppressive systems, systemic racism and homophobia.

By the look of things, the Advertising Regulatory Board is happy to let it happen.

[source:businessinsider]