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Cute Monkey Selling Phones or Racist Depiction of Obama

Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 11:16 am by Jami

A few things to keep in mind before you jump right into the “OMGZ, teh Japanz R Racist!” pool. Snow monkeys are revered as intelligent and wise in Japan. They even have their own temples. There is a new political drama on Japanese television that started in May called Change. The intended audience does not associate monkeys with racist images of blacks. Of course, the intended audience isn’t all that diverse to begin with. Also, The intended audience has not been assaulted on a daily basis by the Democratic primary race.

So let’s get into this.

From an American perspective, this is horribly racist. The “Change” banners, the monkey in a suit, it’s clearly a riff on Obama’s campaign. Sure, all the presidential candidates this time around have attempted to use “change” as their theme. But most of us readily associate “change” with Obama. Blacks have been portrayed as monkeys in racist cartoons and comics here in America so it’s easy to associate the monkey with Obama and therefore conclude that this is a racist commercial.

From a Japanese perspective, I don’t know. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, or in this case, a monkey. And if the snow monkey is truly a revered animal, it could be that this is their screwy way of paying tribute to Obama. Or it could have nothing to do with him at all. The monkey has been part of other Emobile ad campaigns and if this “Change” show is popular, it makes sense to do a riff on a political theme.

Is this just a cute monkey with a phone or is Emobile demonstrating a lack of judgment by replacing Obama with a monkey?

[Via Gizmodo]

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This entry was posted on Friday, June 27th, 2008 at 11:16 am and is filed under Henshin Korner, Dumb Ass, Not News, Diversity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

10 Responses to “Cute Monkey Selling Phones or Racist Depiction of Obama”

  1. Pingback Pingback:
    Posted: Jun 27th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
    1
    My new WordPress MU Site » Blog Archive » Cute Monkey Selling Phones or Racist Depiction of Obama

    […] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBut most of us readily associate “change” with Obama. Blacks have been portrayed as monkeys in racist cartoons and comics here in America so it’s easy to associate the monkey with Obama and therefore conclude that this is a racist … […]

  2. AvatarMax
    Posted: Jun 27th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
    2

    Well I think you can only go so far as to try and protect the feelings of others. If they did have innocent intentions, then it’s just America blowing steam over small things, as usual. I don’t see how an intentional racist remark could help anyone in a marketing campaign. I mean look at Sony.

  3. Avatargreg
    Posted: Jun 27th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
    3

    Here’s to hoping the Japanese never get around to watching any American commercials that aren’t meant to be released in Japan. Same for pretty much every other country.

  4. AvatarVonKraut
    Posted: Jun 27th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
    4

    Bush was portrayed as a monkey all the time. If it is supposed to be Obama portrayed as a monkey it’s racist all of a sudden because he’s black? This argument has about as much wait saying the Urku Kai in LOTR are racist. Arguments like this seem to stem from people who tend to consider themselves not racist then when they see this the first thing they think are OMG monkeys are like black ppl!

  5. AvatarDevin
    Posted: Jun 27th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
    5

    this reminds me of those international sony PSP ads where they had the white and black versions portrayed dramatically by white and black models… like you said, jam, sometimes a cute monkey is just a cute monkey…

    it’s not like they had sambo selling phones, ya know? heck, i don’t think they’d disrespect Obama when that small Japanese town with the same name went nuts for him during the primaries! :D

  6. AvatarRichard "Pocky" Kim
    Posted: Jun 27th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
    6

    To be honest, most of Japan cares not one bit who wins the U.S. election. If they watch the news, they might know who Obama and McCain are, but even then, they don’t care.

    This was probably done with the idea of “hey, a monkey in a suit would be awesome!” and not “let’s lampoon U.S. politics”.

    Ignorance, while not entirely forgivable, is still not malice.

  7. Avatarkindless
    Posted: Jun 27th, 2008 at 2:41 pm
    7

    I didn’t even see the Monkey as Obama… And honestly I’m more racist on my own.

  8. AvatarFm
    Posted: Jun 27th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
    8

    This just look like a spoof on his campaign and I cant see the correlation between him and the monkey.Change the slogan and it could be any one.With the crying u can compare it to Hillary to.You have to stretch it to even come off raciest.I mean terrorist fist bump level of stretching.I have read stuff that might seem raciest from japan but that a matter of perspective and culture differences.

  9. Pingback Pingback:
    Posted: Jun 27th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
    9
    test » Blog Archive » Cute Monkey Selling Phones or Racist Depiction of Obama

    […] Cute Monkey Selling Phones or Racist Depiction of Obama unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptBut most of us readily associate “change” with Obama. Blacks have been portrayed as monkeys in racist cartoons and comics here in America so it’s easy to associate the monkey with Obama and therefore conclude that this is a racist … […]

  10. AvatarSteve
    Posted: Jun 30th, 2008 at 10:37 am
    10

    In my opinion, all politicians are monkeys.

    Also, to the alleged Mr. Richard Kim up there, a recent poll found that the Japanese are actually more interested in our presidential race than you might think. Somewhere around the lines of 60% polled said they had been following it.

    You want sources? How ’bout yo’ momma!

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