Burger King’s vision of Asian masculinity
Merq (MMW guest contributor!)
I was just about to crash, but this Burger King ad came on and I had to e-mail you. The basic premise is, a guy’s at dinner with his girlfriend, and he’s repulsed by the gourmet-portioned meal presented to him. So he breaks into song, “I am man,” dammit.
As he goes off in search of a burger, we see a bunch of guys singing the same song. One of those mob-in-the-street types. At this point, I was still enjoying the ad, without really noticing that all the guys shown were white. Then a black guy shows up and joins the mob… and then an East Asian dude.
What I found disturbing was that in order for this guy to fit into the “manly man” theme of this ad, he had to kneel with one hand holding a burger as he karate-chopped a cinderblock with the other. Sound like a familiar stereotype? The good old “East Asian men are sexless wimps whose only show of manliness is through martial arts.”
(Note from CVK: I found the ad on YouTube - click here to watch it.)
Merq wrote:
Forgive the incoherence, people. It had been a long day, and I was minutes away from hitting the sack.
Posted 05 May 2006 at 1:10 pm ¶
Bryce wrote:
That’s a pretty funny commercial, but yeah…I would probably re-edit and drop the shot of the karate chop. It seems a little out of context with the joke being told by the ad. Maybe if it was set up with a quick shot of him stuck doing yoga with his gf, and then he gets up, headbutts the brick, and joins the mob…
Not the last we’ll see of this type of thing…
~BE
Posted 05 May 2006 at 1:57 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
Maybe the one I saw was a shorter one and there was earlier stuff cut out, but from what I saw the black guy is the second one to appear after the original one singing it. Then the group comes out, and the same black guy from earlier and the now-appearing Asian guy are part of the crowd from the first time we see them. I don’t see anywhere where there’s this white crowd singing this song before those two show up, which was the impression I got when I first read your post. I was looking to see what you described, and I never did.
As for the Asian guy and the concrete block, I think you’re misinterpreting it. It’s not about martial arts being the only way Asian men can be manly. Otherwise their main point that Asian men can be manly by eating burgers would be seriously undermined. I think what they were thinking was that breaking cinderblocks with your bear hand is something that Asian men can sometimes be especially manly at, as opposed to other people who are much less likely to do that sort of thing. So I wouldn’t take it as comparing Asian men doing that action as opposed to other manly things. It’s more Asian men doing that action as opposed to other men who couldn’t do such things. Maybe it’s still based on a misleading stereotype, but I’m not sure you’ve identified the right one.
Posted 05 May 2006 at 9:36 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
Bare hand, sorry. That’s what I get for trying to write coherently in the evening after staying up late grading the night before.
Posted 05 May 2006 at 9:36 pm ¶
merq wrote:
Jeremy,
I too typed my post out in exhaustion (after seeing it for the first time), and probably screwed up the order of things. The black dude may have shown up earlier. To me, the order of entry is irrelevant. My point was their depiction of the only East Asian man in the ad.
“It’s not about martial arts being the only way Asian men can be manly. Otherwise their main point that Asian men can be manly by eating burgers would be seriously undermined.”
Let me clarify that point, ’cause you seem confused. Emboldened by the burger, the other guys roam the streets– some punching things out, others merely hoisting a burger above their heads– supposedly being manly. My point is that it seems they thought they couldn’t achieve that effect with an East Asian man. So they went for the good old Masculinizer of (Asian) Men… martial arts.
Get it now? The other dudes supposedly had a swagger about them the ad’s director deemed sufficiently “masculine.” But in order for the East Asian dude to step up to the challenge, he’d have to crush a cinderblock, “as they’re known to do.”
Posted 06 May 2006 at 8:37 am ¶
John wrote:
Jeremy Pierce– “breaking cinderblocks with your (bare) hand is something that Asian men can sometimes be especially manly at, as opposed to other people who are much less likely to do that sort of thing. Maybe it’s still based on a misleading stereotype… ”
Dude, please read that again. I’m sure you’ll eventually get it.
Posted 06 May 2006 at 9:19 am ¶
John wrote:
After an hour in cubicle hell, I grow increasingly annoyed w/ JP’s comments.
In-N-Out Burger… where are you!
Posted 06 May 2006 at 10:42 am ¶
merq wrote:
John…
after dealing with Unlisted, I realized I have neither the energy nor the desire to deal with certain comments… that one you attacked was one of ‘em.
cheers, for taking one for the team
Posted 06 May 2006 at 2:08 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
What I meant is that they didn’t have some deliberate view that the only way they could show an Asian being manly was to have him break a cinderblock. They probably wanted a variety of ways to show manliness, and the breaking of the cinderblock was one that someone came up with. Their reason for selecting an Asian man to do it is because martial arts tend to originate in Asian countries. There’s a stereotype there, but I don’t think it has anything to do with any idea that Asian men are manly only in those situations.
My sense of what was driving this wasn’t that he was Asian but that he was a middle-aged Asian man in a nice suit. There might have been something racial about it, but I think there was just as much from his age and dress. If they’d had younger Asians, I don’t think they would have hesitated to have them doing what everyone else was doing. This was the older, mild-mannered Asian man stereotype and not some general Asian man stereotype. That’s why I don’t think this has anything to do with Asians being able to be manly only in those circumstances. It’s more than those circumstances are more likely to have Asians, or perhaps that a certain segment of Asians is manly only in those circumstances. Either way I didn’t think the way you’d said it was the best way to put it. It wasn’t denying that such a phenomenon ever occurs, just that your diagnosis really fit the commercial the way I saw it.
Posted 08 May 2006 at 5:16 pm ¶
Ray wrote:
Wait, isn’t that an Asian guy walking out of the building with the rest of the group near the beginning of the spot? But yeah, the karate chop of the concrete block is, without question, a stereotype. It would be similar to showing an isolated scene of a black guy holding a whopper in one hand while slam dunking a basketball with the other.
Posted 08 May 2006 at 7:35 pm ¶
John wrote:
JP,
I also wanted to respond to your comment on the “Wife Is War Trophy” topic, but your paragraphs have such a dizzying effect… it’d be easier to decipher a labyrinthine puzzle.
(example- “Its more than those circumstances are more likely to have Asians, or perhaps that a certain segment of Asians is manly only in those circumstances.”)
But like the clues hidden in Da Vinci’s art, the answers you seek are hidden in plain sight– in the maze of sentences under your name.
“If (there were other visible Asian men) I don’t think they would have hesitated to have them doing what everyone else was doing.”
Urethra… I mean, EUREKA! THERE WERE NO EASILY VISIBLE ASIAN MEN, OTHER THAN A GUY CHOPPING A BLOCK. The end.
Oh wait!
That Asian guy in the white shirt/black tie is different from the karate chopping Asian guy in the white shirt/black tie… his face in a billowing cloud of cement dust.
This really is a mystery. Not!
Posted 08 May 2006 at 11:36 pm ¶
merq wrote:
John:
priceless
Posted 09 May 2006 at 6:45 am ¶
John wrote:
Merq:
“priceless”… like a In-N-Out Burger in New York?
Posted 09 May 2006 at 7:10 am ¶
Merq wrote:
dude, priceless like “URETHRA!”
I still laugh my ass off whenever I read that.
Posted 09 May 2006 at 12:23 pm ¶
Anonymous wrote:
Still craving?
You should try FATBURGER in Jersey City… sat across from Lizzie Grubman.
Posted 09 May 2006 at 2:33 pm ¶
Jeremy Pierce wrote:
John, is he a younger Asian? I notice that your misattribution of my words left that bit out. I’ve only seen the thing twice, and the second time I missed half of it, so I don’t know. I didn’t notice that there were two Asian men, though, and if there were I didn’t notice one of them being of a younger generation or fitting a different demographic in any other sense. I don’t know of any stereotype that younger, cooler Asians can be masculine only by doing martial arts. I do know of a stereotype regarding older, more staid and formal Asian men regarding this.
Posted 09 May 2006 at 10:38 pm ¶
John wrote:
Okay, so maybe you’ll never ‘get it’.
… the only Asian male representation– karate chop…
Is it really that difficult to comprehend?
Posted 15 May 2006 at 8:30 pm ¶