TV commercial with foreigners as criminals

FYI:
About 15 years ago, I was in a TV commercial for a well-known local cold remedy. I was in a subway, dark and smokey, and there was a cute girl waiting on the empty platform, coughing a bit. I step from behind a pillar wearing a trench coat (Bogie-style). She takes one look at me and then runs the other way.
I follow her (close up on my face – am I famous yet?).
Cut to her bumping into some Chinese guy who stops her and gives her some of the medicine. I turn up in the background, see what is going on, shrug and walk off into the mist (toward the dry ice machine).

The idea was supposed to be a case of mistaken intentions – I was going to give her some medicine, but one look and she bolted.
Maybe it was the coat; maybe it was the big beard…

I didn’t and don’t consider this racist.

Ah no. But in that advert you were not labelled a thief, it was the girl who made the mistake. Anyway, I have got used to this sort of thing in Taiwan. If I thought everyone here was a racist @#$% who had it in for me the whole time I’d leave.

Um, I am not sure what to make of this statement. The ad was meant to be silly and funny. Though I am not trying to defend the guy who came up with the idea, but my speculation is that maybe using foreigner models simply makes the ad appear different, and look even funnier (not that I am saying foreign-looking people are clowns). My impression of waikuoren growing up as a kid had always been that they are funnier because they don’t care making exaggerated funny faces, unlike Asian grown ups. And this theory was proven to be correct when I took English classes at sixth grade in a bushiban, where the English teacher made learning English that much fun by making weird noises and funny faces to help us associate words to sounds/acts/faces. And I discovered the same thing with my next English lessons when I moved to Thailand. Among the students, we think “ta hao kua jan oh, hao hao hsiao” (he exaggerates so much; it’s funny).

I honestly don’t think the ad intends to racially profile that foreigners are thieves. Ask anyone if they were “alerted” by the ad and started paying more attention to their wallets and purses whenever they see a waikuoren. It’s absurd. Ad appears; meant to be funny; hah hah; over. I never gave it a 2nd thought of associating foreigners to criminals after watching it. Relax! I don’t go off everytime Asians are depicted as bad guys in Hollywood films (although I do believe that’s the popular Hollywood stereotyping). And now with Jet Li and Jackie in the pop culture, I am starting to get questions like “hey, do you know kong fu” in a city like NYC. Silly. (But I always replied, hell yeah, we all had to learn kong fu like you had to learn to spell!)

So tell me, if this silly ad offends you so easily, what else is there in Taiwan that you don’t take lightly and consider it as racial profiling or racial discrimination? (no, seriously, I am interested to know)

As for the subway ad, again, not to defend the ad or the creators of it, the only logical way I can justify it is 2 folds. Socially, Chinese children are shy and not as encouraged to speak with strangers, let alone a foreigner. In western families, whenever a guest visits, the kids always openly greet the stranger. But Chinese kids hide behind their parents and can’t even speak their name (could be different now, but that’s the conventional thinking). So when a kid sees a foreign stranger making exaggerated faces, of course she runs. I know I would run too (at that age)! Second, the ad takes the metaphor of associating the sickness to something foreign, something evil (as in the old days, sicknesses were thought to be brought by evil spirits). And as pop culture would have it, evils look certain way and dress a certain way. And what better to distinguish the difference than to use a foreigner (the Hollywood style)!

Are they racism? Maybe a little. But in the case of the cellular ad, it’s for humor; in the case of the subway ad, bad creative taste.

Just my two cents.

Couldn’t agree more. I used to especially like the Black & White Minstrel show. What an absolute hoot that was! I wonder whatever happened to it?

scchu, my sentiments exactly. I hope you post get 20 stars.

One more point I forgot to add: in the ad, the “theives” supposedly wear the stripped prison uniform. Please correct me (and do correct me) if I am wrong, but Taiwan’s prison does NOT use stripped uniforms for prisoners. And as in the style of Hollywood, stripped uniforms are used for prisoners (association 1), and stripped uniforms are only used in western prisons (association 2). So I guess what they are saying is, their service is so good, even thieves (assumingly in other countries) know what it is. And this point reinforces what I have already mentioned, which is to make it look different and stand out.

Maybe I am just being silly and “reading it in” too much. :?


I’m sure I’ve seen that geezer around. Wasn’t he involved with that zine - the Stone Monkey?

I’m boycotting the movie Bruce Almighty because of its portrayal of ethnic minorities, but I can’t remember if it’s because the guys who beat up Jim Carey are minorities or because God is a black. I’ll let u know as soon as I get back on my meds…

The God is black but he is a good mountain climber. He climbs to the top of Mt. Everest, so that is pretty impressive even for God.

Well, of course, Richard! God created Mt Everest, so he certainly can climb what he, er, He, created. But what does any of this have to do with TV ads?

There was an ad for people to go climb Everest, and I seem to recall they were going to use prisoners as high-altitude porters . . . . . . . . “expendable” I think, was the rationale.

Acutally, the mountains on the moon are higher . . . . . but you don’t see God climbing those . . . . . . . so that is something for Bruce Almighty to think about . . . . . even if he can walk on water.

God appears as those viewing him expect him/her/it to look.
Just because you have not seen God climbing the mountains of the moon does not mean that he/she/it does not in fact climb these mountains. My sources say, actually, that God enjoys an afternoon up and down Beta in the Leibnitz Range, at 36,000 feet.

Foreigners as prisoners? (yawn…)

Higher than what? The height of Everest is measured relative to mean sea level. Any water on the moon? No.

So, measure from the highest point on the Earth’s surface to the lowest and you get a ‘height’ for Everest of approximately 20 kilometres - 66,000 feet for the boneheads.

Apparently, and I’m quoting boyhood popular facts here, the surface of the earth is smoother than the surface of a billiard ball if you make the necessary adjustments for scale.

Also, the surface of the moon has been mapped in more detail than two thirds of this planet due to the latter being covered with water.

Going back to the original post - my gf’s mother calls every hour or two whenever we’re together to make sure that her little darling is OK. Why? Because she has seen and heard enough in the media to believe that all foreigners are up to no good.

At least that’s the explanation given.

My wife’s mom tried to break us up while we were dating. Said all foreigners wanted was to drink and have sex! Not sure where she heard that, I was the first foreigner she ever met. Of course, I was surprised that she had pegged me that well :slight_smile: It wasn’t till after the wedding, which she didn’t attend, that I was considered human enough to be invited to the family house.

This is not exactly a criminal/commercial issue, but I was a bit surprised to see that the main poster (put up in the MRT stations and neighborhood bulletin boards) during the SARS hysteria depicted a cartoon foreigner (brown hair, big nose) sneezing out the germs from an uncovered mouth. Realizing that cartoons are cartoons and, thus, usually have some exaggerations or distortions, it was a little odd nontheless. However, were such a poster used in the PRC, I’m sure that the torchlight mobs in hazmat suits would have made a beeline for the expat housing.

see next post:

APPLE DAILY had a story yesterday, and FTV English at night, about a Polish man living here for 8 years, ‘‘Jack Jarelewski’’, married to a local woman, he was one of those models in the TV ads for the SYNTEX cellphone that features foreigners behind bars dressed in striped jail uniforms. Discussed at beginning of this thread pages 1 and 2.

He is now suing BengQ Acer for NT$500,000 million billion zillion because as an English teacher the BEngQ people apparently used his face without permission on another poster print ad that is all over town, and many of his students and their parents are afraid to take his classes now.

Something like that. Anyone know exactly what the lawsuit it all about?
I think he said in the article that the SYNNEX company had a year contract to use his image (face) on its ads, but after a year, the image plastering machine should stop in print, TV or POP signs in stores. I think that’s his complaint, that they went over the 365 day contract term. and didn’t pay him for the extra time, but even more important, they broke the contract. so …lawsuit time! does he stand a chance?

Not reported in local English papers yet, but i expect it will be soon. Maybe. The FTV interview was like 15 seconds and didn’t explain anything very well. But the APPLE DAILY story was half page, with photos. Can someone translate. jack got NT$15,000 for his modelling spot a year ago, according to APPLE.

I think some of the posters here were in that original ad for the other celfone company.

PHOTO: see below post to see photo of the guy making the lawsuit.

Amazing the nerve !!![quote=“Juba”]
http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Pagoda/7254/?[/quote]

that’s him. Jack. in previous NT$15,000 incarceration.

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! You expect the English papers here to actually report local news? Of any sort? Well, aside from press releases from government departments and political parties that is.

Wow, if the above is right, it’s the same thing plaintiffs usually do in the States: They’re probably really after a cut of the take from their image, but they usually sue on a claim of injury to feelings, etc.

La plus

What’s a Polish guy teaching English here for, anyway? He’s not a native speaker and is thus breaking the law. Thus his lawsuit is groundless. “I’m suing for the right to illegally teach kids broken English in my Count Dracula accent.”