The company had shot a commercial for a new product starring Korean celebrity Park Jin-hee. In one scene, Park showed up in a Nazi uniform with shell-firing sounds heard in the background. Behind her was the sentence, “Even Hitler could not get East and West at the same time.”
A Coreana source said, “Our new product has two main functions: moisturizing and curing. We just wanted to highlight this, and thus centered the ad on the concept of conquest and Hitler.”
After an internal review, however, the company pulled the word “Hitler” from the commercial and replaced it with “anybody.”
Well, I don't understand why they're still insisting that the ad was pulled after an internal review, or was voluntarily censored back in February (as was claimed in the AP article), but whatever. It's quite clear that nobody around here has a fucking clue why Nazis in a make-up commercial would be inappropriate. Just cutting out the word "Hitler" while leaving the unmistakably Nazi imagery does nothing to reduce the ad's offensiveness. In fact, it kinda makes it worse, and the ad should have just been pulled all together. But, like I said, I'm getting kind of sick about talking to myself about this. Obviously overseas protests won't do anything, since organizations like the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Associated Press have no teeth over here. The "fixed" ad still runs regularly on OnStyle, the smug grin on Park Jin-hee as infurating as ever.
Whatever. Like I said I'll do one more write-up in a day or two, to talk about my two teachers' workshops, then I think I'm done with the topic. The idiocy around here can be staggering.
3 comments:
Hey there, BiJ,
Just wanted to drop by to note:
I'm listening, and I'm agreeing with you, and I'm glad you're verbalising (so to speak) these thoughts, and I'm glad to hear that less random types are also dropping by and spending time on your perspectives.
I know blogging can seem like the sound of one hand clapping against a sea-breeze, and that can seem less than effective for getting the attention of said idiots lost out amongst the waves of history and multi-culturalism. But actually, it is a lot more effective than that. And, it's a hell of a lot better than just sitting down on the beach to watch the sinking.
hey Brian!
I do teach with co-teacher (3 lovely ladies) and while they have different styles, they are all very helpul. We don't team teach thoug, I'm definitely holding the reins in my classes. They hlp me mostly with translation, managment and hlping the low level kids keep up as best they can. th system works for me!
WIESENTHAL CENTER GRATIFIED THAT COSMETICS COMPANY DROPS CONTROVERSIAL “NAZI” AD
The Simon Wiesenthal Center today responded to reports saying that Korean cosmetics company Coreana has dropped, after protests from the Center and the Israeli Embassy, a controversial TV ad that depicts a model in Nazi-like military garb. The ad’s tagline read, “Even Hitler didn’t have the East and West”
"We are gratified that Coreana has decided to do the right thing,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Wiesenthal Center. “We remain very concerned that too many young Koreans lack important basic information about Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Holocaust,” he added.
The Center last year protested a similar incident with anti-Semitic imagery in a popular Korean comic book series. In both the comic book and cosmetics ad controversies, Rabbi Cooper also offered to work with Korean partners to educate the Koreans about the Nazi era.
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