A R C H I E F1 9 9 8  
16th
  Malcolm Payne
ACE
  Zuid–Afrika 1997
Videotape, 1:39, colour, stereo
 
A black woman laments to her grandmother: How can I keep my wash dazzling white? There are, luckily, grandmothers who know the answer to that. And of course all grandmothers everywhere carry their favourite consumer products around with them in their bags. This one too. She takes a box of ACE out of her bag and leaves, knowing she has done a good deed. When she returns later, it is to find her granddaughter radiant. “Grandma, Grandma, my wash is dazzling white! ACE acts as a bleach too so my white wash will stay whiter than white much longer now!” This ad, made following western European advertising conventions for detergents, is laced with images of more conventional forms of life in South Africa. A cow is slaughtered, a bird is plucked. These images have not been staged for advertising but show aspects of life and of consumption as they have been passed on through the centuries, from generation to generation. Here life, the future (according to advertising) and death (tradition) are being mixed here. Advertising is directed towards market expansion and the propagation of certain values. By frequent use it guarantees the bleaching of the more traditional (cultural) values and helps to show the new ones as dazzling and attractive. Here, modernity seems to be winning over the traditional when Grandma exclaims: “Surely, you don't use...?” And since Grandma approves, progress can be favoured and the traditional forgotten. This is true of aspects of society as well as of detergents.

– Carla Hoekendijk

Sound: Warrick Sony

Malcolm Payne ° 1946, Pretoria (South Africa)
Lives and works in Kaapstad (South Africa)


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