Sunday, June 8, 2008
"More Flags, More Fun" = Racist
Has anyone else seen this commercial? The racism if off the charts. Essentially, Six Flags presents two different scenarios of summer fun: A mom dumping dirt on her kids and their toy trucks (huh?) and cackling, and people having lots and lots of fun riding rollercoasters at Six Flags.
As if it weren't already obvious which is more fun, Six Flags has an Asian man shout really loudly at us to confirm, yes, it's Six Flags. The man isn't allowed to fully form any of his words (read: "Chinese people don't know how to speak the English language and have particular trouble with the letters we're asking this man to pronounce"), screams the whole time (read: "Japanese people do martial arts and there's a lot of screaming involved") and acts bizarrely, which I think is meant to conjure those Japanese TV game shows where people have to navigate the most inane contests that are sometimes played on cable very late at night and are mildly funny while drunk. (Read: "Japanese people are kinda weird, kinda crazy and will do anything to get on TV." Side note/postmodern deconstructionist alert: ABC is debuting its own version of one these this summer.) These are the only messages Six Flags sends with the commercial. Really, all I think about after seeing it -- and I see it at least twice a day at work, now that summer is starting -- is lots of yelling in my face, which sounds like negative flags and negative fun to me.
(And I'm not the only to think this: A quick Google search of " 'More Fun, More Flags' racist" produces this, which has many results. Here's one of the results.)
If Rachel Ray, Dunkin' Donuts and her "keffiyeh" have to be pulled from the Internet (odds Ms. Ray knows who Arafat was: 25:1), I think this should go away even faster.
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3 comments:
glad to see your blog is at maximum readership of ZERO. I think It's time you get a job, and stopped pretending to be a social commentator. I happen to be Asian and I think this commercial is halarious. You take yourself far too seriously. You think everyone watching this video doesn't know this is a stereotype? Stereotypes are funny get over yourself. You're goin to grow up to be one of those humorless leftist imbeciles who wants to impose his skewed sad anal retentive morality on the world. New flash we don't need your opinion, and not everything that is funny and deals with race is racist..
Thanks for the comment. I agree, not everything that is funny and deals with race is racist. But something as caricatured, pointless and demeaning as Six Flags' new "spokesman" is racist.
And for the record, I have a job.
It's basically the same commercial that they had before but the man shouting before and not speaking clearly is an old white man. I don't think either is funny but I don't think it's racism.
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