E-Mobile has decided to pull their advertisement. You can read about via the link below:

http://www.blacktokyo.com/2008/06/28/e-mobile-pulls-obama-inspired-adver...

www.BlackTokyo.com
Information and discussions on Japan from the Afro perspective!

This is ridiculous. This is Emobile's mascot. The Japanese think the monkeys are cute. They always take parts of American culture and make it their own, that's probably where they were inspired to get "change" (which is also quite generic and anytime a politician runs they promise "change", tons and tons of it!)
I highly doubt this is supposed to represent Obama and supposed to be racist. There are many who will see this and won't even think of Obama.
What you you people be saying if the mascot was a parrot? A polar bear? It seems this company had the misfortune to have their mascot be a monkey and this ad on @ the wrong time.
Do you guys know what happened to the Dunkin donuts ad? This kinda reminds me of what happened. Let's not all be as crazy as Michelle Malkin.

It's surprising to me that no one in the production meetings for this CM said, "Hey, you know, maybe we shouldn't use a monkey to parody a black man." While I understand that the monkey has been used before in other CMs from this company to parody other non-black individuals, using it to parody a black man is quite different due to the historical context of portraying black men as apes as a means to degrade them and portray them as less than fully human.

Let's try to do a reversal here. Let's say there's a cell phone company in the States that has a yellow puppet with large teeth and glasses as its mascot, and it is often used to parody white American politicians or other public figures. However, for one ad they use it to parody a Japanese prime minister. This would obviously be problematic given the history of racist images used to represent East Asians, particularly Japanese. During WWII, the American government and the media portrayed the Japanese as yellow creatures with large buck teeth and glasses in order propagate the idea that they were less than fully human. No doubt the Japanese embassy as well as Asian-Americans would be lodging complaints with the cell phone company regarding the CM, as they should.

In fact, there have been stereotypical and degrading portrayals of Japanese in CMs and other media in various countries, and the Japanese embassies in the respective nations have filed complaints. I don't recall there being any accusations that the Japanese government was acting in an "imperialist" manner, as some have accused the critics of this ad -- they were rightly taking objection to how their people were being negatively portrayed.

The CM in question here is, at the very least, insensitive to the historical context of how black men have been portrayed as apes in order to humiliate and degrade them. At the very least, they should have taken this into account when they decided to parody a presidential candidate who happens to be a black man. And at the very least, they should take the example that Mandom set for their racially insensitive CM before -- pull the ad, issue an apology, and vow to do better in the future.

Being a black man who lived in and loved Japan I can whole heartedly agree with the comments of the black tokyo guy. Don't let the Sushi, Sake, and Bowing fool you. Japanese people as a whole due to the media which they are subject to think that black people are a like a lower life form. I remember watch a particular television show there where they had these black dudes that spoke japanese as though they are retarded and that was the humor to them, it was like "Darky Manzaii". The white guy on the other hand spoke as a proper man should. When I happen to meet one of the brothas at a party actually had a number of degrees and spoke better japanese then most japanese people.

I had a number of negative experiences with the people there. To the point of my "kind" are not wanted in the country. Sure there some whom are great people and will go out of their way to be cool. You can't blame those enlightened few, black folks are awesome.

But knowing how the culture views black people and their theroy that we would never be able to see through the context of the ad to see this diss. They feel that we are only good for sports, music, and fashion. I can only hope that Barak wins, maybe if he make it 2 terms he can insight change.