Should we read anything into this, a commercial for the latest Samsung Sens notebook computer, in which the white people are wearing pig noses and are trying to plug their notebooks into them?
The white people don't have 센스, both the notebook and "sense" enough to buy one. The safe answer would be that Samsung simply wanted to give the commercial an international feel by including non-Koreans, but you know eventually people here will have to answer for the casting choices they make.
28 comments:
I caught this on television a little earlier tonight and thought it was for conversion plugs at first. Interesting timing, what with "swine flu" going around these days.
For the record, this blogger bought his Sens Q210 last year - thus avoiding any pig-nose brouhaha.
What a horrible ad:
a) It's a dig at white people, accusing them of spreading swine flu.
b) It's calling them stupid, obese pigs but the slim little Korean girl bought the right computer! So cutee!
By the way, look at the locations. This wasn't filmed in Korea, so the white actors really have no idea what they are getting themselves into. They are just a bunch of hack actors in, perhaps, New York? I agree that Westerners who decide to become "actors" in Korea often end up being used for roles that degrade other Westerners and that those people should use some sense. Ha. But there is still very little sense of community within the foreigners in Korea, people are always looking for acting gigs to make quick cash and their egos as "actors" will trump any suggestion you make that perhaps they shouldn't get on TV and act like a cartoonish white person for Koreans to mock.
Perhaps the international community might like to respond by showing a Korean with trotters for hands browsing the interweb on their Samsung laptop and having to enter their real name and ID number on every site they visit, and only being able to use Internet Explorer, and having a million or so ActiveX components and flashing images on every site they visit, and using Naver for searches, and getting their news from YTN, and all the other shitty internet things that Koreans get no choice in.
I was wondering when this issue would come up into the blogs.
This is one of the reasons I don't watch TV here in Korea.The only channel I can watch for more than I minute is YTN.
It'd be nice to see some intelligence shown by the people who made the ad. For international appeal, it's best not to go down the path of outright racism.
This ad says Koreans are smart, Americans are stupid. My question is why did they dress her up as a hooker?
"enter their real name and ID number on every site they visit, and only being able to use Internet Explorer, and having a million or so ActiveX components and flashing images on every site they visit"
Jesus christ does that get annoying.
It was filmed in Sydney, Australia - as are many Korean commercials - I can tell by the landmarks. I guess the economy must be really bad back home for models to think 'ok, I'll degrade myself, look like a boar and a fool and collect my $A50 at the end of the day's shoot'.
Very ordinary stuff. I hope it makes the Australian press.
Stay classy, Korea!
With ads like this, it's only a matter of time before foreigners begin rating you way higher than inferior countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic.
I think the white people in this ad are meant to symbolize the cheesy-ass "pig English" of this product's name.
Good, I'm not alone in being offended by this ad. I would get the Elie Wiesel foundation on these fools, but they haven't glorified Hitler. Per se.
oooh, noes, Koreans are being mean to white people! What the heck is the matter with you people? Must every nation in the universe observe your absurd kabuki theater of political correctness to be considered human beings? It's a dumb commercial: grow up! As a genuine, 100% unadulterated, probably much paler-than-you white man, I couldn't care less about this commercial. One of the things I like about Koreans is they are still capable of making good natured and inexplicable things like this, because they haven't been infected with the disease of preening moralistic piety about things like race. If it really makes you feel howwible and oppressed, why don't you just make squinty eyes at an Asian and go, "ching chong ding dong" or something and get it out of your system. I'm not impressed by your moralistic posturing, and if I were a Korean, I would laugh even harder.
oink, this is so disgusting, it is difficult to know where to begin. Hitler did this by putting rat faces onto Jews.
And lupole--- if you truly feel that way, well, I'm sure there is a nice concentration camp somewhere north of the DMZ where you will be very happy.
Do they even sell sens computers outside of Korea?
"...they haven't been infected with the disease of preening moralistic piety about things like race..."
I double-dare you to start taking cheeky potshots at the Korean minjok in front of a large group of Koreans and see how "tolerant" they are about it.
Moron.
I don't think the commercial is racist. It's not saying white people are pigs . . . the noses are referring to the adapters used to plug them in overseas. But it is depicting these people as buffoons, and quite frankly I'm sick of seeing crap like that on TV. Which is why I asked if they couldn't cast any Koreans as computer users with substandard laptop batteries.
I don't think the film is a kind of racism stuff. I think you intentionally added the phrase 'piggy white' in youtube which I guess samsung didn't intend to be deduced from the commercial. These days, Korean brands are using more western guys in their commercials. If samsung is not to use western guys, Korean guys should have worn the piggy noses or something you can easily consider as one can be used as an electricity outlet.
I don't like samsung, but I don't think the samsung are such idiots as to use some racist stuffs.
Brian, I understand what you're saying though my belief is that it is indeed racist. Not because it is explicitly showing white people to be pigs, I get the plug connection angle they're going for.
But, why in a city of Sydney - where they chose to shoot the ad - which is a multicultural city with around 20% of residents being of Asian descent, did they chose only to have Caucasian Australians in the shoot for the role of 'pig people'?
I would have had no problem with the ad if the .pig people. included Asian-Australians, Indigenous-Australians, African-Australians, etc. But, it didn't. It chose only to have Caucasian Australians play the 'pig people' role.
That in my mind makes the ad clumsy, foolish, low-brow and indeed racist.
Okay, the ad is stupid and may or may not be racist, but consider the source and the morons who are masquerading as an ad-agency. These are the same fools, a few years ago, who thought that a guy in a kangaroo suit doing stupid shit was the ideal way of selling 'Sens' laptops. I remember because the Samsung coffee machine on my floor had this infantile nonsense plastered all over it for more than a year. We're not talking about Don Draper and Sterling/Cooper here.
3gyupsal -- Yes, they do sell the Sens line of computers outside of Korea. Dell and Samsung entered into an agreement where each company has refrained from intruding on the other's "home turf", but this is set to expire in 2010.
When looking up reviews for different Sens models last year I noticed that the brand seemed pretty easy to come by in the UK. Not sure how much/what kind of advertising is produced for overseas markets, though.
nit pick nit pick, must you eat apart everything that you see on tv that is not to your liking
"nit pick nit pick, must you eat apart everything that you see on tv that is not to your liking"
Must the Internet be such an infinite refuge for the oblivious and chronically self-unaware?
"Nit pick" indeed.
In Korean, the term 'dwoeji ko' is used as slang for a plug. 'Dwoeju ko' means 'pig nose' in English. I don't think Samsung meant to be racist with this commercial, no matter in how much bad taste it is to non-Korean viewers.
If anything, we can just add this commercial to the others that lack discernation and foresight, like the nazi cosmetic commercial, the 'paint a white dude black' commercial, the 'suck a lollipop' etc. that have all hit the airwaves in the past.
Samsung computers are crap. I have one at work and I detest it. I usually bring my HP laptop or Asus netbook to work and work on it instead.
As for the commercial and the comments, as an African-American I am kind of amused. My experience has been that I usually see Blacks and other minorities (in the States) complaining about such stuff. It is kind of refreshing to see whites complain about being stereotyped and maligned. :-)
Saying that, if Samsung is doing it intentionally or not, they need to stop it, especially when they depend on Westerners to buy their wares. They could not survive just selling only in the Korean market.
Well, I don't know about the Sens models these days, but my Sens computer a couple of years ago (bought in 2003) the battery died in 15 minutes, every time. Someone else said you can now get Sens models abroad. As of 2007 they weren't in the US 'cause I had problems whenever I took my computer to be serviced anywhere.
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