These days the latest Olympic scandal is a print ad for a courier company, official sponsor of the Spanish Basketball team, where Spain’s Olympic basketball team players appear stretching the skin on either side of their eyes for an Asian slant with sheepish grins on their faces. That add seems to say “look out Chinese people, here we come!”
The two full-page ads have been running since August in the Spanish sports newspaper Marca. Nobody in Spain noticed anything “inappropriate” until a British newspaper showcased it yesterday.
“Spain’s Olympic basketball teams have risked upsetting their Chinese hosts by posing for a pre-Games advert making slit-eyed gestures.” Wrote Sid Lowe for The Gaurdien. “The failure to recognise the potential consequences is striking in the light of the problems Spain has had with issues of race…”
I am sure the Creatives behind the campaign had no intentions of offend anyone with this ad, nor could they distinguish any offense in it.
It’s an interesting cultural contrast, which is worth examining.
In Spain, like in Latin American countries, race is not treated as a sensitive “issue.” It’s quite common to hear very “un-pc” comments in friendly daily conversations, as well as in advertising. Racial or cultural differences are perceived as a natural thing, never avoided; on the contrary brought forth in a sort of naïve matter of fact way.
Gordo, (fatty) often supplants the name of a heavyset close friend, ) as you can see on the popular Univision show “el Gordo y la Flaca”, (the fat man and the skinny lady”. Iñaritu is called “El Negro” (the black one) in his country of Mexico for his dark looks. In Colombia all kids are called “chinos,” where in other Latin countries, “chino” is reserved for the friend that actually looks Chinese. These are perceived as terms of endearment not as malicious name-calling.
The rest of the world may tiptoe around what Latin countries perceive as obvious race differences and nothing more.
Meanwhile through the scandal, the Spanish Team is still clueless as to what they did wrong.
for the UK’s point of view, checkout: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2008/aug/11/olympicsbasketball.olympics20081?loc=interstitialskip