httpss://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFWy1qyyMHE&list=PLkVSzrKdeIKUznc9C_1SCbYS-bVYtP3YF
In honor of National Weed Day, Snapchat launched a Bob Marley filter that superimposes the late reggae icon’s trademark dreads and beanie – and a noticeably dark skin tone – over users’ faces.
Some folks on Snapchat and Twitter were, to say the least, not happy about it, arguing that the filter evokes blackface.
The lens we launched today was created in partnership with the Bob Marley Estate, and gives people a new way to share their appreciation for Bob Marley and his music.
The effort to honor Marley is falling flat with users who say the filter has little to do with Marley’s legacy.
People are angry about the filter not just because it darkens skin – they’re also saying it reduces Marley to simply a weed icon when, in reality, his relationship to marijuana was much more complicated than a photo-editing trick can convey.
In addition to bringing international attention to Jamaican reggae and being a noted political activist, Marley was also well known as a Rastafarian.
Bob Marley was pro-weed because he was a Rastafarian.
One of the primary issues with Snapchat’s Marley filter launching on 4/20 is that it doesn’t seem to be tied to anything about Marley except the fact that he happened to be pro-cannabis.
Rastafarianism is an Afrocentric spiritual practice created in Jamaica in 1930 that focuses on the repatriation of African-descended people back to Africa, particularly Ethiopia, to rectify the histories of colonization and slavery that displaced them.