Its worse than that, in two respects. First (according to the 'readers
question's section in the Daily Mail, anyway) the car being modified is in fact an
Indian-made car, [Hindostan, I think the name of the model was], so the message
is that poor backward uncivilised countries like India, which of course never
had any technological/cultural/design traditions to match those of noble
Euro-America, cannot match the West in car design either.
Secondly, the car, when mofidied into a Peugeot, is used to plainly flirt or
'pull' with the female bystanders in some Indian village.
Message One - the car is a symbol of male dominance, although India isnt a
million miles from states where, indeed, women aren't allowed to drive at all.
Message Two, it doesn't matter if the environment is wrecked, Greenhouse
warming, etc (which may well have a worse effect on india than on some western
countries), so long as a male has a (up to date western) car, the main thing is
to sleep with as many femalse as possible (india has a growing AIDS problem,
besides other STDs, and given it will soon be the most populous country in the
world, its AIDS figures may well dwarf those in Sub Saharan Africa).
Message Three, Indian women occupy a very low position relative to men and
will indeed fall for something as simple as a man in a replica of a French car.
Message Four, it doesnt matter if old traditional Indian architecture, say
historic temples, are bashed about by cars, so long as a modern western look is
achieved. And we condemned the Taliban for blowing up Buddhas in Afghanistan!
(although in Iran in 1998 I was sad to see old historic traditionally-built
housing quarters being literally sliced through in thirty-metre wide swathes
presumably to accommodate new roads. Especially as Iranian traditional houses
are built in an extremely eco-friendly and sustainable way, unlike most cars I
know of).
It would be interesting to see the consumer reaction of Westerners if either
a) Indian car makers ran a similar commercial, with a peugeot being modified
into a Hindostan (by say a horse being sat on its bonnet), and said conversion
being achieved by bashing car against picturesque old village church, then
said car being driven slowly through French village to lure on board naive
village teenagers (though French ads on bus stops etc are indeed noticeably more
sexual than English ones),
or b) A Ford was similarly advertised in English village setting. In the UK
we progressed long ago beyond the stage where nude female models sold cars at
Olympia. Evidently not in some parts of the world. We also have hopefully
progressed from bulldozing history, wildlife etc for the sake of new roads, again
maybe not elsewhere.
Hillary Shaw, School of Geography, University of leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT
email [log in to unmask]
In a message dated 25/07/2003 10:00:14 GMT Daylight Time,
[log in to unmask] writes:
<< here's also an interesting ad for the Peugeot 206 (don't know if you have
these in N America - small-ish French hatchback). This shows a young Asian man
with a beat-up old car (presumably the Indian equivalent of a Trabant or
something similar). He drives it at speed forwards into a brick wall, then
backwards. He takes out a crumpled photo of the Peugeot, examines it, and then
encourages an elephant to sit very gently on the bonnet to replicate the curves of
the French car. The ad ends with the young man and three friends cruising
through brightly coloured city streets, leaning out of the windows, smiling at the
girls, in a somewhat beat-up but perfectly recongisable facsimile of the
Peugeot, all to a Bollywood-style soundtrack. I've found the Dutch version of this
online: http://members.lycos.nl/peugeot206site/Reclame206.mpg
This is a tougher one - although it's obviously using stereotypes to sell
the product, there's also a clear sense of agency in the young man who is
transforming his car, and it could be read as saying that good design is worthy of
being copied. At the same time, the message is that a new European car is
better than an old Indian one. I think that part of the Land Rover problem is that
the people are solely the backdrop / exotic other. And although the French
have a pretty nasty colonial history, Peugeot is far less implicated than Land
Rover (eg in general warmongering and supporting the apartheid regime in South
Africa). In this case, I think that Land Rover is simply following on from this
rather boorish approach to dealing with other places and peoples.
Comments on the Peugeot ad, or any other examples?
David
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
David R Dodman
School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford
Tel: +44 (0)7971 840937
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