So fucked up!
Click to viewI don't what part about this midterm election ad to object to first.
ETA:
And to those commentators who say that it isn't racist, and is actually all about America, and not really about China, I point you to this blog post:
The ad says a lot by only saying a little. Most of the communication is image; and the sinister background music, that to me comes across as a musical intonation of how Mandarin Chinese sounds, with its highs and lows.
The professor is obviously taken from the James Bond standard plot-I bet he’s even got his pet kitty sitting off stage. “Bwa ha ha! We bought up all that federal debt and now the Americans are our slaves!” I think there was one about SPECTRE trying to blow up Fort Knox. It’s this sort of thing. (That was a Sean Connery one-Goldfinger. I know the villains in the Bond series didn’t become Asian until later.)
So someone in the shadows presents us with: The evil Asian guy. Never mind that the story line suggests that we did it to ourselves-that’s the message of the billionaire who wants to cut out social security and Medicare. The point of the flick is that you don’t want to have to be working for the chuckling college punk in the front row, even if he seems to have adopted a Western dress and hairstyle.
And at Angry Asian Man:
You have to hand it to them -- this is the ad everyone's going to be talking about. It's slick, well-produced, and takes the average American fear of ever-encroaching China to another level. This is some serious Red Dawn shit.
The futuristic classroom setting. The smirking professor. The evil yellow peril laughter at the end. It's frightening, and is going to hit all the right nerves with Joe America. If you weren't already scared of a China-dominated future, this ought to do it.
The most brilliant thing is, it never once actually blames the Chinese for anything. Instead, it foretells a future in which America is responsible for its own undoing -- China's just there to laugh in our faces.
This entry was originally posted at http://the-grynne.dreamwidth.org/896242.html and has
comments.