Dacia Mitchell

Furnishing Desire: Issues of Racial Identity and Consumption in IKEA’s Advertising

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The essay that follows is an excerpt from an ongoing project titled Furnishing Desire: Issues of Racial Identity and Consumption in IKEA’s Advertising. This project will interpret visual representations of the fleeting nature of desire seen in advertising. More specifically, this essay investigates three aspects of the larger project: the historically indoctrinated Jezebel stereotype, the sterility of interracial sex, and the commodification of domestic space in an upwardly mobile society. All of these deeper cultural narratives are embodied by the interracial couple featured in the IKEA commercial titled Moo Cow Milker.