If you see a guy wearing this costume on Halloween, he probably watches Lou Dobbs (Citypages)
I hesitated to file this little rant under "Queer This!" and then came to the conclusion that I needed to share with all you smarties anyway. So, my roommate just told me about this costume made by Target (a Minneapolis-based company) that she heard about from a friend. "It's an alien mask, wearing an orange jumpsuit and holding a green card." I thought she was talking about something out of The Onion (and it would be a pretty offensive move even by their standards, which notably require more wit about their subject matter). So what the hell is happening here? In a quick search, my first result was a little more revealing. Not only one, but multiple product developers and their companies, in their search for what's cutting edge bordered by how soon is too soon, assessed whether or not they could make a profit with a play on the words "illegal alien" and came out saying "Yes." Maybe Anti-Capitalism or Nation/Citizen folks would like to chime in on this? I'm also interested in what people think of the general critique which has removed at least the first costume in question from stores-- I'm not entirely convinced that its overall message is "Immigrants are dangerous."
So Target has now pulled the "illegal alien" costume, and claims that it was a mistake made in data entry. Whatever that means. Amazon and Walgreens are still being lame and distributing this shit according to City Pages though.
http://blogs.citypages.com/blotter/2009/10/target_pulls_of.php
I think this is really interesting, I haven't seen anything about this costume until this post so I'm glad you posted it! My term is nation/citizen, which I chose in part because I am taking the CSCL class "Aliens" this semester, and they fit nicely together. The Aliens class really explores exactly what this costume is introducing- the commonalities in the way we (Americans) look at aliens as in UFOs and aliens as in immigrants/foreigners. For instance, the term alien is used to describe both groups but why is the same word used for both? I am also really curious to know what the significance of the "green card" is that comes with the costume- so it's still an illegal alien even with legal status via green card?