Zatarain’s food brand has been around for decades, and its logo is another commonly known media image, but the image it portrays can be traced to images from slave times.
The logo of the brand Zatarain’s is a man dancing with a musical instrument, wearing a hat. The man is always colored in black as to say that he is African American. In the commercials the narrator speaks with a southern accent, adding to the description of being African American. Zatarain’s is a food brand which mainly specializes in southern comfort food such as Dirty Rice, Jambalaya, Gumbo, Red Beans and Rice, and Creole and Cajun foods. I think this image of a black man dancing was chosen because of the connection with slavery and how the slaves were the cooks of their time, and had to cook for their white masters. They basically invented the southern comfort kind of food and perfected the thousands of recipes that have been passed down through the generations. The man is also dancing and playing a musical instrument that looks to be a trumpet. This depiction goes along with the movie, “Ethnic Notions,” we watched. In the movie it talked about how white people were led to believe, through the advertising, that the blacks were happy because they were always singing and dancing. The whites depicted the blacks as always having a huge smile on their faces and singing, dancing, and playing musical instruments, even if the instrument was just the bottom of a wash bin. I think this image was used in created the logo of Zatarain’s.
Why use this little character for a logo of a wide spread food product? Many people when they pick up a box of Zatarain’s probably do not think in their mind that the little man on the box could be tied to an image of what at one time in our country’s history was an image that was used to make the white population think that the black slave population was living a happy and festive life.
When I think of Zatarain’s, I think of southern comfort food, and especially New Orleans, and again of African Americans singing and dancing around the street, like their advertising portrays. This image, however, is still a reminder that even though slavery is over, the images and stereotypes that were produced during that period of time are still existent today, even if we don’t think that they are prevalent.
2 comments:
To help inform you. The "black" man on the logo is actually a silhouette of a jazz man playing a flute, and was not the original logo for Zatarains. This logo was even created after the civil rights movement, and could be Pete Fountain for all we know. The silhouette was chosen for marketing purposes because a simpler logo is easier to reproduce.
The man on the commercials talks with a "southern" accent, not to depict African-Americans, but rather Cajun/Creole because of the "New Orleans" style flavor.
It was always a trumpet to fit the New Orleans Cajun/ Creole image. The image has been altered to reflect the pied piper with his lambda that entrances most all of the people of the world to stay in his fishing hole... strange I know but Zatarain word meaning is exactly that "fishing hole" Christ said be not of the world and to look up. There are many changes now to the time line, some call it the mandela effect but it's nothing more than prophecy unfolding. The Good Shepard is greater than the shepherd in your bible... keep looking up.
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