The reality is that all of these people have similar skin color. Face it - you're a racist prick.

Actually, I think those Asians aren't an undifferentiated mass - they're two small undifferentiated masses. They took the same group photographed from a different angle and used it as "more people."

I guess they all look the same to, say, the person who directed the intern who did the photoshop to make the crowd larger.

"The reality is that all of these people have similar skin color. Face it – you’re a racist prick."

Oh God, you're one of those, "Racism only exists because
you keep talking about race" types. I guess
you're color blind too.

The palm pre ad simply trades on people's familiarity with China's mass synchronized dance/acrobatics popularized world wide by the summer Olympics. This has nothing more to do with racism. If it is then you'd have to say that all of us who were so astounded by the summer Olympics synchronized displays--where in some cases humans were hidden within what appeared to be mechanical displays -- were all racist. This is also similar to the current Prius ads, where humans are made to look like undifferentiated masses of green plant life or blue water.

It's a pretty big stretch to find racism in the Palm ad...

Obviously the dancers are being used as a metaphor for the phone. Both are supposed to demonstrate athe ability to deal with incredibly complex and detailed things with great precision and accuracy. The ad would work just as well with any large group of highly skilled dancers/performers. Their race has absolutely nothing to do with the ad.

Is it better or worse that the "Asians" in the first two ads (or at least the first one) don't even appear to be actually Asian? Or else they just didn't want to bother styling real hair.

And don't the first two seem to be referring to Japanese culture specifically? I'm not sure about the second one.. but I don't know if they have geisha like that traditionally in any other Asian countries. I'm just throwing stuff out there, though, I don't know nearly enough about various Asian cultures.

Thanks Gwen for these further examples of the common Western tendency to think of Asians in terms of undifferentiated hordes. I think the Palm Pre ad is racist for this reason, but also because it contrasts its faceless, homogenized group with an individualized white consumer at the center. As I wrote in a post about the ad awhile back:

I don't see a problem with the Olympics connection, but why put a white woman at the center of all this vague Asian-ness?

According to USA Today,

The message of the ad, by agency Modernista, is ease of use. Actor Tamara Hope sits on a rock in an open field surrounded by circles of dancers. In coordination with their synchronized dance moves, Hope shows some of the phone features.

The idea is that Pre is "a little more human and a little more approachable and about making your life better," says [Palm Marketing VP Brodie] Keast, who would not disclose spending. "This is not really for work or play but for one life with many dimensions."

Yes. An ad about "one life," that of a Western white woman, who's using an object that's made "a little more human" by placing it, and the individual holding it, against a faceless, dehumanized backdrop of 1,000 choreographed, synchronized . . . puppets.

Ad makers don't have to have racist intentions for an ad to end up being racist.

this ad also plays into the western trope of using asian 'bodies' as a signifier for technology and efficiency.

And if the ad used white people as the dancers, would you be accusing its creators of racism because they co-opted an Asian art form?

Anytime two races come together in one form of advertising, you can always make the accusation that there's some underlying tone of racism. If you're always looking for it, you will always find it.

So what's your answer...segregated advertising? Or some silly idealized world where only white men are depicted as "inferior" or "an inhuman mass"?

I think that the fact that a group of asian women dressed in traditional clothing are kneeling to two blond white people lit up in light while they seem to be on a sweat shop floor is quite significant. whether intended or not, the ad comes across as imperialist and makes me think of economic exploitation and the need for capitalist consumerism.

Asians portray white people in the same manner in local advertising. You're making this out to be a purely Western issue. The fact is that you've blindsided yourself into becoming a racist yourself by ignoring the fact that races other than Caucasians are just as evenly capable of racism.

I can honestly say that it's people like you who make the rest of the feminist movement look ridiculous.