During the start of the Labor Day weekend/holiday, Johnny Depp was trending on Twitter. I thought it was because of some new mess involving Amber Heard. But no. It was about his latest commercial for Dior. For several years now, Depp has been the face of Dior’s cologne Sauvage, which is just the French word for “savage/wild/untamed.” The commercials have always been questionable, like they seem to follow in the grand tradition of Matthew McConaughey’s Lincoln commercials, trying to be “deep,” but really just stupid and unintentionally hilarious.

Anyway, so a new Dior Sauvage commercial came out and it featured Depp wandering around an arid landscape, picking up a guitar and playing some music, all while a Native-American woman looks around confused, and a Native American man in full dress dances around.

That’s the original commercial which Dior pulled within a day, deleting it from Twitter and from their YouTube channel. Twitter was up in arms, and so were many Native American historians and activists:

“It’s an arrogant appropriation of imagery that is unimaginatively executed,” Hanay Geiogamah, a UCLA professor, playwright and historian who is a member of the Kiowa tribe, told The Washington Post. “What offends me is that they so casually appropriate imagery like that and blend it together for their own purposes.”

Geiogamah noted that “savage” is one of the original slurs used against Native Americans.

“That’s more insulting than anything else,” he said. “This calls attention to the ongoing reality that the ad industry nationally and internationally still thinks they can appropriate American Indian imagery when they see fit. Here they’re doing it in a very high-gloss way, but it misses the mark completely.”

[From The Washington Post]

WaPo also notes that Dior did work with some Native Americans in the creation of the commercial – Hanley Frost, “a cultural education coordinator of the Southern Ute tribe in Colorado, blessed the land for the film crew and was filmed in a traditional outfit for one of the videos.” Frost was paid $1000 for his work and he says now that he’s not bothered by the “Sauvage” name. Apparently, Dior also worked with Americans for Indian Opportunity (AIO) to “ensure respect for indigenous cultures, values and heritage.” Which… I understand that Dior – and possibly Depp – thought that they did their due diligence on this and actually attempted to be respectful. But… it’s also a mess which should have gotten shouted down in the meeting, you know? “So then we have a Native American – like, a REAL one, dancing in our commercial for Sauvage, HEAR ME OUT!” No.

Ads courtesy of Dior.