Africa Is a Country

Car Commercials and Primitive Peoples

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

Car Commercials and Primitive Peoples

By
Tom Devriendt

It could have been just another dull TV ad featuring an Inca boy, Maori warriors, or Maasai dancers–heck, why not throw them all in there–and filed as such in the archives of car-plows-through-exotic-river-bed commercials.

But then we find out through this making-of clip “no Indian was hurt during the shoot” (around the 3:00 mark: “…nenhum índio foi ferido na filmagem”). So, now this commercial becomes something else. It becomes a reminder of Brazil’s past and present fraught with racial discrimination and we forget what the ad was trying to sell.

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