Year: 2019

Through the use of this ad, McDonald’s is trying to appeal to the Chinese audience. It is instantly obvious that due to the fact that it is in Chinese means it would only really make sense in China as anywhere else, no one would be able to understand it! But other than that, the advert is trying to encourage Chinese people to consume more beef by making cows appeal as ‘cool’. To me this makes me feel less inclined to eat beef, but maybe it is different for the Chinese culture. One thing that came up through a discussion with my partner is the cultural insensitivity of this advert. This could perhaps be offensive to cultures that don’t agree with consuming beef like the Hindu culture which believes cows to be religious animals.

This other Mcdonald’s advert was released in South Africa hinting at the use of contraceptives to prevent HIV/AIDS. It is appropriate to be used in South Africa as HIV Awareness Campaigns are very popular and unlike many other countries, it is not ‘taboo’ to talk about it. While people in South Africa may find this daring and humorous, others may find this offensive.

Taking into account both of these adverts, it is evident that big corporations like McDonald’s try and appeal to a specific group of people to try and make themselves look less like a big corporation.  They try to make everyone’s ‘McDonald’s experience’ feel special and in a way, personalized. They will show this through advertising as well as menu options. Here in Singapore, we have the Nasi-Lemak Burger. McDonald’s is trying to show how diverse they are through there choices, but with this, there are a few downsides. They may be too stereotypical and might offend that certain culture. For example, another McDonald’s advert based in France had a woman holding a macaroon, this could perhaps be offensive to some French people as they are stereotyped as neat and upper class. In conclusion, I think McDonald’s and big corporations like it are trying their best to be funny and appeal to their audience on a much more personal level to encourage sales. As long as they don’t have any bad intentions behind their advertisments I think what they are doing is fine.

In general, I believe that culture can be owned by many different people. Initially, I thought that you own your own culture and the decisions and choices you make on a daily basis are usually influenced by your own culture. Furthermore, the people that surround you also influence your culture, your parents, friends, etc. I later formed an opinion and realised that no one really owns culture and that it should be okay for anyone to adopt any culture provided they are respectful. If everyone is respectful of one another, ‘cultural appropriation’ would no longer exist and it would be called ‘cultural appreciation’. Moreover, when people are no longer respectful of other cultures and perhaps ignorant there is a VERY blurry line. For some people, that line begins earlier with smaller actions and for others, it begins later and only has an impact after a big action was made. For me, I would say the line doesn’t really exist, to be honest. I think I generally just mind my own business and don’t see the point in getting that involved with people’s stuff. I think this may come from the fact that I am not necessarily that well connected to my English culture. Having never lived there I don’t really feel like it is a big part of me. I tend to just let others do what they want and hope that they are doing what they are doing for the right reasons and not the wrong ones.

Having thought about the various discussions in class today, I believe it is possible for some texts to truly represent groups of people. Although some may assume that with the example of “Crazy Rich Asians” not representing all Asians that it is impossible to do so. In actual fact, the movie “Crazy Rich Asians” did a great job in representing the top percentile of rich Singaporeans. I think it is possible to truly represent groups of people provided that you are being specific about the kind of people that you are representing and not generalising or stereotyping anything. It is quite often that stereotyping tends to come from people who are foreign from these groups. Leading me onto my next point which is, who gets to say what? I think that in order to best represent a group of people the person representing that group should come from the very group itself. By being a part of that group, they will have far superior knowledge that has come from their own personal experiences and encounters to that of a “foreigner”. With regards to the act of representation, I believe regardless of the situation there will always be problems, people will always disagree with the creator’s intentions. I only believe it can become really problematic when the representation is formulated with negative intentions. I believe that things will only start to become very problematic once whatever is being represented is being done to have negative effects on that group. Either that or when it is evident that not enough research or knowledge has been put into this representation and it is just wrong.