New McDonald's Campaign In Japan Imagines Americans As Nerdy, From Ohio

September 25, 2009 at 3:31 PM | by Omri | 0 Comments

McDonald's is launching a new ad campaign in Japan, this time revolving around four new burgers they're making available exclusively on the island nation. To spearhead the effort, they're rolling out their local mascot Mr. James, a kind of stereotypical American nerd who speaks broken Japanese but is very, very exuberantly bubbly about it. The only problem is that the actual Americans who live in Japan loathe the character, who is roughly the reverse equivalent of when Americans put on fake Japanese accents by turning 'l's into 'r's.

Except on top of having pronunciation problems, Mr. James is an incoherent and painfully annoying simpleton. He stars in a number of spots in this campaign, going to McDonald's locations all over Japan and musing about his favorite burgers. He even has a blog, on which he goes into deep background about his Ohio birthplace and about how he loves to shower foreigners with cash. That last bit isn't part of the stereotype; it has something to do with a cash prize McDonald's is giving out, but the rest of the ensemble has Japan's small foreign community less than pleased:

Arudo considers the characterization of a 'clumsy sycophantic "nerd" an embarrassment. 'If this were in a different country, and we had a Japanese in a [summer kimono] and [wooden sandals] saying "Me like Mcflied lice, please eato," we'd have the same sort of antidefamation league speaking out and saying this is disparaging to Asians or Japanese,' says Arudo. He says the campaign's portrayal of non-Japanese as 'unquestioningly supportive and culturally ignorant' will only make life more difficult for foreigners in Japan.

Yeah, it's wrong to portray people as caricatures. Yeah, every drip drip drip of stereotyping probably makes life that much harder for foreigners in Japan. But still. If every other problem with xenophobic discrimination in Japan has already been solved, fair enough. But if we're at that point then there's probably little risk of Mr. James-inspired backlash, where Japanese people rush up to Americans and demand childhood stories about cow-tipping.

And if that's not true and there are bigger xenophobic fish to fry, it's probably better to focus on those.

[Photo: TIME]

Related Stories:
· Not Everyone Is Lovin' Japan's New McDonald's Mascot [Time]
· McDonalds Coverage [Jaunted]
· Travel Advertising Coverage [Jaunted]

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