jimmy johns commercial

This is a commercial for Jimmy Johns sandwiches. They are very popular in Bowling Green, because they are cheaper then Subway and they deliver. Jimmy Johns calls themselves the worlds best delivery service. Their sandwiches are very good too. They have many commercials but there are a few out on the air that are a bit questionable. The commercial I picked is one of the worse ones, I believe.
The commercial is taking place in a conference room and what looks to be an intern is giving a presentation and the boss is not pleased with any of the ideas. Then the intern gets an idea and calls Jimmy Johns delivery and then his boss is happy. It is a regular commercial, something we see everyday but it has racial connotations behind it. Every person in the meeting is Japanese and male, and they end up ordering food from an American company whose specialties are sub sandwiches. This was the only thing that made the boss happy. But what I really noticed was that all the men looked and dressed exactly the same. Everyone had a gray suit and one even had dark rimmed glasses. And that is why I decided to use this device; I wanted to analyze the stereotypical depiction of the Japanese men.




This commercial reminded me of the in class discussion we had about the Indians mascot art piece, “Welcome to Cleveland”. The whole collection of the artwork was about stereotypes. The main idea was from the Indians mascot, and then the artist used that same basic face and changed it to the stereotypical view of other races. A few of the races that were part of the work were the Irish, Polish, and of course the Japanese. The Japanese drawing has glasses; lines for eyes, a go-tee and a hat that makes him look like a tourist, all ideas of the “typical” Japanese person. This same stereotype can be seen in this commercial. Granted everyone in this commercial actually is Japanese, the producers applied the known stereotypes to further the idea that they were Japanese. There is a few times in the commercial you see the boss’s obvious distaste for the presenters ideas and he shakes his head and squints his eyes to show it. The squinting of the eyes just reminds me of “Welcome to Cleveland” because that is exactly how the Japanese character was drawn. Yes, Japanese have smaller and different eyes then we do but they certainly aren’t squinting all the time and they definitely don’t look like lines.

Normally, I find commercials to be funny, but this one was just offensive to me. Even if I had never taken an ethnic studies class I would still find this offensive. I understand that Japanese are different from us Americans but that is obvious, you shouldn’t have to make them “seem” more Japanese by adding in the stereotypes. And that just reminds me of when blacks had to paint themselves black so they would look blacker, so that the audience could see it without an ounce of thought. Pushing stereotypes unto people is just wrong, especially when you can clearly see what race they are, there should be no reason to add in “what is known” about them, just to make a commercial, or in the case of black face, a performance.

this is the url for the whole collection
http://www.chgs.umn.edu/museum/exhibitions/moccasins/index.html