M-Net decided to deliberately delete the only black man and the only woman featuring on the Horrible Bosses 2 poster to promote the movie on MultiChoice's DStv satellite pay-TV platform, leaving only white men.
M-Net Movies took the original Horrible Bosses 2 poster art and decided that it didn't want the sole black man or the woman in the image.
M-Net photo-shopped Jamie Foxx and Jennifer Aniston out of the image that was shown on DStv's channels and on social media to promote the Sunday night film on the M-Net Movies Premiere (DStv 103) channel.
The strange move from M-Net comes across as very racist and sexist.
Look again carefully at what M-Net did in its image: spacing is clearly not a problem: Jamie Foxx doesn't appear at the horizontal side where it might make the overall image "too long". He filled a "gap" that's simply now left empty.
The same goes for Jennifer Aniston: To add insult to injury, M-Net's reprehensible image doctoring leaves the space where she stood completely empty.
It's not as if M-Net "functionally" deleted her to crop and make the image "shorter" - the space where she stands but got deleted from is left there.
It begs the question: Why did M-Net decide to deliberately remove all traces of specifically these two characters - the black man and the woman? And how many people at M-Net, after it was done, all saw it and signed off on it and said this is right?
This also wasn't a "little" or thoughtless decision. Notice how Jamie Foxx' right hand had to be scrubbed from the image. Notice how Jennifer Aniston's whole arm had to be deleted and a whole new black tie created for the character she stood next to.
Making M-Net's disgusting marketing photoshopping even more reprehensible is if keep in mind that M-Net is a South African company and that M-Net Movies Premiere presumably would want South African viewers, and South African viewers of all races, to watch.
If anything, the black man and the sole woman should have been left in the image and one or two of the white men rather deleted to make the image come across as more multi-cultural and inclusive.
I have asked M-Net for comment on Sunday afternoon and why the pay-TV broadcaster decided that the only black man in the marketing image and the only woman in the image who was put there originally by the Hollywood movie studio isn't good enough to be there for South Africa.
I will update this story if and when M-Net has a response.
