Last month, Opposing Views told you about the Florida couple who reached out to popular ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s complaining that their chocolate hazelnut flavor called “Hazed & Confused” had offended and concerned them.
Lianne and Brian Kowiak said last month that they stumbled upon the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor and were shocked to read the label. Their 19-year-old son Harrison tragically died during a hazing incident six years ago, so when they saw the name of the ice cream, it made them feel uncomfortable.
“I saw there was a flavor named ‘Hazed & Confused’ and I just paused and I was really upset and shocked when I saw it,” said Lianne. “When I saw this name, ‘Hazed & Confused,’ it frankly just struck a nerve with us.”
The Kowiaks immediately got in touch with Ben & Jerry’s to express that they felt the name promoted hazing and suggest that they call is something else, and initially, the ice cream company said they would look into it. Now, however, they’ve decided to keep the name, which they saw is a reference to the movie “Dazed & Confused” with the “hazed” part referencing the ice cream’s hazelnut flavor.
“It didn’t make sense for us to change the name,” Sean Greenwood, a Ben & Jerry’s spokesman, said to Bloomberg. “We named it because it’s a pop culture reference.”
The company says that when they looked at the name, they found nothing that “condoned hazing, supported hazing, or even inferred hazing.”
Still, the Kowiaks strongly believe that the name is offensive to them and other families who have lost loved ones to hazing.
“The name minimizes and makes a complete joke of the dangerous and sometimes deadly practice that has caused physical and psychological harm to many and in the case of our dearest son, Harrison, his death,” said the Kowiaks to the NY Daily News.
Ben & Jerry’s has reportedly received 11 complaints about the “Hazed & Confused” ice cream flavor.
http://www.opposingviews.com/i/society/ben-jerrys-response-people-offended-over-new-ice-cream-flavor-get-over-it
I offer sympathy to the Kowiaks regarding the unnecessary and untimely death of their son during a college hazing incident. However, the culture of being offended at unintentional phrases or words needs to change. For whatever reasons people see offense where none was intended and don an identity of being the victimized object of the offense they perceive. I’m growing weary of the hyper-sensitive folks among us who make mountains from mole hills in an effort to manipulate others. An apology and removal of the ice cream name will not change one iota about Harrison Kowiak’s death and Ben and Jerry’s was right to stand their ground defending the original intent of the flavor’s name.
One more of the easily offended…
Remember in semi-recent past, when Miley Cyrus was selfied with some of her friends, all teens at the time, and they took fingers to the outer corners of their eyes and pulled so they had ‘chink eyes’? The picture posted and a coalition of Pacific Islanders filed against HER for defamation of character? They filed against HER because she had money. The other four or five in the picture, they didn’t mention. They were KIDS BEING KIDS, she said nothing else about the picture, it was her and a bunch of her friends goofing around and the picture went viral through fansites and someone filed on her. It got dropped eventually when the grand tide realized that the suit went after just her and not the others too and the main reason seemed to be, that she was the rich one in the picture. Period. ‘Conveniently Offended’…against a selected target.
The name of the ice cream would not have offended me. I would have been offended that a college permitted hazing and that any fraternal organization would still be engaged in the hazing of pledges. I didn’t like it when I was a college student and my opinion has not changed with age.
This does remind me of the time I took a black friend to St. Augustine, FL. We were deciding where to have lunch and I suggested the Florida Cracker Cafe in the old part of the city. My friend nearly fell over and gasped, “They call a restaurant that!”
Well, yes, we have the Florida Cracker Trail in South Florida, Cracker horses, Cracker cows and natives of Florida are Florida crackers. It serves local favorite dishes.
It turned out that she had, when she was a child, referred to someone as a “Cracker”. Her father heard her and whipped her, saying it was a racist term and she was never to say it. Now she was standing in front of a restaurant with the same term as her comment. To her, it was the same as if a restaurant had used a derogatory term for African-Americans as its name.
“Dazed and Confused” was a song years before it was a movie. It came out in the 1960s. There was a trend in the 1980s and ’90s to title movies after classic songs (other examples from the era: “Stand by Me,” “Pretty Woman,” “My Girl”). I’m guessing it was the song, not the movie, that Ben and Jerry, both born in 1951, were thinking of when they named the ice cream. The movie may have hazing in it, but there is none in the song.
That said, I feel for the parents. They lost a child under tragic, preventable circumstances, and the word “hazed” in the ice cream name is triggering and upsetting.
But being alive in the world means experiencing trauma, tragedy and heartbreak. It also means being exposed to upsetting, heartbreaking and triggering things. Deborah Spungen, whose daughter was Nancy of Sid and Nancy, writes about the crippling upset she felt, after Nancy was killed, every time she saw a baby. The last scene in her memoir has her holding an acquaintances’s baby and realizing it didn’t hurt anymore.
I think what has changed in the ensuing years is that when people are upset or triggered, their first reaction is to cry “That’s offensive!” and demand that the upsetting thing be changed or banned. (Or maybe that’s always happened, but we’re just hearing about these incidents more because of the Internet and social media.)
The parents were within their rights to complain to Ben and Jerry. But I hope they will accept B&J’s apology for the upset and their explanation that the ice cream’s name is about hazelnuts and the song “Dazed and Confused,” and was not intended to make light of hazing.
Should they “get over themselves”? Of course not. Losing a child is one of the worst things a person can experience, and there will be many more events that will remind them of their loss — watching other people’s sons graduate, get married, have children.
Life happens. Tragedy happens. Triggers happen. I could list upsetting events and triggering reminders from my own life, because we all have them, but I won’t, because comparing my issues to anyone else’s is apples and oranges. It’s on all of us to respect others’ feelings, but not to demand that the world change to protect ours 24/7.
I was thinking of the song as well as the movie.
Great post. I can’t take away everything that reminds me of our son’s murder. Instead I crush those thoughts with memorie of his life.
With that said, “Dazed and Confused” was a pretty hilarious movie and spot on for the era it referenced.
Enjoy the show. Literally and figuratively.
Yes, for these parents, anything with the word haze in it is going to offend them, so don’t buy the product. I get the pop culture reference, however, if their child was hazed with ben & Jerry’s hazed and confused then I see their point otherwise if the ice cream name is offending you then please seek professional treatment. People are going to find something wrong with anything they come across if they want to. Yes, you have experienced a tragedy but don’t raise your voice over an ice cream, which I am sure was around before your son tragically died.
Oh for goodness sake. My son, Michael, died twelve years ago. I guess we should ban anyone from naming their child that in the future because it triggers me. People need to grow up. Bad stuff happens. You can’t make it better. You can’t expect the world to know about or *care* about your personal pain.
The original article has been commented on backwards, forwards, and sideways, so I’m not going to address that. But I’m troubled by Admin’s comment about “this culture of being offended…” and the follow-up that’s based around that same assumption.
I feel compelled to respectfully ask, what culture?
This sounds to me like a single incident. In this social media age, it’s easy to find a few extreme examples of pretty much anything. I agree that this example is extreme, but again, it’s one incident. I hear all the time about an “offense/PC culture” and while yes, there are genuine examples of people getting offended over nothing (though I still submit that they’re not more common so much as more visible) but more often, I see it used by people who say things that are hurtful, things they *know* are hurtful, but are upset by people telling them it’s hurtful (or racist or sexist or whatever) and so they claim their critics are too easily offended or being politically correct rather than actually engage with the criticism.
I also found interesting the contrast between this post and the last one. In that one, someone got on social media and criticized many people for saying “Happy Memorial Day”…and Admin did not say Word One about an “offense culture” in that woman’s case. Part of what I dislike most about the “offense culture” dialogue is the whole idea that some things are totally okay to be upset/offended about, but if you’re upset/offended about something not on that list, you’re unreasonable or too easily offended. Everyone’s going to be more upset or offended by one thing than another based on their own history, and I don’t think that the question of which offenses are “valid” should be decided by majority rules.