Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 4

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Screen Magazine - Index

Screen Magazine - Screen Magazine: Vol. 29, Issue 4 - Index

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Recently, disturbing evidence of an East
Asian disconnect has crashed onto the
stage of US advertising like a family of
bamboo-mongering cartoon Panda bears
who speak English with Chinese accents.
The spectre: a Sales Genie commercial.
It began simply as a thirty second display of
shameless, mediocre advertising during the
Super Bowl. But when the thirty seconds
ended, ironically, they marked the beginning of
a long-winded, national display of shameless,
mediocre political-correctness that continues
today.
People seem to be upset about the accents.
Evidently, Panda bears — cartoon Panda
bears, mind you — should not talk with
Chinese accents. Except for, of course, the
fairy godmother Panda bear. She speaks English
as soothingly as a trade show model. Strangely
this does not upset people. The Chinese accents
do. So much, as a matter of fact, that it seems
risky to type the words, “Chinese accent.”
So the vocal inflection that least offends viewers
who are tortured by animation falls within the
Mickey Mouse range. Problem is, I can’t imagine
Mickey schmoozing his way into my office sounding
like Richard Simmons on a helium binge. The Yogi
Bear dialect might work — you know, that happygo-lucky
blue collar thing — but I can’t buy into a
blue collar Panda bear. Perhaps this is because the
Panda’s natural habitat exists entirely within the
borders of China.
Of course the Sales Genie company itself
represents an even greater obstacle. Not only
do they generate enough revenue to buy time
during the Super Bowl, but they leave the
creative process to a group of ten year-olds
with a keg of Coke slushies at Disneyland. The
strategy works fine for beer commercials and
Will Ferrell movies and US foreign policy, but
what kind of nihilistic software company would
attach it to a Super Bowl commercial?
Oh, that’s right: it’s a cartoon.
The fact is, drawing political correctness into
the world of make believe is like opening a
huge can of cartoon worms. I don’t know
what cartoons talk like, but I do know that
Panda-gate is just the beginning. If their
ethnicity gets sold into some categorically
unrecognizable suburban honk, a mountain
of cases will follow. An entire cast of
imaginary talking animals — from that
charming Dixie stutterer Foghorn Leghorn
to the andele-spewing Mexican Speedy
Gonzales — will be stuffed into the
chomping, anthropomorphic teeth of an
innoculating meat grinder.
Such a machine is already being
manufactured by the Acme mail-order
bomb company.
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