Right. Why not make some reference to the horrific conditions at facilities that make Apple devices, for example, if you think voters will give a crap about that? Instead they show a girl in an honest-to-God rice paddy, hat and all. It’s too bad they didn’t have her go Ross Perot and say “America will hear giant sucky-sucky sound.”
So what we are supposed to take away from this discussion is that anyone who points out that there is a difference between someone living in the US and someone living in another country, that must be racist?
When was the last time you took anything away from a discussion other than the biggest numbskull in that discussion?
Next up: a black kid on an urban street bouncing a basketball with one hand and holding a piece of fried chicken in the other, saying, “Yo, cracka, we comin’ fo’ ALL yo’ shit!”
Well, as you know, many African Americans like fried chicken and talk in a distinct dialect. Additionally, they have a higher-than-average crime rate, including theft.
So clearly that ad would not be racist in the slightest.
Why was she wearing a straw hat and riding a bicycle through a rice paddy? She’s supposed to be a Chinese factory worker, yes? So why isn’t she dressed in overalls sitting at an assembly line in a Chinese factory?
This is the equivalent of an ad with a “Frenchman” wearing a striped shirt and a beret playing an accordion while eating cheese and sipping wine talking in an Outraaaagezz Fronch accent about how he’s going to surrender to Iran.
And riding a bicycle. Don’t forget the bicycle. And a baguette if at all possible.
That entire setup lookee Vietnameesee to me.
Me not see hat velly well but me suspectee it not Chinesee hat.
Me also thinkee sclipt litten by white Lepublican.
They should do another one:
[Scene opens on water buffallo tilling a field with the Taj Mahal in the background to the sound of a sitar. Man in turban with a bindi on his forehead comes into view in rickshaw, wobbling his head and holding a curry.]
Thanking you kindly good sir. My name is being Mike.
Because of Debbie Spendit Now and the grace of Vishnu, all your call center and software jobs are coming to us.
Kindly do the needful and send us more jobs so we can becoming more richer now thank you please.
I’m don’t get your point.
As for the actress “really” being an American of Chinese decent, would anyone have thought otherwise? Did anyone really think they went to China to film this with a Chinese citizen? When you see a “family” shown in an ad on TV, do you assume they are all really related? That the guy playing an architect in an ad is really an architect?
This is a bunch of nonsense. It’s an amateur ad (which is not at all unusual for a campaign at this level) made on the cheap and there’s nothing inherently racist about it. No more racist than an ad depicting an American as some guy driving a pick-up truck pulling a horse trailer and speaking with a Texas accent. Both are meant to convey some information, visually and orally, without an arrow pointing to the people saying telling you exactly who the person was supposed to represent.
So, Chinese ride bicycles, Frenchmen wear berets and have a baguette under their arms, Dutch people wear wooden shoes while they walk past windmills, and Americans wear cowboy hats as they drive pick-ups. BFD.
So are you trying to say that stereotypes have to be employed in order to convey the race of someone in a 30 second commercial? Otherwise, how would we ever know who was supposed to be Chinese or Dutch or French on tv?
What if the commercial went something like this.
Chinese businessman (or woman) walks on screen in an executive business office in a possible Shenzhen business office, wearing a suit and tie and says almost exactly what the ad says. Except he’s actually speaking Mandarin Chinese, and the commercial is subtitled with proper grammar. Then the candidate comes on and says his piece. End of 30 second commercial.
Would that be any less effective at conveying the meaning of the message? If so, why? If not, then why the hell didn’t they run an ad like that? Oh I know why, because they wanted to play to people’s fears and stereotypes. That’s why.
No. I’m saying it’s a very common method used, and isn’t inherently racist. The message here is not that the evil Chinese are coming to get you, but that the smart Chinese are laughing at us as we spend more money than we can afford, all the while making them richer.
My guess is that they got the ad from a similar one (done much more professionally) last year which showed, IIRC, a scene in the future at a Chinese University where an economics professor was explaining to his class how Americans had frittered away their economy. I’ll see if I can find that ad on youtube somewhere.
You have got to be fucking kidding me. If you are a little hard of comprehending, I’ll explain why: she does not speak English the way that Chinese people actually speak English as a second language.
Instead, she speaks English the way people from the time of Charlie Chan movies think Chinese people speak English.
The script is appealing to a crude and outdated stereotype of Chinese people. The stereotypical setup bolsters this.
It also plays into the belief/stereotype that Chinese people are laughing at Americans at the way we are running our economy, and thanking us for being so economically stupid. It’s just racist from back to front, top to bottom, beginning to end (until the candidate himself shows up).
And I will repeat what I said earlier. The website ACTUALLY uses the phrase, “We take your jobs” as if it is coming out of that same actress’ mouth. It’s… unfathomably offensive.
The ad is offensive. Period. Whether you consider the contents to be racist or not, it is offensive to a vast swath of people. It’s poorly done. It doesn’t even make any valid claims. It’s a stupid attack ad without substance that plays on american stereotypes of the Chinese and their beliefs and attitudes. It makes Chinese people look like villains, smiling and laughing at the downfall of America as their economy grows and ours fails. It’s ridiculous, outlandish, preposterous!
OK, here’s a similar ad with the guy actually speaking Chinese, with subtitles. Had the Hoekstra ad done something similar, would it have still been racist?
It comes off as making them look like villains, but the ad doesn’t strike me as racist, no.
That’s pretty much exactly what drewtwo99 suggested:
And no, that ad’s not racist. Pretty effective too, to my mind.
I should be in the business of making political ads!!!
You guys are criticizing the style, as if just because there might be a better way to convey the message (in your minds) that this ad must be racist. But people often make a less than optimally effective ad for all kinds of reasons, not the least of which that it often costs more money to make a really good, optimally effective ad.
Both ads have the same message: America is on the wrong path, and the Chinese are going to eat our lunch because of it. Not because they’re evil, but because we’re being stupid.
No! Because it’s not white-guy stereotyping of Chinese. If he had been saying the same things in a Coolie hat dancing on the Great Wall, yes.
You don’t get it. It’s because the style is racist.
I normally respect you as the right wing voice of reason, but in this thread and the TSA one it’s like someone’s sprinkled kneejerk dust on your cornflakes. Must be election fever or something.
It’s because one is a stereotype and one isn’t.
If we think the professor commercial is a better way, it’s because it’s not fucking racist.