White TV Commercial Actors

We are desensitized to the appearance of white people and hyper-aware of the appearance of non-whites. This applies to ALL of us, even non-whites. Never fear, white people will always be everywhere.

Finally a race-baiting thread on DL. It’s been so long!

R1 Do you think the casting in TV commercials is a trend...a reaction to the present climate? Or permanent? Casting for TV commercials used to be very demographic-driven...we'll play the "black family at MacDonald's" spot during "Living Single" and the "toothy white family MacDonald's spot" during "Who's the Boss?" Then ground was gained in depicting gay and then Latin and biracial casting. Now, it is a flood. I'm just curious if it is going to last. Advertisers used to try to reflect back to viewers an idealized view of themselves...that is still true, you seldom see lower middle class or even middle class settings on TV commercials...but now they seem to be particularly prone to reading the politics of the room in terms of casting.

As if we would miss them (the actors).

It’s part of what is freaking out the MAGAs

zzzzzz

My friend works for a casting agency and says white children are particularly hard to place these days - the advertisers still want them, but in much lesser predominance than before. Everyone check on your local white stage mothers, they are not okay!

Seems like 90% of commercials feature biracial couples with biracial kids. It's starting to look like parody now. And that little biracial girl who features in half of the commercials - my fave is her white father with diarrhea - must be a millionaire now.

Yeah - I've noticed that too OP for the past couple of years.

Yet, there are still not a lot of Latino or Asians.

And then you notice that the Progressive commercials are 4 all white characters. So it depends. But it does seem a bit overkill lately.

March, 2021 Not Necessarily a Mirror While interracial ads may reflect an increasingly diverse America becoming more of a melting pot, they are not a mirror on society, according to Morgan State University Professor Jason Johnson, who is currently doing research on interracial advertising.

Johnson notes that 70% of interracial commercials from the past four years show a white man with a Black woman. The reality, he said, is a Black man with a white woman is more common in America.

He said such ads are not directed just toward interracial consumers and that many still cater to racial biases and narrow comfort zones.

“Ads showing a white man with a Black woman are soothing to white people because it makes them more comfortable than seeing a Black man with a white woman," Johnson said.

Progress may be incomplete, but Chiagouris predicts Americans “will start to see even more biracial couples in advertising” and that over time, “you might find less commentary on it” as it becomes the norm."

I certainly agree with the concept of a wide range of types and racial backgrounds being represented in contemporary commercials and contemporary shows when appropriate and accurate. That is the reality of the current world and I am glad for it.

But I do find it distracting and little amusing when inaccurate types are thrown into period dramas as is the current trend now. If you're watching a period drama and one of Jane Austen's sisters is obviously of Latino or Asian decent, you can assume the production is less than two years old.

There's a new Old Navy ad that is driving me crazy. Its to the song of "you ain't seen nothing like this before" or something.

It's a series of families Theres a black family at a picnic. There's an Asian family at the movies (although the mom could be white)

And then there's,....I guess a family with two moms and two kids? There's basically three adults and a small child. One of the women has short hair and I guess is the soft butch lesbian. But I can't figure out the other two adults. Is one her wife and an older teen? Two older teens? Are they a throuple with a small child,? And of course they're all different races so who knows who's adopted or birthed.

Drives me crazy. They're all good dancers though.

R12 - I've noticed that they do that with the gay/lesbian couples.

It's a from the behind shot, no close-ups, a lot of action with the kids - all so that you can't easily identify that it is two men or two women. They really try to hide it.

And there are always several kids, to make sure we all know they're Totally Normal Except In That One Way.

There's some new TV mini-series about Anne Boleyn and they've cast a black actress to play her so that's going to be historically accurate. She was beheaded because of RACISM!!

[quote]The reality, he said, is a Black man with a white woman is more common in America.

And the white woman are always the nastiest white trash types. Just real bottom rung trash.

I wonder how effective it will be. As everyone knows, actors in commercials are used as a cue by marketers to indicate to viewers who the product is for. Old people are used for old people products. Women are used for products targeted to female shoppers. Fit men and women for people who aspire to be that. It also helps for people to be able to relate to a product by seeing someone who may not look exactly like them, but is in similar demographics. When I’m seeing commercials, I’m trusting that the companies are showing me which products are for people like me, and which are not.

It seems to be a real issue now. I’m always looking for white representation in ads, and rarely see it! It’s just an economic fact that the white population is a huge segment of consumers. Why would ad agencies be “icing us out?”

As long as they don't replace Doug...I'm ok.

The narrators are always young Black women with just a trace of "hipness" in their voices: "More of your thing? That's our thing..."

"Old people are used for old people products."

Not in the beauty business, they still using young, beautiful women to promote anti-aging skincare. Ageism is still alive and well in 2021.

How many interracial couples are there in America, in actuality? They seem to be reeeeeally over-represented in commercials.

Also, who is that young woman driving her kids in the Mercedes along the ocean cliff side? “Hi Mom. We’re just on our way back from na beach.” My boyfriend insists it’s Alicia Keys, but I don’t know.

Yes, I’ve noticed it. Not only that, I tend to watch a lot crime shows (FBI, SVU, ect)… no more black criminals. A few other races such SE Asians, Hispanic), but mostly white criminals.

R8 can you imagine the Frautrage if it was a Black father with a White kid?!

Black male celebrities all seem to marry white women. Not many white male celebrities with black women.

I've noticed it op and I don't really care. At one point 80 percent of commercials featured whites now they feature other groups. If a product interests me I will purchase it, If it doesn't I won't. From a business point of view, it makes perfect sense that the companies will respond to changing demographics. I've heard people complain that they're trying to push some agenda but it's really about money. No big deal.

R10 On a side note, I think the black female white male couplings are becoming more common in real life based on what I see nowadays.

I once agreed with that and then I saw Hamilton about 4 years ago...and I told my brother-in-law that he might like it...and he blurted something out to the effect of "I like authentically cast period stories," and I said something like "it's an interpretation, it's not a documentary." That got me to thinking...and while Hamilton wasn't colorblind casting per se—casting people of color was just part of the whole...interpretation—colorblind casting today is generally where we're supposed to ignore anachronistic-to-the-story casting, like the Anne Boleyn tale r15 mentioned. It doesn't bother me much any more because I like what it represents and as far as my own entertainment: it doesn't take me out of the story — like R11 mentioned it sometimes does — because I have seen every story...they're all recycled and increasingly derivative of what came before. I'm already out of the story. I generally only 1/2 pay attention to everything I watch. I just watch things because I like the cast/production team, or I want to be scared, or laugh, or be titillated. Sometimes something grabs me emotionally but that is rare.

I know 2 couples where the man is white and the woman is black. Both guys are Jewish and ugly. Both women are fat.

R17 I think many marketers do their segmented demographic advertising in other mediums now (social media and other online) and the big guns of an expensive national TV spot is often done to blast out their mission or to demonstrate how down they are with "fill in the blank." As far as all the product advertisers such as pharma and cars, yes I agree that they used to do exactly what you are saying...now they have abandoned that to a degree....they want viewers to see the home the "characters" live in and what they are wearing and that they are a family and have that be the marker: "that's me" or "that's the way I see myself" as opposed to the ethnicity of the characters.

R26 I don't care either. It's all just smoke and mirrors and the big agencies thinking they are trailblazers. But I find it interesting sociologically as a reflection of the national conversation — such as R10 — as well as economically (such as what R7 mentioned).

It was still controversial in 2013 when Cheerios did it.

I have a white husband - black wife neighbor couple who have been married for 20 years. Both are decent looking, though not candidates for modeling careers. When I lived in Seattle, they had a strange local ad featuring an aggressive football fan black wife, and her rather nebbishy white husband. There was a national ad a while back featuring a good-looking white guy fixing breakfast for his family. Later in the commercial, a couple of black kids come bounding onto the scene as consumers of his efforts. Their mother is never around, so it's unclear if he's the stepfather, or they're relatively dark mixed kids?

The level of inter-racial couples has become almost a parity of itself by now.

Am I the only one who has noticed an ad, which I believe is by Consumer Cellular, featuring shots of different families including two black men and a toddler daughter?

Who the hell still watches commercials?

People who like wet teddy bears, R33?

It doesn't bother me in commercials because we live in an ethnically diverse nation so it's appropriate that marketing would reflect that.

It does bug me in period films/TV programs where it can be historically inaccurate. This Italian teacher explains why.

I went to the National Theatre production of His Dark Materials. The lead character, a little girl, was played by a blonde teenager who looked like Renee Zellwegger. Her mother was played by Lesley Manville. The big shocking reveal in the play is that the girl's guardian Lord Asriel is, in fact, her father.

In an example of colorblind casting, Asriel was played by David Harewood - a very dark-skinned black guy. When he dramatically revealed he was the blonde girl's father, a muffled titter ran around the audience. "really?"

[quote] I generally only 1/2 pay attention to everything I watch.

You are the millennial stereotype.

R36, a friend and I went to see The Personal History of David Copperfield. We knew there was going to be offbeat casting in the film because Dev Patel was playing the title character, but when milky white Aneurin Barnard’s biological mother turned out to be the jet black Nikki Amuka-Bird, we turned to each other and just started laughing hysterically, it was so ridiculous.

R36, R38 The National Theatre and all British subsidised theatre is becoming ridiculous.

The subsidised companies have to follow the dictates of the government if they want to be paid.

Of course that’s Alecia Keys R22.

I reckon advertisers prefer to cast Jamaicans rather than full American POCs.

Jamaicans evoke holidays and marijuana.

Asians and Hispanics? Very few in commercials, and the Asians are only there because of the publicity of anti-Asian violence - otherwise they wouldn't have been cast. Blacks, however, are in about 98% of all commercials. POC = black.

Or - when they do try to represent gay couples - it's two women. You don't know if they're a couple, or sisters or best friends - and that's on purpose as well.

I keep wondering if this OTT push for biracial couples in advertising isn't having the opposite effect of alienating more people than it attracts. Even Joe Biden was commenting on it. The GOP will be mining this for votes in 2022. African-Americans are only 13% of the population but they're now like 60% (at least) of all actors in commercials.

And it's true Latinos are almost never featured in commercials. Weird.

Latinos have their own entertainment networks like Univision. Half of them can't even speak English anyway so they're not watching English-language stuff.

R45 Latinos have lived in Texas and California for 20 generations. They speak English.

Just watched a commercial for a bank that warns you by text message if you're overdrawn and gives you 24 hours to make up the shortfall. All the actors in it were white. So only white people get overdrawn.

Black people keep very good track of their spending and have great impulse control, R47. It’s as simple as that.

Have you ever heard the term "n----r rich?"

People in the advertising industry are vile, manipulative liars.

They think their lying and emotional blackmailing is funny and/or creative. They, as far as I concerned, on par with pedophiles.

[quote]I have also seen quite a few fat people and homely people in commercials as of late, particularly prescription drug and automobile commercials.

It's always a fat, dumpy guy, usually with either erectile dysfunction or disgusting psoriasis, with an at least decent looking thin woman who looks about 15 years younger than him.

And men don't have to listen to bullshit about drugs not being tested on "people assigned female at birth". They're called women, assholes. Ad agencies can take their 6'5" dude in his red dress towering over his little pocket gay and fuck themselves.

I can't wait until wokesterism dies away. It's like a new religion and its followers are as fucked up as all the other religious lunatics.

[quote] It's like a new religion

It attracts people who don't know how to think for themselves.

I laughed at the "overdrawn bank account" commercial. That's one of the few where it's all white people lol!

Nah, white people also have all the disease commercials.

On the home security system commercials, the burglars are always clean-cut middle-aged white guys.

I can't wait to start seeing action movies where the terrorists are elderly white women because anything else would insult someone but no one cares about insulting old white ladies.

I think the current trend of female action movie heroes is slightly ridiculous.

The use bows and arrows because, I suppose, guns are too masculine.

And the posters manipulate the positioning so that the short females get equal height with normal-size men.

Thanks for the unnecessary misogynistic intermission, R57. MRAs are almost as bad as the transtapo. Open the windows in your mommy's basement, incel, the fumes are going to kill you.

It’s one of the current rules of advertising, that if someone is doing something wrong in a commercial, the person has to be portrayed by a white actor. That avoids promoting racial or ethnic stereotypes.

[quote] And the posters manipulate the positioning so that the short females get equal height with normal-size men.

They do that with the miniature actor Tom Cruise too.

[quote] MRAs are almost as bad as the transtapo

R58 What? Magnetic resonance angiography is as bad as what?

OP- You're an idiot. A lot of us don't even watch tv anymore. MANY people just use a streaming device on their tv or computer and those people that watch broadcast tv fast forward the commercials.

Well if what you suggest is true, R62, a thousand corporations across the country are throwing BILLIONS of dollars away every month.

So, I don't think what you suggest is true.

[quote] And the posters manipulate the positioning so that the short females get equal height with normal-size men. They do that with the miniature actor Tom Cruise too.

The head of Matt Damon was manipulated in the posters for some of the Bourne movies so that he looked a bluish shade of Adjacent-African-American.

R61, MRA = Men's Rights Activist = Incel

In that case, R65, the opposite of a "Men's Rights Activist" is someone who wants movie posters with 5 feet tall females and 6 feet tall males.

R66...huh? No, the opposite of an MRA is someone who doesn't turn everything into an attack on women and doesn't see putting women in the front-and-center position on a movie poster for a movie they star in as a threat to their already inverted and never used dick.

The trolls that accuse someone of being MRA and incels are so fucking tiring. Its a way to shut down an argument before you can even have one by trying to belittle or shame someone. It's pathetic.

R68, there's no argument when the MRA moron just injects himself in a thread to go off-topic to attack women for no fucking reason. It's not an argument, it's an invasion. But, of course, you know that because you sound just like one.

The funny thing is the commercials are far more diverse than real life. I mean does anyone have an integrated, interracial friend group, especially as one gets older? It is not racist but here in NYC neighborhoods are very, very segregated. People really stick with their own in general and t here is nothing wrong with that.

Even when the navy comes in during Fleet Week, the black sailors walk around with other black sailors and the white sailors walk around with other white sailors.

[quote] The head of Matt Damon was manipulated in the posters for some of the Bourne movies so that he looked … Adjacent-African-American.

Well, we have wokeism to thank for the career of John David Washington who unlike his daddy Denzel can't act to save his life.

TV Commercials should feature specimens like this?

R69 Yes, his comment was unnecessary in this thread but he didn't "attack" any women. Goodness! Can you even sense your over-reaction?

Shove a dynamite stick up your snatch and do the world a favor fucking cunt r58

[quote] there's no argument when the MRA moron just injects himself in a thread to go off-topic to attack women for no fucking reason. It's not an argument, it's an invasion. But, of course, you know that because you sound just like one.

listen cunt you can swing your snatch over to Roxane Gay's Twitter and post there instead of hanging out here.

[quote]The funny thing is the commercials are far more diverse than real life. I mean does anyone have an integrated, interracial friend group, especially as one gets older? It is not racist but here in NYC neighborhoods are very, very segregated. People really stick with their own in general and t here is nothing wrong with that.

It is pretty funny, and it's so over-the-top now. Every group of friends on everything looks like a UN meeting now.

[quote]I mean does anyone have an integrated, interracial friend group, especially as one gets older?

Yes but apparently you don't because you never bothered to leave your neighborhood and meet people.

[quote]It is not racist but here in NYC neighborhoods are very, very segregated. People really stick with their own in general and t here is nothing wrong with that.

How would you know? You don't even go outside?

[quote] The head of Matt Damon was manipulated in the posters for some of the Bourne movies so that he looked … Adjacent-African-American.

That's blueish at R71?

I worry about Flo and Jamie.

R74, see R75 and R76. You can smell these MRA fuckers from a mile off. I knew exactly who they were from that one earlier comment. People that go out of their way to denigrate women in a random thread do so with intent and they are completely transparent about it because they are so fucking stupid.

R79 Next thing you know we'll have an internet debate over whether Matt Damon is tinted blue or gold and white.

r81 stop being such a stupid hysterical cunt

Every bloody advert now is dark skinned yet BLM still screams they don’t get screen time. Scratches head. They have a whole network for “blacks only” yet they say they’re not repped on the tele, I literally do not understand this.

R8 They know what they are doing and are helping create more “snow queens” and in 80-100 years lowering a certain population to well under 10 percent, it’s very calculated.

There will never be another category at any awards show without at least two black people because if they only have one they'll be accused of tokenism.

[quote] Next thing you know we'll have an internet debate over whether Matt Damon is tinted blue or gold and white.

It's all for you, R82!

Who the hell watches commercials these days?

r81, if straight women like you are continually outraged by what people post here, then why do you come here? Is it just your love of fucking over gay people?

R79 The word 'blueish' does not occur in R71.

Moron at R89 doesn't even know what a lesbian is.

r91, unlike you, a lesbian is a woman who is not straight, you lying, dishonest bitch.

R84 please provide your source for BLM ever saying anything about television casting. You just pick one recognizable Black organization and ascribe any sleight or shortcoming real or imagined on your chosen boogeyman, BLM.

You are so racist you can’t even be bothered differentiating entire organizations with unrelated concerns like some ignorant elderly who thinks everyone younger than themselves is a Millenial.

R92, you aren't even making sense at this point. You're just a troll. I'm a gay woman. We are kind of known to stick up for women. It's kind of our thing. Maybe you're just the first gay male incel who feels bad because literally no one in the world wants anything to do with you.

New TV commercials strive to create 30 second situation comedies to make us pay attention.

Men are used as the butt of their humor for most of these adverts.

r94, you’re such a fucking liar.

I love the interracial families where the kids don't match. It's too funny.

R96, stow it!

This reminds me of an old It's Always Sunny scene:

As a NY theatre actor I can tell you that the majority of current castings are for POC. Great for my POC friends. Bad for me.

I seriously don’t understand how companies can get away with discrimination in casting. Don’t employment anti-discrimination laws apply to acting like they do with other jobs?

[quote]As a NY theatre actor ...

We're talking about commercials, Rose!

R100 I feel that with theatre it’s 1) colorblind casting in roles that had traditionally been white and inclusive casting in the chorus. With TV advertisers, it’s a ruse to demonstrate they represent the real America. The former I have more respect for, the latter is chasing dollars. But yes, my original post was intended to get the two cents of people like you who are clearly feeling it, so thank you.

Inclusion should mean minorities are included in the percentage they represent in the population. Pretending blacks are 50% of the population is downright peculiar. And so many other minorities are totally ignored.

R104 It’s looked upon as reparations for slavery.

TV commercials are reparations for slavery? How come they never show any native American actors then? They're owed reparations.

^^I thought all the casinos and tax-free cigs were the reparations for them.

R106 Native Americans don’t have as many SAG or AFTRA cards. Plus, good representation is hard to come by on the reservation.