How Hybridity Benefits Marketing

Danzy Seena captured the notion of hybridity, as she calls it, the best in her book Half and Half (see last blog post). She predicted something that we see every day in commercials, movies and in the entertainment business. Marketing companies have realized the changing racial composition and present us ads with racially ambiguous faces. For example, Arabs, Indians, Hispanics and Whites are more than likely to identify with a tanned brunet ad presenter. If she appears to have hints of Black genes, African Americans and Africans are covered as well. The Kardashian sisters, Halle Berry, Christina Milian and Freida Pinto are the best examples for racially ambiguous faces. This strategy saves the (multinational) companies time and money because they only have to cast one product presenter, shoot one ad and simply dub it into all the different languages. From the companies’ standpoint, it makes everyone happy because no ethnicity was left out. However, this strategy does not promote understanding of the various groups to the vast majority which tends to group all the different ethnicities into one. Arabs and Indians have a distinct cultural and racial identity from each other; the same applies to African Americans and Africans.