WHITE IS COMING

PlayStation for the Aryan Nation?

In case you haven't heard about it elsewhere, the billboard above is from Sony's advertising campaign for its new "White" Playstation Portable. As of now, the ad -- featuring the tagline, "White is Coming" -- has only reared its inflammatory head in Amsterdam.

If Sony's goal is to court attention, they have undoubtedly succeeded with this provocative set of images featuring a white-haired, white-dressed, whiter-than-white woman (a term of art in the advertising world) dueling with a black-haired, black-clothed, blacker-than-black woman (another marketing term).

If these two models could produce offspring, I'm guessing their child would look just like X-Men's Storm, as played by Halle Berry.

But I digress. I doubt we'll see these "White is coming" ads in the United States, where they would ignite racial hysteria and cause riots, if not for the fact that we're all too apathetic from playing with our Playstations.

Nonetheless, I say Sony gets the Gas Face for such poor marketing. "White is Coming" might be too subtle for some. Why not make the message clearer?

---

Oliver's Addendum: Sorry to hitchhike onto this thread but it's so unbelievable that it bears some additional comments. I'm amazed that there are people out there defending these ads as, "harmless personfication of the handheld console's two available colours." Seriously, gimme a %$#!! break. I'm not sure in what part of the world the image of that billboard won't be read as some kind of commentary on race, regardless of the Playstation color scheme context or not.

Provided, I've never been to the Netherlands, but as early as 1983, researchers were noting that Dutch society was starting to suffer from tensions arising with the arrival of large waves of immigrants from Surinam and the Antilles (both former Dutch colonies). It may not be America but I hardly think race is invisible so the image of black and white woman confronting each other in various poses of domination are hardly innocent of any extended meaning.

That said, as my friend/colleague David Leonard would no doubt note: it opens up a great conversation into the dynamics of race, sex and gender within video games, a topic that we should be spending far more time contemplating.

--Junichi