The news that focus groups outside Toronto objected to the image of an Asian-looking woman scientist on the back of the redesigned $100 billed — the cowardly Bank of Canada hastily replaced her with a “neutral” woman, whatever that may be — is shocking.
My only opinion of $100 is that I’m happy to have it, whether it comes in dimes or this new plastic polymer creation the bank’s website says, for those who don’t understand the concept of currency, will help us “make those basic transactions of everyday life.” Other Canadians apparently disagree, in their usual provincial manner.
In 2009, eight such groups from across this multi-ethnic and multicultural country assembled for a report on the $5, $10, $20, $50 and $100, said some nasty things. It was stereotypical to show an Asian in the sciences, they suggested, or the yellow-brown note was “racialized,” or the woman looked, well, Asian.
One person in Fredericton commented, probably in green ink and all-caps: “The person on it appears to be of Asian descent which doesn’t rep(resent) Canada. It is fairly ugly.”
This is why focus groups have a bad reputation. Perhaps the bank should have done what the Libor bank rate committee in London did, which was toss out the extreme interest rate estimates and stick with the middle ground. This would have left them with Torontonians who like both ethnic diversity and big bills, and praised the inclusion of what appeared to be a non-white person on the rarest bill of all.
In the meantime, this woman stares silently into her microscope. We stare back at her. Who is she? Who is she meant to be? And why do we care, really, we focus-group types, the kind of people who have a day to spare eyeing money not our own and dreaming up stereotypes, like some kind of sadistic bartender?
She works on her large, old-fashioned-looking microscope behind a big bottle generically labelled “insulin.” This is puzzling since she is clearly no Frederick Banting. Perhaps she is diabetic. But she is not overweight, a happy argument against fattism, some would say. She is wearing a wrinkled blouse that she seems to have run up at home — no Made in China goods for this homegrown nonethnic Canadian — and no lab coat either, so why is she staring at slides? Has she wandered in from the street?
Science Lady is shown from behind. One thing is clear. She and her hairdresser, who appears to have been using a chisel, are not friends. Furthermore this particular one does not offer her clients — with their striped rather than highlighted hair — a quick rearview check before they leave the salon.
This may be why the Bank of Canada does not invite me to their focus groups but my quick assessment is no less useless than anything offered up by other underoccupied Canadians. Most money is badly designed, the Americans with every denomination in green having done the worst job of all. The euros, with their drawings of “Interesting Window Shapes of Europe,” tried to make everyone happy. And look at Europe now.
The new $50 banknote has a drawing of a research icebreaker, this in a country with a government that is actively hostile to science and where the temperature is rising to the point that the polar ice will be gone before the notes wear out.
The new $20 shows the National Vimy Memorial, a big boring sculpture that looks like the CN Tower with curly bits or the classic statue Gumby Goes to Heaven on Toronto’s University Avenue. Focus groups said it reminded them of the Twin Towers in New York. This was clearly a desperate response to the Rorschach-type question “Does this remind you of anything?” which makes me think that they were asked of the $100 bill, “Does anything here strike you as ethnic at all?”
So the focus groups were just doing their best, which is all that anyone can do, especially in Canada where no one can do better than anyone else. The theme of this redesign was “Frontiers,” the kind of woolly conceptualizing that has no fan base.
The next redesign will be “Furniture” with a set of coins based on regional coffee tables. As for this version of the $100 bill, I’ll take it, and so will you.
Original Article
Source: the star
Author: Heather Mallick
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