Groupama and the poison of racism - Pepe Reina in racially stereotypical advert

For background to this article please read:
http://leejasper.blogspot.com/2012/03/obv-campaigns-successfully-to-ban.html



The international insurance company Groupama and Liverpool and Spain goalkeeper Pepe Reina have both shamed themselves in the making of the racially stereotypical television advert that depicts Reina meeting a Black “tribe” in a jungle scene, which is both racist and homophobic.


Groupama commercial

 For centuries, Black people have been forced to endure and live with a viscerally poisonous caricature. History is replete with examples of crude and negative racist stereotypes depicting Africans as cannibalistic savages. In this imagery, Africans are usually portrayed as subhuman, violent and dangerous simpletons usually wearing grass skirts with the obligatory bone through the nose.

The other powerful image is the persistent White association of Black people with monkeys. The inference being Black people are more closely related to apes than to modern man. The cultural resonance of these types of stereotype are so powerful, I bet even as you read this you can see these mental pictures in your head.

There is a view within the UK’s Black communities that we are increasingly expected to laugh at such examples of racism in the name of tolerance. God forbid that Black people should react or publically complain should they have the temerity to do so, their complaint will be routinely dismissed as “having a chip on your shoulder”.

If they are public figures they will be lambasted by sections of the printed press and will undoubtedly face an avalanche of racism from the UK’s growing online Twitter Tea Party tendency.

As you would expect, Black people are naturally reluctant to collude with our own oppression in a society t
hat arrogantly and falsely assumes that Britain is a “post-racist society”. Such denial is the stock response to any accusation of racism in the UK.

To date, neither Liverpool FC, nor Reina has issued a statement on this issue. No doubt they are in denial, hoping this issue will blow over. The club has made that mistake before. It is bizarre that they seem to be determined to repeat the mistakes of the past in relation to this latest incident.

Their reported stance can be summarised as ‘what the player does off the field is nothing to do with the club’. This, of course, is complete and utter nonsense and reinforces the growing perception of LFC as a club that is failing to take racism seriously.

Here is some free advice for LFC: Ensure Pepe Reina gives an immediate explanation and apology. As a gesture of remorse and by way of repairing the damage done, Reina should donate the fee he received for the advert to an anti-racism charity. End of.

What starts off as Reina’s extra-curricular earner or a ‘bit of fun’, ends up as racial chanting on the terraces.
The persistence of racism in sport and advertising affects us all. In particular, Black footballers, Black fans, Black politicians and activists and communities are all forced to endure the ignominy of such ignorant portrayals and the on-going right-wing backlash that follows any attempt to raise the issue of racism. And yet what children see players doing today, they do on the streets tomorrow.

The fact that these cruel and archetypal racist stereotypes persist to this day is significant. Such is the all-pervading power of racism and the prevalence of graphic, racist propaganda dressed up as advertising. These derogatory images of Africans are globally recognised and instantly understood by millions across the world.

In both Europe and the UK, Black people have faced serious abuse and at times, deadly violence when faced with groups of White youth infected by such imagery. Such stereotypes are grossly offensive and extremely dangerous.

The last few months has seen the issue of racism in football splashed on the front and back pages of the British press. Liverpool Football Club’s disgraceful handling of the Luis Suarez affair saw a combination of racial abuse and ungentlemanly conduct inflame racial tension on the terraces. Black leaders from Liverpool and across the country wrote in protest at the clubs action, describing Liverpool FC's inept handling of the Suarez matter as “inciting racism”.

Prime Minister David Cameron called a summit of the resurgent phenomena of racism in the national game. As the economy continues to stall and unemployment rise, there is growing anecdotal evidence that the violent racism and bigotry is on the rise across Europe and the UK.

As we approach the European Championships in Eastern Europe, whose record on tackling extreme, violent racism is abysmal, the Football Association, English clubs and FIFA need to send a strong and unambiguous message to players and clubs that racism will not be tolerated in the beautiful game.

My advice is that Black football fans should not attend the EURO 2012 games without absolute assurances from the UK and FIFA that they will not be subject to racial violence and or abuse.
Liverpool Football Club needs to support the efforts of the FA to challenge racism and take real action to provide a national lead in tackling racism.

Lee Jasper

OBV campaigns successfully to ban the racist Pepe Reina Ad

(From OBV 28 Feb 2012 www.obv.org.uk)

Another Liverpool player Pepe Reina in race row

We sometimes forget to our peril the battles we have fought here in the UK against racism and racial stereotyping.

Most of the readers of this article will not remember seeing the type of derogatory stereotyping in cinema and TV advertising, which at the time was not only common place but won awards and acclaimed fame. For example, some 40 years ago the cigarette company Benson and Hedges commissioned the nations number one advertising company Saatchi and Saatchi to make a film for the Silk Cut brand. So prestigious was this account that mini-films with huge budgets would be made. One film in particularly paraded the British Film the Zulu’s.

‘ At the height of the Mbongo uprising a garrison of 80 were surrounded by 30,000 hostile warriors’, Queue a blackened up actor with a plumy English voice dressed as Zulu warrior extolling the virtues of the cigarette brand before threatening to put the English warriors in the ‘pot’.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6Kc5QQ6Pv8

Many of us thought these types of videos would be consigned to the museum of very bad taste. Not so. Today in Spain Groupama Seguros –Insurance company- are running a similar distasteful ad in a tribal scenario in which once again a blackened up ‘African king’ speaking in native tongue is presented with the -and you couldn’t make this up-Liverpool and Spanish international goalkeeper Pepe Reina- Reina in Spanish means Queen. So the joke is the African –eye rolling homosexual –King chooses his Queen, Pepe Reina, who looks to the camera for help to check his insurance.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpmZPeZbI1Y

All very funny if you live in the dark ages and you have no idea or don’t care just how offensive this is. But I’m afraid that’s Spain and much of Latin America too. Remember, it wasn’t too long ago that the former Spanish football manager Louis Aragones  was outraged, and refused to pay a paltry fine for calling Thierry Henry, for no good reason, ‘ Negro de  mierda’. ‘ …Black  shit’. More recently the Uruguay President defended Luis Suarez , for saying, among other comments, ‘No hablo con negros’ . I don’t speak to Black people’.
Despite these shockingly disrespectful ads and comments much of Spain and most of Latin America would argue that there is no racism in their countries. Well I guess on one level if you don’t acknowledge it, you have nothing to confront. But one can only be surprised at Liverpool's  Pepe Reina, who has lived in the UK for a long and is acutely aware of how his  football club has been  embroiled in an unnecessary and protracted  race row.
OBV has contacted the company via their publicist to make an official complaint.
info.wexterbox.escomunicacion@groupama.es
I guess it just goes to show just how far we have come here in the UK.
Simon Woolley

 OBV force Spanish multinational to pull racist ad

(From OBV 29th Feb 2012 www.obv.org.uk)

OBV have learned that Spanish multinational insurance company, Groupama, which has a subsidiary here in the UK, has pulled one of its adverts currently showing in Spain that depicts Black people, in a jungle scenario as stupid, backward, animalistic homosexuals.

Sadly, however, the group go on to say,

“Groupama Seguros does not consider that this advert contains either offensive nor any discriminatory content.”

The advert which stars Liverpool and Spanish international goalkeeper Pepe Reina, plays on his surname Reina-which is translated to Queen in English. In the ad the blackened up chief chooses Reina, the Queen, as his partner in a lustful manner.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpmZPeZbI1Y

 OBV’s Director Simon Woolley said,

“I’m shocked on so many levels. Firstly, how would the Spanish feel if the English stereotyped Spanish people as backward, stupid, and animalistic homosexuals? Secondly, what does this say about Pepe Reina? The Liverpool goalkeeper has lived and worked in the UK for nearly a decade, does he think it’s ok characterise Black people this way? Does he think his Black team mates will laugh at his joke?”

Given that Liverpool football club is trying to move forward from the Suarez affair, it is a shame that another one of their players has caused offence, by appearing in an advert that seems to come from a bygone era. Those who are old enough might remember those despicable Benson and Hedges Silk Cut Zulu ads of the 1970’s."

(Update from OBV www.obv.org.uk March 1 2012)

There has been a lot of heat generated from OBV complaining about a Spanish TV ad starring Pepe Reina. Many bloggers on national websites have been outraged that our organisation should say, ‘this demeaning portrayal of Black people in Africa is not acceptable’. Many comments have been very abusive. But few writers have taken a step back and tried to objectively unpick and understand what is being played out in regards to this ad and what it means in Spain and here in the UK

Pete Jenson writing for the Independent has had a go. Whilst you might not agree with everything he says he has nonetheless written a very thoughtful piece.
Simon Woolley


'It is Alf Garnett humour, and Spanish still think it's funny
In 2004, when Spanish club Getafe's supporters were accused of racist abuse, their president, Angel Torres, offered to make his players black up for a game to prove the club was not racist. He was being serious.
It should be pointed out that Torres also proposed that any supporter found making racially abusive comments be banned for life. His intentions were good but, seen through the eyes of people with a different cultural and socio-political history, his idea was hideous.
Pepe Reina's advert for insurance is the kind of thing that would have been screened on British television about 20 years ago, probably while the Alf Garnett series In Sickness and In Health was airing on the other channel. Today anyone coming up with the idea at a brainstorming session would have been getting their coat before you could say "crude racial stereotype".
The question is: should the Spanish be allowed to define and redefine their own perimeters of what is and is not acceptable, taking on board the opinions and complaints of their own ethnic minorities, or do groups from outside the country's borders have a duty to tell them what is and is not acceptable?
In the advert the Liverpool goalkeeper Reina is introduced to the king of an African tribe. The person presenting him to the king says: "Great white man – Pepe Reina." Then the king says something which is translated to Reina as: "The boss says 'you Reina [meaning queen in Spanish], he Rey'" (king in Spanish). The king then says something else and when Reina asks: "And what does that mean?" the interpreter shakes his head worryingly and a spearholding tribesman puts a crown on to Reina's head and shuffles him forward towards the king – the inference being that he will have to marry the king. Reina utters the advert's catchphrase: "Me siento seguro", which translates as: "I feel secure".' The word seguro also means insurance.
Whether the ad for the multi-national insurance firm Groupama really depicts black people as "animalistic homosexuals", as Operation Black Vote suggests, is highly debatable. It's Benny Hill humour with a silly play on the fact that Reina's name means queen in Spanish. The tribal king is the fool in the story – in another of the adverts from the same series the joke is on the Spanish, with Reina sat on a coach being asked for his autograph by a fan, who turns out to be the coach driver who has left his mother at the wheel – Reina utters his "I feel secure" catchphrase as the coach veers across the road. Women drivers could take offence at that one.
Of course, women drivers have never been enslaved and persecuted, and that maybe is the part that Spanish culture still does not get. Should Reina have got it, with his years of playing in England? The behind-the-scenes shots of him filming the advert have him joking with the black actors as he struggles to say his lines without laughing. He will be as surprised as the Spanish TV audience that the commercial has caused so much outrage beyond the country's borders.'

Pete Jenson writing for the Independent



LINKS:

Reina leaps to defence of Suarez - December 22, 2011 - Liverpool goalkeeper Jose Reina believes striker Luis Suarez has been "crucified'' over his racism charge.

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/news/story/_/id/1000197/liverpoo%27s-pepe-reina-leaps-to-defence-of-luis-suarez?cc=5739

Anti-racism campaigners attack Pepe Reina over 'stereotyped' African tribe advert

http://www.mirrorfootball.co.uk/news/Anti-racism-campaigners-attack-Pepe-Reina-over-stereotyped-African-tribe-advert-article872450.html

Pepe Reina in racism storm: A Spanish TV Commercial featuring Liverpool keeper Pepe Reina has been banned following complaints of racism and homophobia. http://www.insidespanishfootball.com/pepe-reina-in-racism-storm/

To see the extent of the internet coverage of this issue worldwide, please check out: http://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_sports/view/1186384/1/.html&hl=en&geo=us