Wednesday, July 18, 2007

I Can’t Place the Name but the Blackface is Familiar….

In my craven effort to revive my moribund posting practices, here’s a bit of trivia you may find amusing, or depressing, or amupressing perhaps is the word I wish existed to describe how you may feel about this:

DARKIE!  For years, merely a crude racial epithet - but it’s also a delicious and nutritious asian toothpaste!  but you didn’t need to go to the mysterious orient to get it - it was being sold here on the very streets of this our America, where I’ve seen it several times at the big asian markets in my ‘hood.  It was offensive and demeaning, but also sort of pathetic.  “Darkie” toothpaste?  Really?  You think that’s gonna get me to use your prophalyxis cream?  I think not.*

Well now it seems a New World Order has stepped in.  The brand was bought by Palmolive or somebody and, despite deep penetration into the asian milieu (sounds hottter than it is), they changed the name.  In english, anyway.  Now it’s Darlie!  and the black dude on the label - he’s ambigufied!  No problems here, officer!

However, it seems the original art still lives - in Japan - with an even more offensive name!  I can’t even begin to describe what “mouth jazz” evokes for me.  This is a family blog.  I’m just saying - I’m sticking with Crest.  I don’t know why that’s a good name for toothpaste but at least I don’t want to slap the tube every time I see it.  And for a tubeslapper like me, that’s saying something. 

(* and disappeared.  the punchline to an existential joke about - whom?)

I love the mouth jazz. But it must be an asian thing… some cultural thing that I am totally missing. Black men or even jazz men or the hint at music in my mouth doesn’t make me want to brush my teeth. Not that “crest” is tricking me into mistaking hygiene for a vacation, but at least crest sounds all sterile and possibly medical. I have no idea.

what I’m reading on various sites is that the original idea was to suggest that the contrast between dark skin and gleaming dental enamel indicated that african-heritage teeth were whiter than those in the pieholes of less robustly-melanized racial subgroups.  I think it’s because of all that damn coffee I’ve been drinking and using as a mouthwash, personally.  On the other hand, “Mouth Jazz” just sounds like the consequences of oral sex to me.  there, I said it.  writing in comments makes me free!

I’ve seen that Darkie toothpaste before and been appalled—much as I was by the Sheeny brand nose-hair trimmer and the Scotsman brand unopenable change purse.

By the by, my man, I think the more effective way to slip an “amusing-depressing” hybrid into the Zeitgeist (and I know that’s what you’re after, you old Zeitgeist-slipper) is with the slightly more mellifluous compound “Demusing.”

And I THINK that existential joke was about that drunken fart who was just as shlossed as Schlegel.  Therefore it is.

glickster you old fishwife, “demusing” is exactly what I would have written had I thought of it.  It rather evokes Margaret Dumont to me, with all her outraged hilarity, and also carries shades of sad thoughtfulness - musing, but “de”.  Good work.

and yes, it’s a Descartes joke.  all prizes have been claimed.  Everybody else, come back for next post to experience new and unimagined realms of demusement!

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