KFC Pulls "Racist" Australian TV spot

thanks for sharing that robert.
I didnt know I could have audio comments. Thats kewl. I'm gonna upload the feature as soon as i find it.



We really need a sarcasm emoticon

I think it is gone now, it was more of a Google joke than a real feature.

We're pissed as hell, and we're not going to take it any more!!!!!


http://www.satirewire.com/news/jan02/australia.shtml







Bugger the whales, save the Australians!

Go bunny!

Don't take this lying down!

I'm too bemused to know how to take it at all.

One minute I want to declare war, the next I want to laugh.

Of course...pissed as hell is another bloody piece of ignorance...it ought to be "pissed OFF as hell."

They're all over liberal talk radio. I hear them every morning on the way to work and they replay their broadcasts on the weekends.

Love that bit about the cheery song.

Agreed. I'm not overly attached to the issue either, especially since it didn't go mainstream condemnation on us, and if anything it's the critics of the ad who ended up looking stupid.
I've just found it surprisingly frustrating to make my feelings on the matter understood. Not just known, but understood.
This thread is, in itself, an interesting study in human behaviour and the difficulty even intelligent people have in crossing cultural barriers. Copenhagen must have been excruciating. Then again maybe I'm just not much of a diplomat. I suffer from this crazy naive delusion where I imagine that when everybody has all the information, that they'll all come to the same conclusions.

While I couldn't agree more with the general sentiment (and as an American, at that), I just can't wrap my mind around why this particular issue should appear to be such a lightning rod. This is probably about the most innocuous influence an American corporation has ever exerted on the larger world -- they pulled an advertisement.

Now, are people who are offended by the ad even with full knowledge of the context ridiculous? Absolutely. But is this really a prime example of the US being a cultural bully? It speaks to our shrillness and our stupidity and our remarkable ability to be distracted by the trivial (and here I am typing away on this thread) that KFC felt the need to pull the ad, and it's emblematic of our own ridiculous internal struggle surrounding political correctness, but on the cultural imperialism scale I'd say this ranks pretty ******* low. Or is there some great Ozzian affection for television adverts by foreign conglomerates selling deep fried parts of unhealthy animals raised in horrifying conditions that I am unaware of? Has Australian life in some way been diminished by this decision?*



* Don't get me wrong, I don't think American life would have been diminished in any way had the ad remained on the air. It's just that I can't imagine caring -- but, then, I'm pretty cynical of the motives of pretty much everything put before me on television, and I'd stand and applaud if they removed the advertising altogether, regardless of the reason.




Or, to be more brief:
What did you expect from a faceless American mega-corporation?

What Australians here seem not to be able to understand is that this has nothing to do with the attitudes of the majority of Americans, who are unaware of this entire passage of bullshit. We have Australians here waxing hysterical over what is essentially a non-event in the United States. This is about youtube, and silly and meaningless exercise in small time entertainment--it is definitely not about attitudes exemplary of Americans. This was important to an insignificant handful of bored Americans for the few minutes during which it was a big deal, before it was replaced by whatever the next big youtube excitement turned out to be. This thread is also as much about a set of resentments, which may or may not be justified, which Australians bring to their view of the United States.

This essentially did not happen in the United States; this essential was a non-event in the United States. The real issue here is the seething resents Australians cherish against the United States and Americans--the event which sparked this outpouring of antipodean angst is meaningless. If nobody in Australia would eat fried chicken, if all of them had the same attitude which, for example, the Wabbit expresses toward the product--then KFC would have no reason to make ads because they wouldn't be there.

I feel the same way about Frenchmen who sneer at MacDonald's. There would be no target for their contempt if the French did not patronize the company in sufficient numbers to justify a continuing investment there. Offensive American "culture" wouldn't be around to offend you if people didn't watch American television and motion pictures, and buy American products. It's hardly rational to blame all Americans for what a handful of loonies get worked up over on youtube, and it is hardly rational to blame Americans for "cultural" artifacts which corporations successfully sell to Australians. If all Australians had the same scruples as people posting on this thread lay claim to, KFC would not have a single store open in Oz.

I wish you would read what I have written, if you are addressing me personally.

I have no idea how many times I have said I understand the pulling of the ad, given the US reaction.

It is the labelling of the ad as racist without even CARING about the actual context, and the blindness of the "shrill and stupid" amongst your citizenry who appear not to even have within their mental world view a notion that there IS a cultural context outside of the US.

Then, the evidence from some of those clearly doing their best to be fair of how they cannot understand how some of their words are offensive, quite unconsciously, because of their continuing to operate from an unexamined US viewpoint.

Yes, it's a pretty minor example of the US-ocentric blindness, but it's in the context of this being present enough of the time in enough of what we see from the US that it's kind of a last straw effect, I guess.

This blindness in enough of you to be noticeable, backed up with you guys having so much power and media saturation and invading people and making demands that the world follow your economic ideas (like free trade..which you have often exempted yourselves from) and such sometimes pisses people (not just us) the hell off.

I think the blindness WITHOUT the power wouldn't be a drama.

I have no doubt this blindness is well distributed throughout the world.

(The Oz version re the US is stuff like that you'd be mad to go to the US because:

a. They'll kill you because they are all murderous gun nuts.

b. They're so evil that they ought to be boycotted.

c. There's nothing there to see because it's wall to wall cultural crassness like Disneyland, and there's nothing except junk food to eat.)

I suspect all top dogs have had the same reaction in their time. You guys'll experience it again when you wane.

ON a lighter note, a couple of minor, rather funny, totally unconscious examples from Abuzz and A2k that I can immediately call to mind:

Being called by an Abuzz luminary "one of our favourite pet Australians."

Having Oz praised for being such a loyal little follower of the USA that we "followed the US into World Wars I and II."

A clarifying comment that Tasmania was actually a part of Australia, (true...they call us their North Island) and was, like us, situated immediately below Africa.

Having USians unable to comprehend that we don't run on US time. (That one's not fair, because those people didn't know the WHOLE WORLD wasn't on USA time!)


I guess I am not sure why THIS has been the lightning rod here...maybe it's the heat, AND you've been dumb about cricket?

Some of that's fair.

I DO get it, re it being a minority of USians.

I actually got pissed off by comments on this thread, not the whole brouhaha as such.


KFC being here isn't the point of the brouhaha though, so that's a a silly point to make.

I was the one who said it, and it was in response to someone telling me that it was KFC being here that I should be angry about. I responded that I AM angry...because I think US junk food has been extremely aggressively marketed here, and this has helped lead to a very detrimental change in eating habits. It's not the ONLY cause...and Oz companies have picked up the heavy influence to eat **** machine themselves, but the craze began with American companies and American market saturation advertising like nothing we'd ever seen before, but that wasn't ever the actual point of the ire.

i like fried chicken and watermelon

You can say that again.



I sure as hell like watermelon.

What Eorl said.

Are you still at it bunny?

It's not silly to make the point that some Australians (and all we see are you affluent and relatively well-educated types here) consistently decry an American influence which would not be present there if it did not sell.

In the end, any thread here about "culture" is an exercise in elitism. No poor and damned few working class Australians or Americans can afford computers in their homes and the monthly internet access fee. So the people we see here are the ones who can afford the gadgets and the recurring bill for the service. I would ordinarily take your word for what life is like in Australia, but it is hard to escape the undeniable fact that you represent an elite in your nation--those who can afford computers in the home, those who can afford the internet service providers fee. That may well be a very large proportion of the population there, and i would hope that were true. But it is inescapable that our conversations are conversations between relatively well-educated, relatively well-off people.

People frequently hold up "Baywatch" as an example of American culture. I've never seen a single episode of the program. But i have no idea if it is popular with a large segment of the American public (i suspect that it once was but that it has palled on the viewing public)--however, its continuing popularity overseas suggests that it is popular with a significant proportion of foreign audiences. But i'm not the one to judge these things by--i watch probably an average of less than one hour a day of television. I eat in fast food restaurants an average of less than once a week--perhaps about once a month or less often.

So i often wonder to what extent intelligent, articulate people such as you and Miss Olga actually represent the Australian national character--if there is such a thing.

I wanted to post a more constructed reply, but I'm off to work in a couple. (I actually find this thread fascinating in and of itself.)

I have read your posts, deb, and re-read. My reply was to your post rather than to the thread in general because I was, in fact, going back over it and re-reading your posts when I put mine up.



I get that -- at least, that's what I suspected. But that the wrangle so consistently comes back to the ad itself, it seems as if there is some degree of surprise that events transpired in this way. I find the whole episode completely unsurprising, except for the level of indignation it has evoked among the Ozzian posters on this thread. All Americans involved -- it's mostly long-time posters on here -- have responded in their usual form. (But, then, I usually avoid threads with any tinge of controversy because I tire of the back and forth -- maybe this whole thing is pro forma for A2K and that's what I'm failing to grasp...)



Personally, I think there is some basis for these points, especially b. and c. (I mean, statistically speaking, you're not likely to be gunned down here, but more likely than in most of the so-called developed world.) Why do you think so many Americans with the cultural capital to do so spend as much of their vacation time as possible in other countries? And it ain't because it's cheap -- I could go to Florida a hell of a lot more cheaply than I can go to even Puerto Rico...*

I'm not arguing with the broader points about American corporate and cultural colonialism here in the least, not one iota, or about the sorry state of our public discourse. Believe me, as a resident I find the latter to be profoundly dismaying, and as a traveler bearing the stigma of my origin I'm bothered by the former. I just truly don't understand why this particular incident should cause a conflagration, except (as you note) as a case of pent-up and re-directed exasperation.

(But, again, within the context of A2K, mountains out of molehills is the way to go, and it is interesting as an occasional study.)

Off to drive through the tundra. Cheers.




* I know PR is technically part of the U.S., which is one of the reasons I chose it. Now there's be a fascinating case study for American cultural and capital imperialism...

Are you referring to the "Young Turks" (YouTube) video, maporsche?

Yes. The Young Turks have shows on XM and Sirius radio which play over and over and over. They are also on a few of the terrestial radio stations.

I have an iPhone app that streams talk radio and they are always listed on there to.


They might have a small youtube following, but the reach potentially millions of people via radio.