19-04-03_PR_Racist Ad Hornbach (EN)
Edition 001/2019
Date April
3, 2019
Has racist advertising become socially acceptable in Germany?
The lukewarm apology of German company Hornbach through a press release earns even harsher criticisms: Using the hashtag #Ich_wurde_geHORNBACHt, people with an Asian background (especially women) are currently drawing attention to the discriminatory commercial of the company. They are calling for an apology and termination of the broadcast with a petition: http://chng.it/49shR2kLyM which already has over 21,000 supporters. The company now has a bad name in East Asia even before it opens its first store.
The film
shows white West European men in their 50s doing gardening, handing their sweaty
undershirts and underpants to scientists in white coats. Only the Asian
scientist gives the laundry a sighing, longingly look. The underwear is
shrink-wrapped and lands in a vending machine in an Asian concrete city. A
young Asian woman buys a bag of underwear on the machine, opens it and smells
it, inhaling deeply. She looks up intoxicated. The second time she inhales even
deeper and rolls her eyes as in sexual ecstasy.
The
reaction of Hornbach to the following outrage was an invitation to "dialogue at eye level".
The time and place of this meeting was determined by the company at short
notice, on weekdays in the company headquarters. A dialogue at eye level did
not take place, as Hornbach continues to broadcast the derogatory spot and
dismisses the problem as a misunderstanding.
The result
of the meeting with three participants was then, as read in various articles,
accordingly: "We are very sorry that
in parts of the Asian community in Europe and also in Southeast Asia we gave
the impression that the campaign was meant to be discriminatory We apologize
for that "(Florian Preuß, Spokesman Hornbach). Hornbach apologizes for
the fact that people with an Asian background have misunderstood them.
Consequently, the company decides to go online with a website that aims to
eliminate "misunderstandings and
misinterpretations". Many of those affected feel this reaction as a
mockery, according to the motto: "We'll
explain how you have to understand that!"
Interestingly,
the creators of the spot, the advertising agency “Heimat” refute their own
argumentation in their official statement. Mr. Guido Heffels of the advertising
agency Heimat admits even in his statement on the magazine horizon: "The humor of the advertised exaggerated spot
is based on the cliché of an Asian, primarily Japanese vending machine culture
..." but then wants the situation to be thought of "... dystopian (n ) World of many
ethnicities ... ".
Ironically,
Mr. Heffels even argues: "... It
only completely turns over the gender-specific roles. Where, according to urban
mythology, men bought used slips from young women, a woman now buys men's used
shirts ... "
No human in
the German-speaking, Western and also Asian culture, neither man nor woman,
wants to be portrayed in such a manner controlled by a low instinct. The
picture in no way reflects a "self-determined
woman", on the contrary, the woman is presented in the same pejorative
form. The unconvincing argument of the advertiser: if a woman does sexual
violence to a man, she is self-determined, because one turns the tables. It
also raises the question of how this film would have worked with a Muslim,
Jewish or African actress.
Neither
Hornbach AG nor Mr. Guido Heffels of the advertising agency Heimat is able to
recognize racism according to the statement in the magazine Horizont. Precisely
because this kind of racism is so subtle, it is so effective. It supports the
image of the young Asian woman as a sex object that succumbs to the sexuality
of older German men.
The
discrimination displayed in the Hornbach commercial is currently very current
in the Japanese and Korean media and is completely underestimated here in
Germany. It has already been featured on the prime-time news in the public
television channels and is drawing wide circles.
The extensive
article of the Korean daily Kyounghyang made it on the title of DAUM News on
April 3, one of the two most visited news platforms in the country. On April 4,
Korean news system YTN broadcasts a 13-minute radio interview with a speaker of
the campaign. The Japanese media take this commercial also very seriously. Fuji
TV’s popular infotainment program Good Day! introduced the campaign
#Ich_wurde_geHORNBACHt on April 2. Tokyo Shimbun, an influential newspaper with a circulation of 3.5
Million copies, reports the racism and sexism charge against Hornbach in
detail. Huffington Post Japan, widely read among the younger generations, discussed
the questionable ad already on March 31, 2019.
----
For further
inquiries, we are at your disposal:
Kampagne #Ich_ wurde_HORNBACHt
E-mail: gehornbacht@posteo.de
The
campaign #Ich_wurde_geHORNBACHt came
into being due to
racist and sexist discrimination against Asian women in the advertising film
"So smells the spring" by Hornbach Baumarkt AG. The Facebook group of
the campaign currently consists of 96 women and men of various nationalities.
We stand for intercultural diversity and demand an apology from Hornbach and
the ending of the broadcast.
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