Synopsis: Caucasian man, flying to/from presumably Korea calls flight attendant over to ask if there’s anything he can be given to deal with back pain. Korean flight attendant suggests Bayer in perfect, accent-less English, to which man immediately shoots down as he explains that he is not having a heart attack, but back pain, furthermore goes to stand up and pantomime how much his back hurts. Flight attendant elaborates that it’s Bayer Back and Body Pain, and when she checks back with him upon completion of the flight, he’s seemingly amazed that he does in fact feel better.
The bottom line is, the commercial is kind of racist. Or at least the way the scenario pans out, it really portrays whitey as naïve honky who immediately dismisses the sounds coming out of a Korean woman’s mouth as gibberish, as if there’s no possible way that this chink could be speaking in his native tongue.
Whitey comes off as a whiny pussy who can’t deal with a little bit of back pain, condescending, in the way he has to get up and pantomime his back pain as if the words coming from his mouth couldn’t possibly get the point across adequately enough, and of course racist in the manner in which he’s speaking to a foreigner like she’s an idiot despite both their capabilities to speak English.
Ironically, this has happened to me on more than one instance, like when I was at a drive-thru with a white friend; despite the fact that I’m speaking clear English to the black girl at the window, she stares at me dumbfounded, and immediately looks past me to my friend who essentially repeats the exact same thing, but actually gets some confirmation of understanding.
Yes, I know my eyes are slanty, and my skin is kind of yellow, but rest assured, I was born in the United States, and I do speak English. And as hard as it may be to fathom, there are thousands more like me, too.
Allegedly, there was once an original version of this commercial where the flight attendant addresses him in Korean first, to which serves as the impetus for his overacting so he can get some aspirin, but it’s really not like it makes it any better. Either it’s the fault of the editors to cut it to make whitey look more like a bigot, or it doesn’t change the fact that once the flight attendant switches to English, he still acts as if she’s ching-chonging away at him.
Doesn’t matter, racist commercial is still racist, and it’s a stupid commercial.
