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In this IO I will discuss an extract from the 1970s McDonald’s ad campaign “We Do It All for You” by Tom Burrel, and an extract from the titular short story of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s 2009 short story anthology “The Thing Around Your Neck”, with relation to the global issue of shallow, stereotypical and harmful representations of minority groups in media causing further damage to these communities. The work and body of work show inverse approaches to representation – where the McDonald’s campaign uses linguistic and visual devices to present a highly sanitised, tokenistic summary of African American culture, Adichie’s use of linguistic devices heightens her focus on individual experiences to create a much broader and more representative cross-section of Nigerian stories. My literary extract from The Thing Around Your Neck represents an exceedingly sincere struggle of a Nigerian immigrant to the United States. The protagonist, Akunna is made to feel as a spectacle in America, creating an intensely isolating mood, which is then imposed on the reader in Adichie’s unique use of 2nd person perspective. For the duration of the story, the reader is one with Akunna, and is made to feel as she feels, thus engendering a profound sense of empathy for the character and, by extension, others in similar positions. Using 2nd person perspective further serves to reverse the predominance of African stereotypes to highlight the absurdity of summarising cultures to a few defining aspects, exemplified predominantly in the extract’s opening lines: “You thought everybody in America had a car and a gun; your uncles and aunts and cousins thought so, too. Right after you won the American visa lottery, they told you: In a month, you will have a big car. Soon, a big house. But don’t buy a gun like those Americans”. As the story’s opening lines, they serve to introduce one of the story’s pivotal themes: the American Dream, or American lifestyles as viewed through their surface-level representation, demonstrating the perceived development of status in Adichie’s use of accumulation in “…a big car. Soon, a big house”. The ignorant questions Akunna is bombarded with later in the extract are fuelled by the same harmful representations perpetuated in the “We Do It All for You” campaign, which are intensified in their impact by Adichie’s relentless syntax, whether curt, snappy questions as demonstrated in line 25: “All of it stands up? How? Why? Do you use a comb?”, or long, breathless sentences devoid of punctuation: “They asked where you learned to speak English and if you had real houses back in Africa and if you’d seen a car before you came to America”. The unrelenting dehumanisation of Akunna would force a white reader in a position that would otherwise be alien, thus attuning them to their own potential ignorance and prompting internal reflection. This then incites the seeking of further education and, at a larger scale, the beginning of deconstructing cultural and systemic biases in the treatment of racial minorities. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s greater anthology is written to share Nigerian stories with a western audience, who would likely otherwise be far removed from such perspectives. Representation is similarly demonstrated in The Thing Around Your Neck’s other stories, where the evidently ubiquitous nature of American media over its own in Nigeria causes a reverence of western features and attributes, such as in Cell One with Nnambia – “Hey! Madam, why did you waste your fair skin on a boy and leave the girl so dark? What is a boy doing with all this beauty?”. Adichie’s choice of medium, that being a short story anthology, inherently allows for far greater diversity in storytelling with interconnected themes which assist the work in feeling cohesive. Adichie further plays with perspective in the greater text, such as to create a dissociative, removed feeling through writing as though in 1st person, while maintaining the use of 3rd person pronouns as in “A Private Experience.” Use of formal features in this manner brings an otherwise unseen depth to her characters, creating a pervasive mood which subtly influences the reader’s interaction with the characters. The diversity in written perspective inherently belies the diversity in the stories’ perspectives, providing a hugely representative curation of Nigerian stories which contrast strongly the one-dimensional depiction from We Do It All for You. The non-literary extract I have chosen from “We Do It All for You” exemplifies a number of the most egregious prejudices amplified in the larger body of work. The campaign portrays a typical nuclear family conversing with a fifth person, sitting in the behind booth, likely extended family or a family friend. This prominent character interaction, in conjunction with using a McDonald’s restaurant for mise-en-scene amplifies the setting as a meeting place, exemplifying the campaign’s focus on evoking a social mood. Ergo, the company superficially aims to simulate the real solidarity and communal nature of black communities to create a hollow sense of relation for the purpose of profit. A highly saturated, somewhat childish, colour palette is used which amplifies the patronising, idealist nature of Black America as portrayed in the advertisement. They further omit any mention of real Black issues as to make the campaign as safe and accessible as possible, avoiding challenging, and potentially losing the patronage of their preexisting white consumer-base. The advertisement’s text prominently features colloquial language, specifically that which mimics the sound of African American Vernacular English (or AAVE) most evident in their overuse of ‘g-dropping’. The shallow nature of this language use demonstrates the company’s removal from actual African American culture, and further, how little they attempt to understand (Lenika Cruz, 2015). The selected extract even goes so far as to advertise not needing to get dressed up and no tipping as selling points, referencing stereotypes of African Americans as poor and lazy in a strikingly overt manner. These features pervade the larger body of work, such as the overuse of colloquial language and saturated colour palette. An important facet of the campaign is its exclusive focus on men, the few women featured acting as a background character or accessory to the male lead(s). Vitally, the subjects of the advertisements are only depicted in blue-collar jobs, such as construction or postal-workers, fields in which Black individuals are stereotypically predominant and which play on stereotypes of Black people’s being uneducated. The focus on masculinity is a vital facet of this campaign, as put by Waldo Johnson and Jonah Norwitt (2022), “White men created the image of Black men as that of child, not a man, and as a body, not a mind. In short, just as femininity is the opposite of masculinity, African American masculinity is yet another contrast necessary for White men’s own self-image”. In recontextualising the campaign through this lens, it becomes clear that the frequency of masculinity in the campaign serves to be a spectacle, and, in guise of positive representation, provides an opportunity for a white audience to derive entertainment without need for deeper thought. The corporation’s further lack to acknowledge any meaningful racial issues is also particularly tasteless, thus making it exceedingly clear that they merely aimed to increase their profits and keep up with the times, rather than provide meaningful representation or incite change (Lenika Cruz, 2015). The effect of this goes beyond simple misrepresentation. In depicting this vision of a society free of racism, full of happy, carefree African Americans enjoying hamburgers, it detracts from the perceived importance of these issues in the public eye. Such a depiction then further serves to undermine the real struggles for racial equality were very much ongoing and persist to this day. While both media focus on Black experiences, the disparity in intention translates directly into the representation’s quality. As demonstrated both the work and body of work, the struggles of marginalised communities are directly interlinked with their individual experiences, and to ignore this in the mere tokenistic pursuit of profit results in a shallow façade of social change. Although representation is immensely important in the deconstruction of cultural biases towards the represented group, without thoughtful consideration it merely reinforces these views, actively harming the cause it claims to support.