I just don’t understand this. “Burger Queen”? Really? Are we going to start being offended when bad jokes bend gender, now? Should we start burning bras because Scrubs has a running joke where a male doctor always calls one of his male subordinates a girl’s name? Should we throw a pride parade to combat the cultural influence of Hans and Franz’s use of the term “girlie man”?
You say don’t find offense often, but if some good ol’ boy implying that Burger King doesn’t have balls anymore gives you the vapors, I’m going to have to disagree.
It was a bad commercial and a bad joke, but fucking A, people. Call off the offenderatti hounds.
Hell, at the right time of day it would be easy to get a whole slew of tantrums. You do not fuck with people during rush hour when everyone is tired, cranky, hungry, and want to go home!
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BZZZT!!!** WRONG! the job of the ad compnay was to create an advertisement that gets you want to BUY THEIR PRODUCT. Getting people to complain about how bad the commerical was and how it turns you off from going to Burger King is a failed ad. It may be memorable, but if it is not making you say “Hey! i should get a Whopper for lunch!” then the ad is a failure.
I am tired a people passing around the meme that an ad that is memorable for being bad must be a good thing. This why all of those dot coms that blew thier budgets buying ads during the Super Bowl a few years ago failed. They had memorable ads at a time for memerable ads, but if no one is moved to use the service or buy the product it is a failure.
And that is because the company actually did a very good job to totally revamp their supply and food handling procedures after the E. coli crisis. What’s more, they communicated these efforts to the public.
“Burger Queen” became “Druther’s”. They changed the name because they wanted to expand the menu and not be “just a burger joint”. They eventually were bought out by Dairy Queen. So they didn’t "go out of busines"s as much as “changed identity”.
ETA: They also changed over to “Druther’s” over 20 years ago, so referring to them in an ad now would be a stretch because most of your target audience wouldn’t remember them. This commerical is totally about emmasculating “king”.
Actually, that’s just not true, as the makers of HeadOn can attest. Perhaps that’s no way to market products to you, but that’s the price they pay for marketing them to millions of other people. The dotcom ads from the Super Bowls in the late 90s are almost universally remembered as intelligent and enjoyable to watch, but they generated no sales.
The people who do that are describing ads that worked. Ads that don’t work get pulled.
Dammit, don’t tell my wife this. She wants to move to Colorado one day, but one of my (many) reasons for not going is that they don’t have Jack-in-the-Box. Let’s not give her any ammunition here.
I missed this in my earlier post. The joke is pretty simple, and not really homophobic. Don’t read too much into “queen”, it’s just being used as the female equivalent of “king”. This is the joke: They took away the burger for real men ::thumps chest::, leaving what? A junior cheeseburger? A chicken sandwich? Those are chick sandwiches! Enjoy your lunch, Sally, I want a half pound of beef and some bacon! The King has lost his balls. Might as well be the “Burger Queen”.
A final note to all those who took exception to those two words: Honestly people, of all the things in this world to get offended about, this pushed your buttons?
I also didn’t take the “queen” name to mean a homosexual queen as much as the female equivalent to a king. Rather than being homophobic, I’d call it misogynist.
I also hate this commercial because customers are understandably unhappy and confused about a nationwide fast food chain discontinuing their signature sandwich. The reactions are exactly what I would expect, so it’s not promoting a new idea about the quality of the sandwich.
To be clear, I personally wasn’t offended (being neither gay nor female) but unlike a lot of things I hear “offenderatti” complain about, IMHO this one would have been a more reasonable one to take offense at and I was surprised to see the comment in a national commercial. I’m not starting a picket line or anything.
It works on both levels which is why I called the guy both sexist and homophobic in the OP.
For those suggesting that it’s an over-reaction to be annoyed at the possible homophobia of the remark, I would say that it’s not just the big blaring examples of homophobia that contribute to the problem. It’s the subtle stuff too, and maybe even moreso, because while it’s easy to call out Isaiah Washington or Anne Coulter when they call people faggots the subtle stuff gets met with stuff like “call off the offenderatti hounds.”
But really, absent something truly obscure like a reference to a 20 years gone burger chain name, what explanation for “Burger Queen” is there other than an expression, however subtle, based in sexism or homophobia?
See, here, were I to say, “Lighten up, Mary,” it wouldn’t be a homophobic remark, because impinging your manhood and your sexuality are two different things. I know plenty of gay dudes who are bigger men than I am, and to call one of them (or any other male with whom I associate) “Mary” would be impinging their manhood, not their sexuality.
HOWEVER, knowing that you, Otto are gay and would take offense at being called a girl’s name derisively, I’d go in a different direction, like…
like…
“Lighten up, Sally.”
There’s a world of difference between “faggot” and “Sally.” And to invent slurs and then call them insidious when no one else can see them damages your quest for equality as much as anything else does- it’s shrill and doesn’t lend to be taken seriously.
I’m with you in that the commercials suck- but crying “homophobia” on the “queen” comment is a little over-the-top.
The “GET ME A WHOPPER” dude who seemed about to get violent or the “I want a manager at this window RIGHT NOW” lady are much more deserving of your scorn.
The real fucktard is the hippy loser standing next to him who responds “D’uh, yeah!”, sounding alot like Big Moose on the old Archie cartoons. That’s all he could come up with is “D’uh, yeah!”?
I took it as a sexist joke, rather than a homophobic joke when I heard it. I would personally be far more offended if they had meant it as a homophobic joke, but I didn’t take it that way. Just typical guy humor, I think, of the kind mentioned ealier where guys call a group of their friends “ladies.” Lame, maybe, but not offensive, at least to me.
I heard BK stopped the Whopper and I’m freaked out. I’m going to go right over there and buy one just to make sure I still can. Let us never take the Whopper for granted.
