Avril makes it complicated

We do not live in a post-racial age. We don’t even live in an age where cultural sensitivity is prevalent enough to avoid nasty episodes of racially-based offensiveness.

Whether by watching Paula Deen, Donald Sterling or Cliven Bundy, we’ve got a pretty good idea of what racism looks like in 2014.

But there are lesser, more contrived forms of it.

And if we needed a reminder, Avril Lavigne delivered it. Recently, the “Sk8r Boi” singer released a catchy new song called “Hello Kitty.”

Seemingly harmless, the song is bouncy and fluffy and declares that behind the “good girl” image of Hello Kitty is a bad girl. Nothing we haven’t seen from Katy Perry before.

The music video, on the other hand, is a different story.

Lavigne flounces around a candy shop in a cupcake skirt, backed up by robotic Asian women in a Tokyo-esque setting.

Asian images and stereotypes are played up to such an extent that Billboard called the video “an embarrassment in any language.”

Lavigne herself is claiming a pass for her Hello Kitty-themed music video by arguing she loves Japan and Japanese culture. For us, that hints at a bigger problem.

It is entirely possible to be racist toward a culture you love. Even if you feel absolutely no ill will toward Japan, fetishizing a culture as Lavigne has done is problematic.

Racism is about result, not intention. If it were the other way around, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.

Lavigne argues her video isn’t racist, because she went to Japan to film it using Japanese producers, dancers and other elements.

Lavigne’s intentions were clearly not racist. Unfortunately, her result was.
Simply because you went to Japan and used Japanese people to develop your concept doesn’t mean the result avoids causing real, racially-charged harm to the cultures involved.

Context is also important. If a Japanese pop artist had created this video, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, either.

But watching a blonde Western woman dance among stereotypical trappings of Japan necessarily evokes memories of colonialism and the accompanying oppression and racial fetishes.

Saying that blonde Western women should not treat Asian cultures in fetishizing ways does not oppress white cultures; it acknowledges the historical realities that inform all of our perceptions of race.

Race is not removed from history any more than we today are post-racial. Regardless of your intention, ignorance can lead to racism, even if you profess a love of Japan.

On a shallower note, it just makes us look bad.

Many Japanese fans did not react as strongly to the video, saying that it’s not really racist, just funny in its inaccuracies.

Even if the idea is funny, celebrities should know better.

Many base their impressions of North American culture on celebrities. Even if we took race out of the picture, Lavigne made a bad impression.

The next time Lavigne decides to make a music video, we hope she thinks it through.


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