Kona Grill specializes in “imaginative meals.” In their ad campaign (discovered here), they sexualize their mixing of usually segregated culinary traditions (“East meets West”). Here they put a fork and chopsticks in bed together:
Their food, apparently, is like interracial sex. This is interesting in itself, but the copy goes further. It reads:
A restuarant. A bar. A place where opposites attract. Visit konagrill.com for a little taste.
So not only are East and West (or Asians and Americans) different, they’re “opposites.” Such advertising not only fetishizes interracial relationships, but it reinforces the idea that race and culture are such powerful and defining characteristics that people from the East and the West could not possibly have anything in common (except sex, of course).
Comments 4
Sanguinity — December 2, 2008
It's also doing a variation on that thing where the food of racialized people stands in for the people themselves. (Remember the law firm diversity ad you posted back in... August? July? With the measuring spoons full of spices?) Here it's exotic utensils instead of exotic food, but very much the same thing.
Bagelsan — December 2, 2008
I would go so far as to say it's gendered, too. That's not a pair of dark blue chopsticks with an angular pattern in bed with a softly curving spoon. That's a pair of delicately leaning pink(ish) chopsticks sleeping with a steel fork. So Asians are decorative and feminized while the West in cool and masculine. And only white guys and Asian girls have sex with each other. Color me unsurprised.
(But maybe I'm reading into it too far? :p)
Rosa — December 5, 2008
Interesting thinking, but at the same time we maintain the categorisation of people depending on colour and culture by talking about “race”.
One can talk about different races of dogs for example; Yorkshire, Dalmatians or Puddle, but the divers’ colours of humans are not biologically supporting the use of the term “race”.
I know this is just a way of saying but at the same time our vocabulary should maybe be reconsidered.
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