Isn'tJohnny Depp part Native American??
edit: yeah unless his grandmother lied
edit: yeah unless his grandmother lied
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Dior releases ad for 'Sauvage’ a Native American-themed cologne, starring Johnny Depp
- Thread starter Tabaxi
- Start date
I literally thought the Sauvage campaign with Depp from a few years back was parody for the longest time -- I truly, actually assumed it was an SNL sketch. This just takes it to a whole other level of not just shitty, but wrong.
There is nothing there to confirm it. He made a claim years ago with nothing to back it up, and no tribe backs it.
Eau Sauvage is a different fragrance. It's existed since the 60s from Dior.
Sauvage is a newer scent inspired by the original's name, but is not the same nor a replacement for it. It is several years old.
This ad in this thread is for Sauvage, le Parfum. Which is a recent sub-fragrance of Sauvage from a few years ago.
Both Sauvage and Sauvage le Parfum have always had Johnny Depp as the face.
Wait, what?
You quite specifically equivocated Savage and Wild. That statement doesn't leave room for the "differences in connotations and associations."
Nope. He's as "Native American" as Elizabeth Warren. Fuck, even Warren could stick to one tribe.
For some reason the part that I find most ridiculous about this whole ad is the random Disney-Pocahontas-like supermodel Indian girl.
Dior Sauvage and Depp's involvement with it are nothing new, pretty sure I used to see it quite a bit on ESPN and other sports programs at least a year ago. And there's nothing inherently wrong with either.
The
This. Pretty sure I saw the shorter ads quite a few times on ESPN and the like.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either the name or Depp's involvement, it's this particular application of both that's fucked.
The
This. Pretty sure I saw the shorter ads quite a few times on ESPN and the like.
There's nothing inherently wrong with either the name or Depp's involvement, it's this particular application of both that's fucked.
Eau Sauvage has been on the market since 1966.
Sauvage, repped by Depp, and only related by name with Eau Sauvage, has only been on the market since 2015
Literally came into the thread to post this.Surprised nobody has posted this yet...
Oof, that's pretty bad. Is it possible they might have enough B-roll or environment shots to replace the native imagery?
It might be impossible to reschedule Depp again on short notice for reshoots, but they can recall a lot of the marketing posters and edit the video.
It might be impossible to reschedule Depp again on short notice for reshoots, but they can recall a lot of the marketing posters and edit the video.
Comes across as "savage", a longtime slur against Native Americans. It would be sort of like a Spanish company naming a perfume "Negro" (which means "black" in Spanish), then using native African tribesmen in an advertisement for it.
I think it refers to the nature, not the amerindians. Source : I'm french, and we always talk about "la nature sauvage", something like "wild nature" I guess. Of course there's the old "savages people" meaning, but I can't believe a huge company like Dior would be THIS tone deaf. I hope I'm right.
Where is the part that I said savage doesn't carry other associations?
Not quite as bad perhaps, but YSL's Opium perfumes have had some terrible and campaigns. No one seems to have made a fuss about this but I thought having an ad for a perfume called Black Opium featuring a white woman running around Chinese city is a bit tone deaf.
Edit: A pretty good write up on this here:
It does make me think that courting controversy is quite often a deliberate part of these campaigns.
Edit: A pretty good write up on this here:
It does make me think that courting controversy is quite often a deliberate part of these campaigns.
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The AP reports that allegedly Johnny Depp "was adopted as an honorary citizen of the Comanche Nation":
AP news said:
Nah, it's a disgusting slur here in Québec, only hardcore racists would argue otherwise.
'This ad was playing over and over again at the airport in Rome.
I mean it's pretty common for white people to claim some bit of native ancestry. It's certainly possible, but irrelevant to every day life.
You never stated it doesn't carry other connotations, but you did equivocate savage and wild by suggesting "wild" is "what savage means". It's not "what savage means" when savage has a lot stronger negative connotations to it which are part of its meaning.
It's like saying "hate" and "dislike" mean the same thing because they both refer to a distaste in something, while ignoring that one is significantly stronger than the other.
Can't speak for the Québécois so I'll take your word for it, but in France at least - I'm French -, the word sauvage does not automatically have a racist stink to it. If you use it as a noun (as in, un sauvage), then yeah, it absolutely is (see that thread not long ago about the Belgian festival with the horribly racist caricature of a "sauvage"); but if it's used as an adjective (which is how I take it in this case), then it mostly means "wild", or "untamed" if you're talking about an animal. The word "wilderness", for instance, could be translated as "la nature sauvage" in French. I'd wager that, when it comes to perfume, the notion of being wild or untamed is the appeal. Not being a part of an indigenous people or something.
It's a bit like the difference between saying something "is shit" and something "is the shit" in English: the mere fact of changing the grammatical nature of the word gives it a completely different flavor, if not an altogether different meaning.
This is like saying "faggot" isn't bad because english people associate it with cigarettes.
Of course it has other practical meanings, doesn't take ANYTHING away from the fact that it is a known slur used againt natives in Canada.
I don't know what you think you were doing by "well acutally"ing me right there, but it's a terrible look that shows your ignorance more than anything.
Dude. I literally opened my post with "Can't speak for the Québécois so I'll take your word for it". By which I mean that the word might be differently loaded in Québec French and France French - wouldn't be the first time -, and that I'm unqualified to offer an opinion on the word as it is used and perceived in Québec because I'm not Québécois.
I was using this as a jumping point to talk about its use in another French-speaking country, without making a comment on how accurate or wrong your own explanation is. That said, I've seen other French-speaking people in the thread, statistically most likely French, have a reading similar to yours, and other, non-French-speaking people, genuinely wondering what the French word sauvage means and how it is used. I was just offering my own reading from a French perspective. That doesn't invalidate the fact that, yes, the noun sauvage is a slur in French; however, it does invalidate the notion that the word is necessarily insulting and cannot possibly be perceived differently. In France, in everyday speech, most people would use it as an adjective meaning "wild", not as a slur. That makes it differently loaded than the faux-equivalent English word "savage", which some English speakers might want to be aware of. Naming your perfume "Sauvage" doesn't carry quite the same racist baggage to a French speaker (in France, anyway) as naming it "Savage" would to an English speaker, because, unlike the French word, the English word is overwhelmingly used and perceived in a racist manner. The only exception I can think of is when you give someone a figurative burn and someone else comments "that was savage".
Is it tone-deaf to advertise your perfume as "Sauvage" in the US and Canada (including, going by what you say, Québec) given how close it is to the English slur? Oh yes, you bet. I won't argue with anyone against that, because I literally work as a professional naming consultant, and part of my job is making sure that you don't choose product/company names which might have a negative connotation in some countries. But in France at least, I don't see it causing much of a fuss honestly. And that's not because we're flaming racists or anything - well, some of us are, sadly, as evidence by Le Pen's relative success -, but because sauvage is overwhelmingly used to describe wild life in France. That's it.
(Side question to English people: do y'all really use the word "faggot" for "cigarette" all that often anymore? I know "fag" used to be/is used that way, but what about now? I'd imagine that, in 2019, it's slowly being dropped because the homophobic slur is just too well-known at this point, but I wouldn't know for sure. I don't live in the UK)
User warned: unnecessary hostility
Yeah but it's colonists from France that gave us this horrible legacy, you can read up about you culture's horrible history before french-splaining words to whitewash your shitty history.
"the english slur" fucking unreal, tu devrais être gêné de ton manque de connaissances de ce que ton pays a fait aux culture autour de la planète. Tes murs de texte puent le privilège et l'ignorance.
France has a horrible history of colonialism and racism, yes. You certainly won't hear me deny that. I do not have any kind of love for my country, and I hate nationalism and colonialism in general. When people tell me about the great legacy of, oh I don't know, Napoléon, I just roll my eyes hard. Which doesn't mean I have zero white privilege or semi-unconscious biases when it comes to those issues (all white people have those), but I fail to see how this particular instance is a blatant display of white privilege on my part.
On that note, I'm not interested in discussing further. You just double down on calling me ignorant and privileged when the only point I'm making is one of linguistic and regional differences in word usage. Keep misconstruing my posts as some kind of rationalization for colonialism and French apologism all you want, I'm not having that shit. You do you.
With Opium it certainly is they have a few adverts that have been banned as well as get flack regularly.
I think this issue is too close to me and I know too much about our history to have any kind of patience for any kind of pedantry regarding slurs directed towards the indigenous peoples.
I am sorry if I offended you, if there is one thing I would recommend you do is listen to native voices and hear out what they have to say on these kinds of issues.