brad pitt, offense ads?

[Rogmok]

anyone know more about this??
this article wasn't too extensive..
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor..._ce/people_pitt (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=492&ncid=762&e=11&u=/ap/20021216/ap_en_ce/people_pitt)

[kitty]

I think his appearance in that photo was offensive... too much facial hair... <_<

[Napoleon Chynamite]

Not the first or last time white people will be used in ads to target the Asian audience :rolleyes:

[VV o n g B a]

Link (http://www.autoworld.com.my/EMZine/Review/viewarticle.asp?awReviewID=699&awCatID=RT.ATC.CAR.NW)

this is an older article, but there's a pic of pitt w/ an altis (last one on right). if the new advertisements are along similar lines, i can't see how he's being offensive. :blink:

[kitty]

it might just be star power... i would probably be offended if they got lucy liu in an ad geared for asians...

does pitt murder any asian tongues in his commercial?

[Chinkaholic]

and we want chewbacca to advertise for us? >confused<

[AliBabaIncorporated]

eh ... ignore it. it is just some Barisan Nasional hack politician putting on a show and dance in order to try to keep the strict Muslims under the BN tent and away from nutty Islamist parties like PAS or foreign Wahhabi-funded groups.

what really annoys me is the whole ethnic Chinese mentality that would produce this kinda ad. it wasn't malays. in the given price range (with certificates, taxes, and all, we're talking $40,000 cars) a huge proportion of the target market will be Malaysian Chinese. Toyota M'sia's marketing director is Chinese. but the best symbol they could come up with was some ugly white guy chosen for "foreigner prestige." what, afraid to use a Chinese model for fear of alienating the Malay consumer, and just don't wanna use a Malay model cuz you don't think it gives your product the same image as if you have a foreigner standing around and touting it?

Mr. Zainuddin couldn't have picked a better target, Brad Pitt looks like a damn disgusting slob in that picture, and it was a giant waste of money for Toyota's marketing department to pay to use him instead of a local or regional star. I'll bet Chinese people will probably bitch about this but I say Mr. Zainuddin did our community a favor ...

[ism]

Thanks for contextualizing the situation ABI. Glad to know this is not really a general concensus but a political ploy. Was about to launch into a rant =)

[loserbutt]

brad pitt is da man

[Commando_turned_MD]

Originally posted by loserbutt@Dec 16 2002, 02:37 PM
brad pitt is da man
I agree................He's da man..... :P

.................................................. ................................................
It's not an insult to Asian. :D .....They need to stop over analyzing everything.....Damn....It seems you can't do anything anymore.......oh my gosh, I find that commerical so offensive......yada......yada.....yada...... <_<

Next thing there gonna complain about is the Coppertone Commerical...Oh my gosh, the baby's ass is showing...........

If Pit looks like Chewy, oh well........maybe its his new signature look :D
Still da man...

[angel nympho]

What the hell. That's lame. Hahaha... People trip over the stupidest things... It's like, uhh, don't you guys have better things to worry about...?

[Jenny]

Originally posted by kittygirl@Dec 16 2002, 01:21 PM
it might just be star power... i would probably be offended if they got lucy liu in an ad geared for asians...

does pitt murder any asian tongues in his commercial?
Actually, I think a lot of celebs from the US aren't that well known in Asia... maybe Brad Pitt is an exception but there have been others that did ads and commercials overseas. To me it seems like Asia is sometimes in awe of the US, so I think putting a Caucasian person in their ads is sort of saying "look, our product is cool enough for a white person, so it's definitely cool enough for you." I dunno, maybe I'm just being too critical.

[angel nympho]

Originally posted by Jenny@Dec 17 2002, 01:02 AM
Originally posted by kittygirl@Dec 16 2002, 01:21 PM
it might just be star power... i would probably be offended if they got lucy liu in an ad geared for asians...

does pitt murder any asian tongues in his commercial?
Actually, I think a lot of celebs from the US aren't that well known in Asia... maybe Brad Pitt is an exception but there have been others that did ads and commercials overseas. To me it seems like Asia is sometimes in awe of the US, so I think putting a Caucasian person in their ads is sort of saying "look, our product is cool enough for a white person, so it's definitely cool enough for you." I dunno, maybe I'm just being too critical.
That's like.. if the US put an ad with an Asian person in it, all the white people should be allowed to be offended and say it's an insult to white people. Regardless of whether Asia is in awe of the US or not, it's basically the same situation.

[Commando_turned_MD]

Originally posted by angel nympho@Dec 16 2002, 05:33 PM
Originally posted by Jenny@Dec 17 2002, 01:02 AM
Originally posted by kittygirl@Dec 16 2002, 01:21 PM
it might just be star power... i would probably be offended if they got lucy liu in an ad geared for asians...

does pitt murder any asian tongues in his commercial?
Actually, I think a lot of celebs from the US aren't that well known in Asia... maybe Brad Pitt is an exception but there have been others that did ads and commercials overseas. To me it seems like Asia is sometimes in awe of the US, so I think putting a Caucasian person in their ads is sort of saying "look, our product is cool enough for a white person, so it's definitely cool enough for you." I dunno, maybe I'm just being too critical.
That's like.. if the US put an ad with an Asian person in it, all the white people should be allowed to be offended and say it's an insult to white people. Regardless of whether Asia is in awe of the US or not, it's basically the same situation.
Correct...... :D
It seems these bone-heads have nothing constructive to do, so they bitch and whine at everything......I remember Leonardo Dicapri did car commericals for Japan and the people love him....

[Jenny]

Originally posted by angel nympho@Dec 16 2002, 05:33 PM
That's like.. if the US put an ad with an Asian person in it, all the white people should be allowed to be offended and say it's an insult to white people. Regardless of whether Asia is in awe of the US or not, it's basically the same situation.
Yeah, but that's the weird thing. Because in the US most of the ads would be made of Caucasians or African-Americans because they're the ones who make up the majority of the US, they'd be the target audience. But I really dunno much about media trends in Asia so I can't really speak about it. That was just my guess on why they would use Caucasians in their ads and commercials.

[TyroneK(prettypretty)]

Tons of pretty big celebs do commercials to capitalize on their fame but protect their artistic credibility.

Mr. Durden's been in a good number of commercials where he murders the Japanese language in cold blood:

http://www.japander.com/japander/pitt.htm

And here's an interesting article on western stars in Japanese commercials.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/Articl...20021102/RVJAPA (http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/printarticle/gam/20021102/RVJAPA)

[MellowDrama]

I think Ali Baba Inc. is the only one that probably understands what's really going on here. We all come from a perspective like "WTH? What's the big f'n deal?" There's probably some socio-political underpinnings though.

[AliBabaIncorporated]

uh, after further investigation, it would seem Yahoo picked up on a story that got completely conflated from several vaguely related stories by some incompetent Associated Press correspondent. In English, people who get paid to write about a foreign country they don't understand the language of (and can't take a joke about it) are called "frauds." In Chinese they're called zhuhua waiguo jizhe (foreign correspondents stationed in China).

Anyway, here's a story from Berita Harian on this issue. (Sorry, Bahasa Melayu only. Anyone speaking better bahasa than me welcome to comment.)
http://www.bharian.com.my/Current_News/BH/...173857/Article/ (http://www.bharian.com.my/Current_News/BH/Monday/Mutakhir/20021216173857/Article/)

From my understanding, the Information Ministry did indeed ban a Toyota commercial starring Brad Pitt, and justified the action on the grounds that it was an insult to Asian people. However, this was a previous case. Datuk Zainuddin's comment, "Why is it necessary that we use their faces in our advertisements? Aren't we people handsome enough?" (Mengapa kita perlu menggunakan wajah mereka dalam iklan kita. Kenapa, orang kita tak handsome ke?) is in relation to the use of "Pan Asian faces" (wajah Pan-Asia ... this is a roundabout way of referring to Chinese, Japanese, and Korean stars - i.e. non-Malays) in advertisements, not in relation to the Brad Pitt advertisement ...

After reading this, I feel rather less ambivalent towards Datuk Zainuddin. If we just saw the aspect of the story that he banned a Brad Pitt advertisement largely designed and aimed at Chinese consumers because he thought we should use Asians instead, I could understand it as an attempt to tell Malaysian Chinese people to look to Asia instead of the West, and strengthen unity within the nation. But now we see his true colors: he doesn't want regional stars (wajah Pan-Asia) in advertisements either.

Who does that leave? "Orang kita," "our people." No non-bumi need apply.

[Craig]

In case anybody wants to look at the comments on this issue from another board that's non-Asian ...

http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.p...l?IDLink=383061 (http://forums.fark.com/cgi/fark/comments.pl?IDLink=383061)