Following up on yesterday's blog post about Axe's marketing genius, I'd like to give some thought to an article that I came across while researching Axe. The article belongs to a web site called Blackademics, and the title of the article is entitled Is Axe's "Dark Temptation" Really White Fetishization of Blackness?

This article recounts the commercial for Axe's Dark Temptation chocolate body spray, and discusses whether or not the portrayal in the commercial (whether intentional or unintentional) of a white man spraying on something that turns him into a chocolate man has to do with race. The author over at Blackademics wonders out loud if this transformation is representative of a notion of the the "clean" do-gooder white man being transformed into the "dirty" promiscuous black man. After a lengthy self-discussion, the author finally concludes that the commercial has no racial connotations, though he does admit to seeing allusions to the erotic association with "blackness."

I will give the author of the article credit for trying to take an academic approach to the idea of white fetishization of blackness, but to use an Axe commercial as a springboard for his soapbox was an attrocious misjudgement. To even suggest that Axe intended - even subconsciously - for spraying on their product to be akin to spraying on "blackness" in an attempt to be like the black man is a clear indication of some people looking for every excuse to inject race relations into a subject matter. The idea is silly to the say the least, and is just the kind of thinking that servers only to keep the black race living in the past rather than progressing towards the future.

Even Freud said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and when it comes to this commercial, you just have to take some things at face value. Women like chocolate. End of story. We don't have to bring race and fetishism into this discussion. Let it go.