British bank makes ‘culturally insensitive’ advertisement
The Observer reports that some people in Great Britain are offended by an bank advertisement featuring a white guy who has been “cosmetically enhanced” to look like a sumo wrestler:
A spokesman for the Japan Society, a charity that seeks to provide a better mutual understanding between the UK and Japan, said of the sumo ad: ‘My colleagues don’t like this advertisement, and you can understand how some Japanese people in the UK would find this ad offensive.’
Steve Pateman, head of the British Sumo Federation, said that the advertisement was ‘amateurish and naïve’. He added: ‘It looks terrible and it is insensitive to have made him up to look Japanese. It wouldn’t have been too difficult to get someone over from Japan who could adopt the proper athletic pose. I turn the page quite quickly when I see it. The whole thing is bloody awful. I’d like them to drop the advert. For a company that size, I would have thought they could use a little more judgment. They’ve shot themselves in the foot.’
Godfrey King, director of the Anglo-Japanese Society of Wessex, said the advertisement had ‘insulted the honour of a nation’. He added: ‘The fact that the picture depicts a sumo wrestler who is not actually a sumo wrestler but has been made up to look like one would be considered a high insult to the Japanese community. It is culturally insensitive.’
Although HSBC has denied making the model look as if he is from ‘a specific country or region’, a spokesman admitted that make-up had been applied to his face and eyes and that his skin tone had been made to appear more tanned.
The article compares the advertisement to Spain’s slit-eye sports team photos, but based on the photos provided of the sumo advertisement, HSBC’s ad seems pretty tame and unoffensive.
[via FG]
