This ad copy from Bayo got a mix (pun intended) of reactions from Pinoys. I'm perplexed by why it needed so many words to get its message across. Sadly, all those words' efforts were in vain because the message got lost and, worse, twisted. It's tragic. Plus, the grammatical errors make me want to throw red pens at everyone responsible for this mess (stick 'em with the pointy end!).
Below is a reaction by one of my writer friends. I think it's one of the smartest critiques made about this matter.
On Being a “Mix” by Ken Ishikawa
Kindly look at the ad above and survey your reactions to it.
I’d like to think I’m an expert on the matter of being a “mix” since I’ve led an existence of one for more than 32 years. My mother is Filipino and my father is Japanese. But I wouldn’t claim that “the mixing and matching of Filipino blood is almost a sure formula for someone beautiful and world class” as this campaign suggests.
I for one look like I have a sea anemone growing on my face and there are many instances that women avoid riding with me on the front row of an fx or a shuttle. As for being world class, I’d honestly just pop a pack of LaLa open than buy myself a Cadbury bar.
I believe that the ad means well but because its execution is ludicrous and overreaching, the campaign has managed to shoot itself on the foot. Whoever conceptualized the ad should have been more studious of the concepts and the contexts they are going to suggest once it comes out.
For one, who are these mixes they are talking about? Is it the Amerasians left by their military fathers in Olongapo? Is it the Japanese Filipino Children abandoned by their fathers? The rather flighty tone of the text dismisses the idea of power and race relations between the two races commingling in what they call a “mix.” They also discount gravity from identity by implying it’s something you put on and take off as in a “match.”
There is always a stigma applied to our origins. Amerasians know this all too well and Japanese Filipino Children live this every single time people call their mothers “entertainer” or “Japayuki.” Our looks, our eyes, the color of our skin creates assumptions of where we come from and these are far from what the image the ad is selling. I tell you there is nothing really that fashionable about being a “mix.”
Perhaps the “mixes” the ad is referring to are those children from upwardly mobile and happy families. When a child hails from a “well bred” family and also happens to have a foreigner for a parent who is also well off, all stigma seems to be erased. This projection confirms a certain fantasy; one of being white and being rich.
Forgive my reading but there seems to be a subtle message here that says: “go forth and multiply with foreigners and have beautiful mongrel children.” It is also an encouragement to do marriage migration.
I, personally, am not against intercultural marriages but what I am against is marrying somebody because of their ethnicity and their country’s pecking order in the global capitalist structure. When people marry for economic reasons or use their better halves as passports to a better life, the foundation of the relationship itself is shallow and the marriage itself may be compromised. Should the split come, it is the children who suffer.
Unfortunately, identities and nationalities cannot be mixed and matched as the ad presumes. Otherwise, we won’t have any trouble moving to and fro our parents’ countries. Intercultural children are transgressions against the concept of nation. Most of us can never have access to both of our parent’s homelands because being a citizen of more than one country is seen as being disloyal to one or the other. We are not so much as the sum of two races’ gene pools; we are the evidence of a common humanity. But this idea is something that countries have yet to get.
I hope this small perspective adds to the range of ideas you clothe your minds with and be careful of what ideas you pick up. Some notions leave you naked more than others.
Below is a reaction by one of my writer friends. I think it's one of the smartest critiques made about this matter.
On Being a “Mix” by Ken Ishikawa
Kindly look at the ad above and survey your reactions to it.
I’d like to think I’m an expert on the matter of being a “mix” since I’ve led an existence of one for more than 32 years. My mother is Filipino and my father is Japanese. But I wouldn’t claim that “the mixing and matching of Filipino blood is almost a sure formula for someone beautiful and world class” as this campaign suggests.
I for one look like I have a sea anemone growing on my face and there are many instances that women avoid riding with me on the front row of an fx or a shuttle. As for being world class, I’d honestly just pop a pack of LaLa open than buy myself a Cadbury bar.
I believe that the ad means well but because its execution is ludicrous and overreaching, the campaign has managed to shoot itself on the foot. Whoever conceptualized the ad should have been more studious of the concepts and the contexts they are going to suggest once it comes out.
For one, who are these mixes they are talking about? Is it the Amerasians left by their military fathers in Olongapo? Is it the Japanese Filipino Children abandoned by their fathers? The rather flighty tone of the text dismisses the idea of power and race relations between the two races commingling in what they call a “mix.” They also discount gravity from identity by implying it’s something you put on and take off as in a “match.”
There is always a stigma applied to our origins. Amerasians know this all too well and Japanese Filipino Children live this every single time people call their mothers “entertainer” or “Japayuki.” Our looks, our eyes, the color of our skin creates assumptions of where we come from and these are far from what the image the ad is selling. I tell you there is nothing really that fashionable about being a “mix.”
Perhaps the “mixes” the ad is referring to are those children from upwardly mobile and happy families. When a child hails from a “well bred” family and also happens to have a foreigner for a parent who is also well off, all stigma seems to be erased. This projection confirms a certain fantasy; one of being white and being rich.
Forgive my reading but there seems to be a subtle message here that says: “go forth and multiply with foreigners and have beautiful mongrel children.” It is also an encouragement to do marriage migration.
I, personally, am not against intercultural marriages but what I am against is marrying somebody because of their ethnicity and their country’s pecking order in the global capitalist structure. When people marry for economic reasons or use their better halves as passports to a better life, the foundation of the relationship itself is shallow and the marriage itself may be compromised. Should the split come, it is the children who suffer.
Unfortunately, identities and nationalities cannot be mixed and matched as the ad presumes. Otherwise, we won’t have any trouble moving to and fro our parents’ countries. Intercultural children are transgressions against the concept of nation. Most of us can never have access to both of our parent’s homelands because being a citizen of more than one country is seen as being disloyal to one or the other. We are not so much as the sum of two races’ gene pools; we are the evidence of a common humanity. But this idea is something that countries have yet to get.
I hope this small perspective adds to the range of ideas you clothe your minds with and be careful of what ideas you pick up. Some notions leave you naked more than others.
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