Group 1
Racial Stereotypes in The Food Industry
and Food Related Products
Pop Chips and The Portrayal of Indian People In The Food Industry
Jacob Beaupre and Trevor Beshear
Original Advertisement
Culture Jam
Pop Chips Culture Jam
Our culture jam is a Pop Chip advertisement that features Ashton Kutcher in “brown-face.” Brown-face is, of course, a variation of black face. The ad features extensive cultural appropriation.
The Pop Chips ad depicts Ashton Kutcher dressed in an ostentatious Nehru jacket, stereotypically Indian garb. A Nehru jacket is a jacket worn to formal events. Ashton Kutcher wearing a Nehru jacket is a blatant example of cultural appropriation. The use of the jacket and Indian colors reduces Indian culture down to simplistic cultural icons. The cultural appropriation ignores the bloodshed of the Indian people caused by the British.
To highlight the cultural appropriation, we added a bindi to Ashton Kutcher’s forehead and we placed images of massacres caused by the British. The cultural appropriation of the image ignores the Indian oppression and struggles. It reduces Indian culture to superficial elements. We wanted to mock the disregard for history by reminding people about the oppression of Indians. We wanted to exaggerate the cultural appropriation by adding a bindi. It is a symbol that is a well-known cultural identifier. We wanted to point to the excesses of cultural appropriation by adding the bindi.
We changed the lettering to say “It’s the Brownbay,” to highlight the brown face that Ashton Kutcher wears. We wanted to underscore the deeply racist aspect of the advertisement by changing Bombay to “Brownbay.” This advertisement is a throwback to racist ads from before the Civil Rights Era featuring white actors in black face.