milkeemountainmama:

note-a-bear:

milkeemountainmama:

note-a-bear:

sexartandpolitics:

minou replied to your post:Obama needs to license that Chrysler ad.
What bullshit Detroit exploitation ad is it this year?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PE5V4Uzobc

But seriously, halftime = end of first term and the GOP hates the auto bailouts.

Also Clint Eastwood and a lot of white people should play well with some demographic that is not me.

^^^^

This made me want to rip my hair out.

Just…ugh


i don’t know. there are a LOT of us who really love the made in detroit commercials. and think that they present a much more nuanced, complex representation of detroit than most even liberal media does. the main critique of those commercials has more to do with how the car companies are what *caused* these problems and now they’re supposed to be *saving* us from them? rather than exploitation. chysler IS detroit, so in a strange way, they have just as much of a need to improve and complicate detroit’s media image as the average detroiter does—

i mean, i think these commercials are complicated. they don’t allow a viewer to go “yeah, but decaying houses! violent murderers! scary hell no we won’t go!” and do you know what a radical departure it is from most media to have detroiters positioned as *leaders* out of crisis rather than the *cause* of it?

so there’s a lot of good with these commercials. and there’s a lot of reason for us to really love them. but…are the big three going to save us? when they caused most of the problems to begin with? and does the rest of the US get to be all “we’re all detroit” when they were so willing to see us die but a couple of years ago? when they’re still masturbating to pictures of violence done to detroiters (decay porn)?

I think, for me as an outsider, it just feels….I dunno, something about them doesn’t ever sit right. And I think it has to do with your earlier reference to the “we are all Detroit” element that overrides everything for me.

But, perhaps, the other thing is I kind of think about (and it’s different circumstances, certainly) what I would feel if something similar were said/done about the Bronx. Because it’s like…I get that in one sense they’re talking about Detroit as a whole and not focusing on this dark “evil” specter of resource withdrawal from an urban setting and what that does. But, it feels loaded.

I dunno, I mean, I’m certainly not trying to counter your read, because obviously as a person from the area (Detroit and Flint) and someone who has spent a lot of time doing the ground work there. I just feel weird about the whole thing in general, and it feels like it’s capitalizing on a specific perception, rather than actually trying to debunk that perception, if that makes sense.

but see, the specific perspective of detroit is: detroit is dead or dying, detroit is frighteningly violent, detroit is a “once great city,” detroit is hopeless, detroit is lost, the violence *done* to detroit through resource withdrawal is “beautifully sad” etcetc etcetc.

there’s no image of detroit TO capitalize on, at least not in the current media landscape. it also doesn’t fit into existing “decay porn———-hope porn” narratives where detroit is dead, and as such, it is full of economic opportunities, big blank slate yay for artists, etc.

these commercials stay true to the working class roots of detroit, the fight of detroiters, the ability to love even in the worst of times—they rewrite “dirty decaying filth” to “gritty working class tuff”—i really liked the eminem commercial (in spite of the corporatism) because it respected the response detroiters have to historical segregation of the city by the rest of the US (and even the rest of michigan). it made a place for that feeling that we’ve been doing this all alone now, and that’s something to be proud of that we made it this far.

but this years commercial…i’m not ready to forgive the rest of the US for being so eager to declare us dead. for being so willing to watch us die. for loving the violence done to us so much.

and in the end, what these commercials are trying to do is rebuild the idea that there is a place in the future for manufacturing and gas guzzeling luxury vehicles. an interesting premise when you consider how the light rail was just defeated in detroit and busing has been taking hit after hit after hit to the point that it almost doesn’t even exist any more.

Bolded the necessary 

(via marshmallowmegamama)