Day 15: "It don't matter if you're black or white"

Van Vicker, popular African actor,
in an advert for Bel-Aqua water

Today's blog post really just addresses my own ignorance and what I like to call Jesus of Nazareth Syndrome.

Jesus of Nazareth, the 1977 film starring Robert Powell, is basically a British film illustrating the life of Jesus as recorded in the New Testament (if you haven't seen it, watch it- religious or not, these 5 hour Bible epics are just brilliant).

Anyway, this film (alongside many similar adaptations) has very British actors playing what should be Israeli individuals. Skin tones- pale, accent- British. Not at all realistic unless the film is renamed Jesus of Nottingham.

Similarly, in European churches, Jesus, Mary and Joseph are often depicted as pale and very.. well, European looking.

So imagine my face when I walked into a Ghanaian church last week and saw a statue of a black Jesus staring back at me.



Exactly.

It really got me thinking about how industries need to use appropriate models depending on their target audience and I started to notice this in Ghanaian advertising.

Ghanaian people.

On Ghanaian billboards.

On Ghanaian adverts.

On Ghanaian posters.

And please, don't get me wrong, it's not to say that I've never seen black people on billboards and posters before. For me, it's been more of a reality check- the world doesn't start and end in London and people will relate to people like themselves.
And it's exactly for this reason that British models are of different ethnicities- Britain is a wonderfully diverse, multicultural nation.


Put simply (and with all due respect), Ghana isn't.

So why was I surprised that the faces of the advertising industry in Ghana are all Ghanaian?


Diagnosis:
Jesus of Nazareth Syndrome

Recommended treatment:
4 weeks in sunny Accra.