An online advertisement launched by Popchips featuring Hollywood actor Ashton Kutcher as an Indian man has been pulled out after it met with huge criticism among Indian-American community. These US born desi people ran a counter campaign against this ad as they believed the entire campaign was based stereotyping and racist in nature.
The online video for Popchips show the 34-year-old Two-And-A-Half Men star in brown make-up portraying a Bollywood producer named Raj who is “looking for love”.
This has now been removed from YouTube and Facebook.
Although Kutcher is shown as a hippie, a tattooed biker and an androgynous fashionista in other online videos but no hippie, biker or fashionista came forward to protest against it. Only the Indians felt provoked and violated by the ad campaign which indicates that they are very sensitive to stereotyping and racist slurs.
Popchips spokesperson made a feeble attempt to defend the ‘controversial racist campaign’ and said that the character was created “to provoke a few laughs and was never intended to stereotype or offend anyone”. Unfortunately the campaign did provoke people specially the Indians but in a negative way.
