EMOBILE created a parody of the Barack Obama series of “change” speeches as part of their summer sales campaign where Obama is portrayed as a monkey. The commercial has now been pulled - what do you think?
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Ha ha - I just found this. Awesome. Selling snowmen to the Japanese. People buy...I'll try it if I can get my hands on it....Not quite as bad as Nakashima Mika's version (honestly what could be?), but...OH wait a minute...it is damn pricey for just a three pack....This might actually be good. I look forward to giving it a try....Congrats on getting photo of the week in the current...well done Danny!! I'm sold! (-:...Good point. Maybe he had a senior moment....I thought the pictures were great! Nice review. :-)...But if he's Catholic...where's that put HIS work ethic? Ha ha. What wins out?...
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Maybe I'm naive on this, but I tend to side with James from Japan Probe - I didn't see any racist motive for the commercial. Merely a concept which becomes offensive in different lights. I really don't think EMobile was trying to make any insinuations. I prefer to give them the benefit of the doubt here and assume that they really were just continuing a series of successful commercials in which a monkey emulates people.
http://www.japanprobe.com/?p=5050 (one of a few posts)
I guess to shorten that whole thing I could just change the title of this submission.
Common Western View:
Emobile Commercial Portraying Obama as a Monkey
Probable Japanese View:
Emobile Commercial Features a Monkey Imitating Obama
Big difference, no?
Check out this video where an emobile rep talks about this:
http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=YXgk-cjfbqQ
I have to admit that I was unaware that this was part of an ongoing series by emobile and the rep did not mention that - he probably should have. I have now added a link to the rep's response in the post.
I remember seeing the commercial on TV a few times and saw a few posters at the train stations. While, I did find it odd I just wrote it off as a different standard of what racism is in Japan. My wife thought that the monkey was actually cute.
Yeah, the original ads featured monkeys and had nothing to do with Obama; They're just regular characters in the ads. They even sent-up inu otoosan from the Softbank commercials. But, the negative images have been around too long to erase them from our minds. Maybe there'll be a positive side to this, people in Japan might change their thinking about racial sensitivity.