ransacked to the waist, hounded under gales. of black hair, eyes burdened with longing, you are left behind, the lyre in your hand. fretted with the chords of the sea. - andrew miller
‘the farewell of telemachus and eucharis’ - jacques-louis david (1818)
in the 1699 french novel ‘les aventures de télémaque, loosely based on characters from the odyssey, the author fénelon describes how telemachus, the son of odysseus, fell passionately in love with the beautiful nymph eucharis. his duty as a son, however, required that he end their romance and depart in search of his missing father. this piece captures the ill-fated couple’s farewell. facing towards us, telemachus’s blue tunic falls open to reveal his naked torso. eucharis, seen in profile, encircles telemachus’s neck and gently rests her head upon his shoulder in resignation. In this way, jacques-louis david contrasts masculine rectitude with female emotion. source: the j paul getty museum.
This video from Netflix is a beautiful example of how the media landscape is increasingly putting interracial relationships on the mental radar.
The video If you don’t have time to watch the video (and I encourage you to do so), it’s about a couple who’s in a “Netflix open relationship”, being able to watch “whatever we want, whenever we want, with whoever we want,” as the woman teasingly explains her friend.
The camera cuts to the kitchen, where the guys are having the same conversation. This is when we learn that the pretty blonde in the open relationship has a Black boyfriend.
Her friend’s boyfriend is white, and he becomes agitated, telling the couple that “what you guys are doing is wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.” He gets up to leave, asking his girlfriend to come with him. But she thinks it “sounds kinda’ fun”, and decides to stay.
As the couple starts watching, with the newly convinced woman sitting snugly between them, the white boyfriend crouches down by the couch, begging: “Can I watch you guys watch?”
IR as the progressive option The video is beautiful in several ways. It doesn’t just normalize interracial relationships, it portrays them as something exciting, something progressive and open-minded people are in. The white boyfriend, on the other hand, is the butt of the joke, morally condemning the sexually liberated couple while begging for a backseat view of all the fun.
Netflix is hardly the first company to dip their toes in this particular water. “There’s no doubt that the incidence of these [interracial] commercials is at least double what it was five years ago,” as a professor of marketing told New York Times in 2018.
The influence of commercials One coupling in particular appears to be common in interracially minded commercials: Black men with white women.
This makes white nationalists furious, calling it a “War Against Whites in Advertising”. Of course, it isn’t a war against whites, but a war against an outdated concept of relationships.
“For the longest time, ads presented the typical American household as Caucasian, heterosexual, two children and two cars in the driveway,” as the professor of marketing told New York Times.
These commercials reflect a shift in family structures in the modern society, but they also help drive this shift. Commercials influence the way we live our lives; that’s what they’re designed to do.
The Netflix is advert is a knowing use of interracial and kink. The white insecure guy talking with the confident black guy who is around a foot taller than him, casually treating him as inexperienced and putting his hand condescendingly on his shoulder. When given the option of leaving with her insecure small boyfriend or staying with the confident and open interracial couple it can be no shock who she chooses. Then there is the knowing nod to how many insecure white men would like to ‘watch’ that. While done in an amusing light-hearted way, Netflix has ultimately just created a kink scenario of a white guy wanting watch his girlfriend in a threesome with a black man.
The theme as SW also points to is one of interracial sexual liberation. Of course featuring white women experiencing that with a black man. It is the most common pairing and often the one made most explicitly sexual.
It isn’t the first and won’t be the last advert to play into 'white guy watching’ a black guy with a white girl joke either.
Interracial is often portrayed as the progressive option as pointed out, the more exciting one that makes society more open.
Who doesn’t want steamy sex with your partner in a stylish (and affordable!) kitchen. Oh and of course for the steamy makeout session we will choose a white women with a black man. It seems that many companies take that as the best projection of that and the one they want their image associated with. Corporations aren’t impeded by morality, ultimately it shows that white women displaying sexual excitement for black men is popular for many markets. A confident black man has undeniable appeal.
Make sure you get some nice blinds to cover up your interracial love making. We wouldn’t want anyone peeking in like in other adverts now would we?
And ladies try to not make it *so* obvious at times! Yes that attractive and cool black man is there but it doesn’t mean you can go and grab him and feel his athletic body. Play it down just a little please. Maybe with enough convincing her boyfriend would be willing to open up the relationship as encouraged by the likes of Netflix. But I suspect some white fragility may make that take some time. In the meantime those desires will be expressed in advertisements and all kinds of popular media. Long gone are the times of a repressive culture that would not allow these depictions. Maybe the fears of those who once controlled it all are coming true in a way. The majority of people have progressed beyond those backwards attitudes, simply giving in to the desire for more.
Yess, this is the number of songs he had written. But just to follow the trend people repeatedly cover the same Tagore songs again and again. I am afraid of the fact that our next generation may lose the amazing songs of him amazing composition of Rabindranath Thakur. His books and music gave me the thought of life meaning of life. Nowadays relationships are toxic where one forces other to do something. But in one of his books I learned “ভালোবাসা খোলা আকাশের মত।” Independent doesn’t hold you back. We live in a generation that doesn’t have the beauty of talking, the beauty of appreciation. We live in a generation where people show more than needed, where people present themselves like talking in Bangla is a crime. Yes I am writing all these in English so that those who have problem to read and understand Bangla appreciate the fact they are Bangali and has a beautiful culture which has so many songs and thoughts. 2233 is the total songs of Rabindranath tagore and people hardly listen 22 songs. 80 years of his life which is full of arts and culture is being wasted just because of fools like us. We appreciate the singer Sanam’s cover of Tagore songs which is not even properly spoken. I hope modern musicians focus and fix this. If it is fusion then should be done in a proper way. Also Lalon didn’t only write খাঁচার ভিতর অচিন পাখি। Just because a band covered that we listen and sing the only Lalon song is that..
