Highjive at MulticultClassics writes: “The foreigner is stealing trade secrets. The White man is addicted to porn. And the woman is a shopaholic. Maybe the advertiser’s name should be changed to Stereotypes 360.”
NEW! Jasmine sent us more banal stereotypes! These are for eye care (found here).
Because old people NEVER have sex:
And all black people love the blues:
Comments 6
Nadav Perez — October 22, 2008
I find this ad useful for talking about employer-emploee relations. Quite shocking, the level of control over emploees this ad guarntees.
Dangger — October 22, 2008
Very nice, considering we are supposed to have passed from the panoptic vigilance to an integration of the work ethics.
finefin — October 23, 2008
Here in germany we had some scandals relating to employee monitoring this year -- all that stuff is illegal in germany as long as the personnel don't know about it.
oh and -- there's a german word
"abstempeln" --> http://www.dict.cc/?s=abstempeln
Niels — October 24, 2008
I'll definitely agree with Nadav and say that the real issue with this ad is the product that it sells. How highly unethical.
I can't get offended by the fact that it's a man who's a porn addict (probably the overwhelming majority of porn addicts are male) and that it's a woman who likes to do online shopping. I don't think there's any compelling evidence that Asians are more likely to steal trade secrets though.
This blog is getting so incredibly tiring with the seemingly never ending stream of race and gender tempests in teapots. My sociology degree seemed to encompass more stuff at least.
OP Minded — October 24, 2008
Niels, I completely disagree with you on this one and it makes me laugh because I, too, think that this site stretches sometimes to identify stereotypes in images, but come on, this is so clearly biased with the use of the Asian in this ad it boggles the mind....
Village Idiot — October 25, 2008
A tenet of Chaos Theory applies very well to attempts at controlling complex systems such as computer networks: A rigid imposition of order leads to an escalation of chaos.
So, the more employers and the government try to impose their control over people's computer use (or lives in general), the stranger and more unpredictable the results will be as people create novel ways to circumvent that control, or in some cases the mechanisms of the control itself will spawn unintended consequences.
It's almost like the creators of the ad tried to invoke blatant and unfair stereotyping as a diversion away from just how troubling the product itself actually is. Where is the well-groomed older white gentleman (the one not surfing porn sites of course) with the stamp on his forehead that says "I inflated our earnings reports and made millions while your pension evaporated!"?? Oh, that's right, he's the one who'd be buying this paranoia generator...