Yep. If England had been touring the ad would’ve featured an Australian supporter and England’s “Balmy Army”. It would’ve worked in the exactly the same way despite everyone being white and some people wouldn’t have had their extreme ignorance exposed.
The dumbest misinterpretation is the belief that the “awkward situation” is being surrounded by black people. The awkward situation, as in all the other ads in the series, is being surrounded by people who are being noisy be they black, white even family members. The benefit of giving them KFC is they stop doing whatever is annoying Mick and quietly eat while he goes back to watching the cricket.
Well I for one, think that everyone is letting Fear’s initial obtuseness bias their reactions to his better thought out argument which developed later into the thread. Almost everyone experiences an instinctual discomfort when alone in a sea of others, whether the differing factor is color or favorite team. It’s plausible that in the advert the difference in race was used to heighten viewers’ perception of the white guy’s discomfort. If a totally white team had been touring Australia at the time, the ad makers might have gone with a different concept. Imagine if everyone had been white, it might have taken viewers an eighth of a second longer to grok the situation, without the initially more obvious division. The difference in color is a very direct visual cue, and I suspect they simply used it as a tool to set up the situation. Of course the team affiliation, rowdy behavior, etc are much bigger factors, but does that totally preclude anything racial?
Nope, got the point. Pointed it out. In the process, showed why the “Us Australians are clueless of your American ways. Next you will tell us that American movies and television shows have had a significant presence in and influence on Australian culture as well. But, erm, we don’t know about that. Levis Bloo Jeenz? We no know what you talk bout. Shrimp on barbie, yes?”
Also pretty funny that you pulled out the “Damn your facts… they am from google!!!” card.
You are correct that it’s not halfway decent, it’s full on raging decent. The point is that it would be disingenuous to exploit racial stereotypes for a quick laugh or a quick buck, and then claim ignorance because, gorsh, it’s another country!
There doesn’t have to be. “Look at those Asians, so good at math!” would also be using the same dynamic, even if it wasn’t a judgment against them.
Yes, and the poor ignorant savages in that American fried chicken company operating in Australia, a nation wholy ignorant of and untouched by American culture, just happened to choose a bunch of bla, oops, I mean West Indie-type people. Totally coincidental.
Next thing you know some damn pushy foreigner will be telling you that skits about hook nosed money loving bastards aren’t totally innocent even though all that nasty stuff happened in Europe. I mean, you’re like, on the other side of the world. How ever would you be aware of cultural attitudes from other places? I get it, I really do. Australians have been in the news quite a bit recently for some really embarrassing racial gaffes and the defense we keep hearing is “gee, we had no idea.”
Just like Americans would be totally innocent if we depicted Roma as lying thieves. Durrrr, Americans sure are ignorant, and all that went on in Europe. Why oh why do you keep imposing European culture on us? Oh, the humanity! Oh the global-cultural faux pas[sup]*[/sup]
- (global culture void in Australia, other restrictions may apply)
Dear oh dear. So insecure.
*Ad hom harder. *
It’s bound to work better that way.
It wouldn’t have taken longer to grok the situation. The situation is a lone Australian fan sitting with a rival team. It wouldn’t take any longer than it would for an American viewer to identify a lone Dodgers fan sitting amongst Giants fans, particularly if the Giant’s fight song is playing in the background*.
- I googled “baseball traditional rivalry” and came up with this. If it’s wrong, then replace the team names with whatever works for you and STFU.
I am NOT a cricket fan, I haven’t voluntarily watched so much as a minute of the game in my entire life and I don’t know or care who is touring, who we’re playing or which team wears which colours and I still grokked the point of this ad the minute I saw it. The racial angle never came into it because they are from the West Indies - that’s the colour most of them are. I didn’t see “lone white man surrounded by blacks”, I saw “lone Aussie supported surrounded by rival supporters”. In fact, I thought the Aussie guy was a member of the Australian cricket team earning bucks on the side by shilling KFC - I didn’t realise until I read this thread that he’s just a character invented for the commercials. Why didn’t I know that? Because I don’t follow cricket!
Racism is prevalent in Australia, to the point that I’d call it a problem, but I simply can’t see how you can project racism onto this ad. The Australian guy never looks nervous, frightened or apprehensive about the rest of the crowd - he looks bored or annoyed. I can’t get from “bored guy shares KFC and makes friends” to “intimidated white guy hands over KFC to fend off perceived threat”.
The story (that Americans find the ad racist) is making news here largely because we can’t get our heads around the “black people eat fried chicken” stereotype, and also from a collective headscratching as we try to figure out how you can misunderstand the intent so thoroughly. Some of you are looking at this ad from an entirely different perspective and seem absolutely unable to comprehend that we don’t have the same baggage or history that you do and so we don’t see it the same way.
Hook nosed money lenders okay in Australian comedy because you don’t have that history or that baggage. True/false?
What the fuck does that have to do with anything?
What the hell is a hook nosed money lender?
Jewish person.
RNATB: Until you grok it, confine your mutterings of non-comprehension to yourself please
Cazzle: No, not buying it. Please answer the question. Is that cool? How about the above dodged example of an American commercial poking fun at the filthy-savage Aborigines. That’s totally fine since we don’t have that history or baggage, and we could legitimately claim total cultural carelessness, right?
…are you arguing that West Indians eating fried chicken conforms to some type of stereotype?
Yeah you do. I’ve read all of your subsequent posts and I’m not getting what you want to say. Spell it out clearly please and relate it directly to my post that you were responding to.
That stereotype has a much longer history – and much wider geographical recognition – than the US stereotype of blacks eating fried chicken. Really and truly, 99% of all people living outside the US have never encountered the fried chicken stereotype.
No you don’t get it. They are black therefore they are African Americans because no other black culture exists in the world :rolleyes:.
I don’t understand the question. What is a hook nosed money lender?
Depicting Aboriginal people as filthy savages is comparable to a white person giving black people KFC? Really? I would object to an ad that depicted African Americans (West Indians, Aboriginals, the English) as filthy savages having their children forcibly removed so your point doesn’t exactly hold.
As has been mentioned upthread, this ad was just one in a series of TV commercials where our hero Mick needed to find a way to get some peace and quiet to watch the CRICKET.
This is not about race, in any way, shape or form. Cricket is by far the more serious issue facing Australians at the moment.
FinnAgain, I’ll say this nicely. There are a lot of cultural similarities between Australia and America but there are also some big differences (guns for example). Sometimes you simply cannot view something that has happened in one country through the cultural framework of the other. This is not like the black face skit which really was about African Americans, this ad is so culturally removed from the USA that you really need to accept that you have no idea what you are talking about. There is no analogy to Jews here, or African Americans, or Aborigines. This is an ad about CRICKET, as I’ve said before the ad would read exactly the same way, to Australians, if the West Indians were replaced with England supporters. What’s racist here is people making an issue out of race where none exists.
…indeed. I am seriously upset the Pakistanis fell over at the last hurdle: you Aussies certainly could have done with a beating!!!