Hasta La Creative!

Most of social media is now going nuts over a new ad from Dior, featuring Johhny Depp and a couple of Native Americans, one of whom is doing a traditional dance on a mountaintop in the sunset. While that actually looks really cool, the response to Dior’s original tweet (archive) was so strong that they have already deleted it. While Dior has sold “Sauvage” cologne with Depp in the desert before, the Native American element is new and coupled with the French word, people now saw the name as a slur.

Prior ad showed Depp leaving the city and driving out to the desert, where he ceremoniously buries all his jewellery and sheds the city look. The symbolism is that Depp is what the name implies: wild and free. 

Dior explained on Instagram, the ad features a Native American dancerand member of the Rosebud Sioux tribe who goes by Canku One Star, and he is performing the “Fancy War Dance that embodies all the modernity of the Native American culture.” The film, directed by filmmaker Jean-Baptiste Mondino, was made as a “close collaboration” between Dior and Native American consultants from the organization Americans for Indian Opportunity “in order to respect Indigenous cultures, values and heritage.”

This is the full ad. Like the previous commercials for Sauvage, Depp is rebelling alone in the American west, except here he riffs on his guitar instead of burying his jewellery, while gazing at the horizon in closeups or squinting at the burning sun. It may look cool, but I’ll always wonder if it smells like sweat.
 

Dior explains in their release that they were actively trying to avoid this current reaction:

“As soon as we began to evoke Native American imagery and symbols in this new film, the House of Dior, Jean-Baptiste Mondino and Johnny Depp immediately decided to contact Native American consultants who are enrolled citizens of the Comanche, Isleta and Taos Pueblos and the Pawnee Nation.” 

 

Their aim was to : 

“…moving away from clichés in order to avoid the cultural appropriation and subversion that so often taints images representing Native peoples. And so, from the script to the choice of locations via costume making and right down to casting, which they organized themselves, the AIO validated all the elements and symbols linked to Native American cultures.”

They failed, however, because no matter how many actual Native Americans were consulted and hired here, the viewer doesn’t know this just by looking at the ad, so Twitter did what twitter does best and had a fit.
 

What most complainers seem to have in common is that they had no idea the Dior cologne “Sauvage” has existed for many years with Depp as the frontman already. They are interpreting the name as a direct slur directed at Canku One Star, and the elusive young beauty who spies on Depp from behind tall grass. 

Due to the reactions, Dior has removed the campaign from all social media, and are cancelling the September media buy.
 

fr omg the real reason the outrage is flying over they’re head and everybody else’s is beyond me. like sauvage? seriously? why didn’t they just name it redskin!

— tina (@whee7n) August 30, 2019

Reasons why your outrage over the Dior Sauvage ad is invalid and ridiculous:

– Natives participated in the creation of the ad.
– Johnny Depp is part indigenous.
– They did not mock or make fun of the culture.
– It was a homage.
– And finally, the meaning of Sauvage: pic.twitter.com/eqAKDh94Cx

— ?haley? (@sparrabitch) August 30, 2019

Did adding the ‘u’ in Sauvage make this racism but with a French mustache

— Danie Darko (@daniecal) August 30, 2019

Possibly the most amazing thing about this “Sauvage” campaign is that they’re using abuser Johnny Depp as its primary spokesperson because of his “deep ties” to the Native American peoplehttps://t.co/R3kAs2LQLO pic.twitter.com/U8SKlCGh2S

— Jeff Yang (@originalspin) August 30, 2019

For those saying “Sauvage” means savage…if only we had an outlet to look up and translate words fast & efficiently. If only… pic.twitter.com/fJNEGCxMSM

— Comfortably Numb (@PettyBooRubble) August 30, 2019

Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have blocked adverts promoting a doctor’s book about vaginal health, sates the publisher KensingtonBooks. Several social media posts that were using the word “vagina” were rejected from the advertising networks on Facebook and Twitter. 

Numerous social media posts using the words ‘vaginal’ or ‘vagina’, advertising Dr Jennifer Gunter’s The Vagina Bible, were rejected. However, promoted content without terms like “vagina” and “vaginal health” were approved.

That has now become the social media campaign for the book, with the name they can’t even mention. Which is hilarious, because “vagina” has, with younger generations at least, become the catch-all term for everything downstairs be it labia majora, labia minora, cervix, vulva or even that cameltoe showing through your yoga pants. Vagina – which is a specific part and I’ll let the people who don’t know which part look it up – has lost pretty much all of it’s meaning, and dare I say, edge, with it. If an anatomical term even had an edge to begin with. We can say “penis” without anyone freaking out, right? We can also create hundreds of scantily clad porn-star accounts on Twitter that do nothing but spew out porn photos all day and spam-follow people, but ah, the word vagina is scary, I see.

We aren’t allowed to say the name of this book in the ad, but trust us you want it! https://t.co/71nkbWs8zP pic.twitter.com/SEqDIT9lG0

— Kensington Books (@KensingtonBooks) August 27, 2019

“We did not take action on Promoted Tweets from this account because of references to sexual organs, as those are permitted within our rules,” a Twitter spokesperson told BBC News

“The rejection of some of the promoted content was due to a combination of human error and violations, including the use of profanity and adult products.”

Just so you know my publisher is not allowed to use the word “vagina” to promote my book on @twitter. The image can have it, but they are not allowed to use “vagina” in the text.

Dear @jack,
Vagina is an anatomical term and not a “dirty” word.
Jen https://t.co/3bf6edZNQ8

— Jennifer Gunter (@DrJenGunter) August 27, 2019

Well, that’s Facebook’s and Twitter’s loss of advertising coin here, as the news about not being able to state the name of the book with travel quite far without having to be promoted.