BK Colonialism
You heard about it in history class, and you’ve seen the movies. If you forgot the details then let me refresh your memory:
Colonialism is the extension of a nation’s sovereignty over territory beyond its borders by the establishment of either settler or exploitation colonies in which indigenous populations are directly ruled, displaced, or exterminated. It was often based on the ethnocentric belief that the morals and values of the colonizer were superior to those of the colonized.*
But what has that got to do with a new Burger King movie, that some will just think is a fun way of trying to find out what tastes better, a Whopper or a Big Mac. And doing so by asking people that have never heard of the rivalery or even tasted a burger before.
To me it’s something very different: WRONG!
The first part is pretty decent, but everything goes wrong halfway. I first started thinking that it was a bit too religious, but quickly the word colonialism popped into my head.
The idea of trying to find people living happily without the choice of supersizing their meal, instantly brings flashes of other things being historically jammed down peoples throats, like alcohol, christianity, diseases, enslavement and so forth. And stealing anything worth having while doing it!
Burger King may needs new customers, but this is not the right way to find them…
Streetbeat
* source Wikipedia
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It comes back to the same old complaints – who are they trying to kid?
You hope in a car 15mins from Bucharest and there’s some toothless nomad who will have never seen a burger before?
Shove a camera in there face and they’ll smile and say the right things and “voila!” we have brought civilisation to the savages!
I’d rather watch Cameron Diaz’s MTV show ‘Trippin’ where “Cameron Diaz and a group of her close, personal friends think globally and act globally too as they travel to unlikely getaways…from Chile to Yellowstone, on a quest to safeguard the environment. No Hotel, no Pilates instructors…they will pack their own bags and carry them into the wild.”
Come on Burger King we aren’t that ****ing dumb
R
Guess I’m that ****ing dumb then, cause I didn’t get all those copied words out if it. It’s was just a fun twist to a battle of giants that’s been going on for ages – a little freshness in that battle I might ad. I don’t think Burger King is planning on making business in those parts anyway. So stop psycoanalyze simple advertising like you wouldn’t pull every trick in the book to sell yourself… I would… They would… wouldn’t you?
Mark,
No I wouldn’t do it;
- I wouldn’t sell my product in a way that is immoral and arrogant
- I wouldn’t introduce my product (that I know is an unhealty convenience food) and interrupt their current existence
- I wouldn’t take a semi superior tone in my film and say ‘they’etc
- I wouldn’t position my product as a slice of Americana that people want to experience and in the next frame go find some people who never tasted my product and shove it under their nose
- I wouldn’t use any ‘tricks’ as that never works
- I would create a film that was honest and genuine
- I would think about communicating my products virtues in a way that is real (really real) as I know that people see through fake adverts
- I would (if I worked for Burger King) question my motives in the 2nd half of the film
- I would think about the social commentary my film makes
And I could go on and on.
Aborigines, American Indians, Carib Indians, Africans tribes, Indian regions…more than a few people who had westerners visit them with some ‘new’ products…does alcohol and influenza ring a bell?
Rob, I’m totally convinced… I am… but should we put a burger in the same category as Alcohol and influenza?…I mean…it’s a burger… come on?
I have to agree with Rob on this. What really bothers me with this whole thing is that it portrays these people like they have a miserable life because they never had a burger. Their traditional food is shown as nasty and “wow here comes the original American burger to save their lives”.
Fact is that it just once again proves the fact that (many) Americans have a tendency to think that everyone in the world have an inner desire to become American and are somehow sad and dissatisfied with their existence because they can’t have an American way of life. And thinking that your way of life is superior in all ways is indeed the first step on the road to being a colonialist.
Clint….well said….
Just have one notice about what you said about showing their own food as nasty. The clip I saw had americans eating local food at the end – not at all shown as nasty – and the same americans saying yummi and loving it… and I really…REALLY don’t think americans think the rest of the world wants to be like them after the last 8 years under Bush. I’m sure they are not on that high horse… well at least not the ones I know… but maybe the rest of america then? I don’t know, but I do think this is blown way out of proportions. Do this ad work in america? I think so! Do it work in Denmark? Do Burger Kind cares? I think that all they thought was “how do we get the most real taste-check?” And then went all out on the motherfucker… thats just what I think. They are playing. It’s a little like talking about the bottle being a fallos and a rose the vigina like we heard from our teachers in school… and then working in advertising and thinking… what? Huh?
“I think that all they thought was “how do we get the most real taste-check?” – and that’s the sum of the problem!
[...] Then, very unfairly – it gave me flashbacks to the Burger King Colonialism post we did a while back (see here). [...]
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