Sonny Midha | Untitled—Take Me to Your Leader Toshiba series / 2010? [commercial advertisement]

in need of a new cut

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sonny Midha (director) Untitled—Take Me to Your Leader Toshiba series / 2010? [37 seconds]

[commercial advertisement]

 

Toshiba has long been known for its general lack of sensitivity regarding the LGBTQ community. In 2013 Toshiba Canada received some flack for an advertisement titled “Math Notes” which featured Toshiba’s Excite Write tablet, which has the ability to convert handwritten notes and sketches into sharable files. In this case a guy asks his roommate for his calculus notes and, upon receipt. looks rather “dismayed,” so Queerty reported, and “almost repulsed, when he instead receives a drawing of himself reimagined by his roommate as a hunky centaur.” The sender responds, “Oops, wrong document.” If nothing else that ad was, as what GLAAD has described it, rather “homo-queasy.”

     But even earlier Toshiba apparently showed English director and producer Sonny Midha’s 2010 animated advertisement as part of their “Take Me to Your Leader” campaign which featured two aliens, one greeted with total disgust by the earthlings with whom he meets up, the other, who quickly assimilates to his/her location, seen as rather charming. 

      In this case, the aliens visit a hair salon, headed up by an extremely fem hairdresser in a pink half-tank top and slim light-blue jeans, who behaves in a stereotypically gay manner and whines and moans in a very high vocal register.

     Meeting up with the coarse alien, pointing his gun, the startled queer reacts with horror as the alien yells out “Take me. Take me,” the hairdresser, putting hand to mouth aghast. A moment later, the second alien pops out from his/her hair dryer with high bouffant hairdo into and out of which fly bees, which quite delights the queen.

     Finally, the course manly alien yells out the full phrase, “Take me to your leader!” the femme hairdresser pointing to his left where we watch the Toshiba logo being spit out across the page.

     We all know such gay figures exist, but using such a stereotype to promote a product just doesn’t sit well with this gay viewer. Did Toshiba see this ad as an attempt to include the LGBTQ+ or even just the gay community? Did it expect us to follow the shears of this tired and stale view of gay men to the brave new world of Toshiba? Forget it. I’ll stay and have the hairdresser give me a stylish new cut.

 

Los Angeles, September 11, 2024

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (September 2024).