Africa Is a Country

The Lost Bushmen

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

The Lost Bushmen

By
Sean Jacobs

It is still okay to create the most objectionable stereotypes about certain Africans and for it to be considered fine. This time: India.

Stills from the four ads for Parle Agro campaign.

An Indian soft drink company, Parle Agro, is marketing a new soft drink, called LMN, with a series of  5 TV commercial series titled “Lost Bushmen” set “… in the [Bushmen’s] natural habitat of the Kalahari Dessert.” Serious. Just watch. Here’s another one.  And one more.

They were proud to announce that they got inspiration for these objectionable stereotypes about the Bushmen from the film, “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” first made for the entertainment of white South African audiences under Apartheid and which became an international hit franchise in the 1980s, confirming just how widely held racist views of the Bushmen are held, but masking South African colonialism in Namibia.

And for all the claims of the filmmakers of the Indian commercials that “the Bushmen” were “specially flown in,” some of the actors seen in the videos (above and below) are clearly in black face (with cork-like black make-up and or hair pieces). They’re playing “Bushmen.” It also turns out the commercials were shot in “… in a barren region in the interiors of Thailand.”

These racist stereotypes are praised by ad industry types (particularly in India) as “hilarious” and “edgy.”

You really can’t make these things up.

 

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