The 1950s brought us everything from I Love Lucy to the Korean War to the rise of racist advertisements. When we look back on this time, we rationalize the shared cultural belief that this is normal and a part of everyday life. AirIndia released a series of travel campaigns spanning from the 1940s to the 1970s depicting a maharaja, or emperor, as a mascot for the company. This comes after the great Partition of India in 1947 following post British colonial rule and the splitting of the Indian state into three different countries. It goes without saying there is a mass loss of identity as Indians and Pakistanis, Pakistan would soon divide further into Bangladesh, scramble to find their footing in a divided world. As millions of people fled and governments grew in disarray, a once prosperous and mighty nation stood no more. British influence remains within Indian culture and the Indian maharaja’s loss of power is felt throughout. AirIndia’s campaign of the maharaja aided in reinforcing the racist caricature of Indian culture and builds entirely upon stereotypes to sell the unrelated airline.
The Case of the Bunny
Consider the best advertisements. What do they all have in common? They are all using Saussure’s founding principles of semiotics, the theory of signs, to signal the desire within us to purchase or use their product. Signs are composed of signifiers, what we use to refer to the sign, and signified, what concept the sign is referring to. Stereotypes emerge when we categorize an entire group of people into a single entity and preconceived notion. In the case of the New York travel poster pictured above, “these posters took a stereotype about India—the Maharaja, a uniquely Indian symbol of both luxury and hospitality—and turned it on its head, with satire and visual shock value” (Kapparath). There is the personification of the culture into a singular entity or caricature within the AirIndia ad. The denotational, or literal, reading of the icon of the maharaja is short, fat, has a mustache, and wears a turban. The connotational, or symbolic, reading is that he is the face of the Indian people in the eyes of the countries they are advertising to. Constant influence and exposure from the media shows up as the subtle shift in our thought processes and beliefs. The maharaja becomes itself a symbol of the Indian people.
Viewers only require knowledge of the English alphabet to understand and read the linguistic message in the ad. What’s interesting is that it is in English and not Hindi, the predominant language in India or in any of the other 21 official languages. That tells us that the primary audience for these advertisements were not Indians but New Yorkers. The maharaja is “a daring, irreverent shape-shifter who had a new look for each city he traveled to, the Maharaja would be caught in hilarious, often bizarre situations” (Basu) as he’s seen here dressed up as a scantily clad bunny serving alcohol to Hugh Hefner and his then girlfriend Cynthia Maddox. He can be seen traveling the world with each country’s stereotype serving as the main symbol within each advertisement. Much of the British influence in turning the once great emperors of India into a laughing stock succeeded with many Indians themselves delighting in the ad. The maharaja himself is a light skinned North Indian once again stereotyping the entirety of its 1 billion people with all different languages and cultures into the stereotype we still see today.
The simplification of New Yorkers into a rich white man and white woman does not go unnoticed. They are well dressed at a nice dinner being served alcohol alluding to wealth. The letterforms used for New York are in the shape of neon lights which are signifiers to the glitz and the glamor that the media portrayed New York as. The playboy bunny is a sex symbol – jarring for a traditionally conservative country like India. We know then that the ad is speaking to a very specific demographic of people and leaving the majority out.
The Maharaja and The Global Audience
When we communicate, we encode our messages with hidden meanings through to the sender. They receive the message, decode the message, and give feedback but oftentimes there is noise that disrupts the intended communication. “Air-India also garnered many critics for choosing the symbol of a king or a raja as its mascot, at a time when post-independent India was integrating its many princely states into a unified democratic government” (Basu) is an example of noise happening during the message cycle. Stuart Hall coined the term reception theory meaning all advertisements in media are encoded and decoded. The dominant reading, or how the creator wanted the audience to view the advertisement, of the travel poster was to entice New Yorkers to use AirIndia’s services to visit India through use of cultural phenomena such as Playboy. As Barthes explains when talking about semiotics, our personal cultural beliefs impact our interpretation of signs and messages. In the 1950s, it was readily accepted that this is a part of everyday life and media but the campaign today would receive an oppositional reading, meaning the audience rejects the creator’s preferred reading. Racial stereotypes are controversial and society today does not hold the same beliefs. This preferred meaning is driven mainly by people in power and cultivation theory distorts our perception of an entire subset of people. It was a product of its time meant to show the versatility of AirIndia and appeal to a wide market audience. Many of the advertisements are purely for shock value or simply paints a country in a bad light.
Reflecting on the chaotic era of the 1950s reveals a complex web of cultural norms and geopolitical shifts. This period encapsulates a pivotal moment in history in the emerging golden age of Indian advertising. The use of the maharaja as a marketing tool by AirIndia not only perpetuates racial stereotypes but also serves as a symbol of a bygone era, where cultural practices were compromised for commercial gain. It serves a sobering reminder of the consequences of colonialism and the complexities of cultural representation in a globalized world.
Works Cited
Basu, Ritupriya. “How the Maharaja Mascot Became Air-India’s Adventurous, yet Controversial, Design Star.” Eye on Design, 19 Sept. 2022, eyeondesign.aiga.org/how-the-maharaja-mascot-became-air-indias-adventurous-yet-contentious-star/.
Kapparath, Madhu. “Air India Maharaja: A Mascot Showed His Witty, Playful Side, and We Loved It.” Forbes India, ForbesIndia, 27 July 2023, www.forbesindia.com/article/lifes/air-india-maharaja-a-mascot-showed-his-witty-playful-side-and-we-loved-it/87039/1.
I appreciate the angle you took in approaching this essay. “Self-stereotyping” does come with a whole slew of intricacies that the less initiated might not be familiar with. It also speaks to the differences in how international communities perceive a culture versus the way a culture fragments itself and self-identifies within a populace.
An example from my own life I can think of is how Lebanese people self-identify based on their religious sect (even on the governmental scale, as your religion defines which courts you must adhere to). My Lebanese ID declares me Maronite Christian, regardless of whether I’m religious at all to begin with, and I therefore must present legal matters like divorce to the Maronite Church as opposed to the government itself, who’s laws are different from a Shi’an authority, for example.
The historical context was also well described, and gives enough information to the reader to discern what about this advertisement was received poorly, and incorporated the theory of semiotics effectively to do so.
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