Chocolate and the “exotic” other

The reason Sarotti specifically chose such a racialized figurine to represent its brand, is because the association between chocolate and blackness had become an extremely powerful one for the German consumer. It drew on the connection between chocolate and the “exotic” place and the people it came from.See Silke Hackenesch’s 2014 article "Advertising Chocolate, Consuming Race? On the Peculiar Relationship of Chocolate Advertising, German Colonialism, and Blackness." in Food & History 12 (1): p 98 A very explicit representation of this association can be seen in (Fig. 10). Such an association was important, because the image of the African “native”, which this plaque depicts in a very racialized way, guaranteed the authenticity of the chocolate.See David Ciarlo 2011’s Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture In Imperial Germany. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. The African “native” figurine was used to signalize the distant lands from where the chocolate originated,and therefore brand it as “exotic” and desirable. What is implicit in all this is the assumption that the white consumer - in this case the German consumer - wanted to consume the chocolate because it was considered exotic, and therefore luxurious.See Silke Hackenesch’s 2014 article "Advertising Chocolate, Consuming Race? On the Peculiar Relationship of Chocolate Advertising, German Colonialism, and Blackness." in Food & History 12 (1): p 103 The blackness of both the chocolate itself and the people who produced it are precisely what gave chocolate its exotic appeal, and that is also why the use of the distinctly African figurine is so problematic. It implied that the black African workers in Germany’s colonies existed only in connection with consumption by white Europeans.See Silke Hackenesch’s 2014 article "Advertising Chocolate, Consuming Race? On the Peculiar Relationship of Chocolate Advertising, German Colonialism, and Blackness." in Food & History 12 (1): p 18,19. In Figures 11 and 12, you can see how the black body was brought into direct connection with cocoa consumption - and that this is still happening. For a more detailed description of how exactly this connection worked, continue to the next step!