ImageCourtesy: financialexpress.com
Kalyan Jewellers is a brand with which everyone associates Aishwarya Rai Bachchan`s face. She being its ambassador, gets featured in all its advertisements. But, the ad poster which they released recently in a leading daily, wasn`t received well as it was accused to have promoted child slavery. The accusatory fingers, undoubtedly, were pointed towards Aishwarya before giving it a second thought or knowing the true situation.
The poster showed Aishwarya as an aristocrat, rich woman sitting cozily and in the same poster, at the back was standing a weak, small boy holding an umbrella as a shed over her. Now, this picture of a tiny boy was the sole reason for causing a whole controversy and Ash being blamed. The main aim behind showing such a scene was just to give it an ancient touch, the team wanting to show their creativity.
But soon, this ‘creative’ idea was highly disdained by a group of social activists who put up an open letter clearly addressed to Aishwarya on scroll.in media website. What they said via their letter was, “In the advertisement you appear to be representing aristocracy from a bygone era – bejeweled, poised and relaxing while an obviously underage slave-child, very dark and emaciated, struggles to hold an oversize umbrella over your head.
We wish to convey our dismay at the concept of this advertisement, and that you have, perhaps unthinkingly, associated with such a regressive portrayal of a child to sell a product. While advertisers routinely use fantasy images to sell products, they must surely desist from using images that condone, legitimize, normalize, or build desirable fantasy around slavery or servitude of any kind, including child slavery or child servitude. Further, the extremely fair color of your skin (as projected in the advertisement) contrasted with the black skin of the slave-boy is obviously a deliberate “creative” juxtaposition by the advertising agency, and insidiously racist.
We are fully aware that yours is an advertisement selling jewellery through creating a fantasy/desire, and not a portrayal of reality. Yet, advertisements and visuals are a critical part of our socio-cultural-psychological ecosystem and these ecosystems can either help create conditions in our mind that will foster positive social change or work against it. So, in this context, what is the social change we want?”
Although, the major, grave societal issues which they have put forth using their letter as a medium are absolutely true and acceptable. But the fact that they blamed Ash for promoting slavery was totally unsatisfactory. Because, when the picture was shot originally, it didn`t consist of any child holding an umbrella for her, and further, the image was edited by the creative team, about which Ash had no idea. She reverted back to the social activists` team, and her strong reply which was released by her publicist stated, “On the onset we would like to thank you on drawing our attention to the observation of the perception of the advertisement. Here is an attachment of the shot taken by somebody during the shoot.
The final layout of the ad is entirely the prerogative of the creative team for a brand. However shall forward your article as a viewpoint that can be taken into consideration by the creative team of professional working on the brand visual communication. Thank you once again.”
On twitter too, the ad received the tweets stated against it showing the disapproval of twitterati. Taking all these oppositions into consideration, the creative team has finally taken the wise decision of pulling down this particular advt. campaign.
But it is really difficult to comprehend, that up to what extent it is correct to position Ash in the allegations when actually she was at no fault. Have Indians really got used to this mentality where they accuse someone innocent rather than alleging the faulty ones? One can surely make that out from the fresh example of India`s World Cup defeat where everyone accused Virat`s girlfriend Anushka just because he was not able to prove himself on that day. It is really a high time now that Indians change their overall perspectives, study the matter before objecting it and accuse the real criminal rather than following a blind-leading-the-blind policy!
Tags: Aishwarya Rai Bachchan
