THE MAGIC LAMP RUBS US, THE WRONG WAY

I have lost all faith in Super Bowl commercials. There are still some gems, but there was once a time when I would kneel before the television with mystified expectation; given the millions of dollars poured into each frame, the screen before me would have to yield an equivalent output of millions of dollars' worth of subtle wit and shininess. Ah, nope.
During Super Bowl XLII last month, Salesgenie.com, a division of InfoUSA (a provider of business and consumer information, as well as marketing solutions, based in Omaha, Nebraska), picked “offensive” as its brand of particular mediocrity. Negative responses to Salesgenie’s ads were both immediate and widespread.
Some highlights: one ad features Ling Ling and Ching Ching, an animated, enterprising panda bear couple with “Chinese” accents who eat their own bamboo furniture and are having trouble finding “sares reads” (read: sales leads). With the help of Salesgenie.com, they have enough money to take their kids to go see the “grizz-ree bay-ahs” (read: grizzly bears) “at da zoo.” In another ad, a reed-like salesman named Ramesh is threatened by downsizing, and pleads with his boss -- in an Indian or other-commonly-identifiable-but-poorly-voiced-over South Asian accent -- “but I have seven kids!”

I am reminded of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s.” Every time I watch it, I am struck dumb by the way in which Blake Edwards begged for laughs based solely on the ignorantly skewed portrayal of an Asian stereotype, “Mr. Yunioshi.” But I am also comforted by the sheer backwardness of it all: this type of insulting tomfoolery would never be permitted today. And then the pandas come along to prove me wrong.
And yet, some people do not see a problem. Vinod Gupta, the Chairman and CEO of InfoUSA and the parent of Salesgenie.com, designed the commercials himself. He was surprised by the offense taken. A Myspace viewer of the “Ramesh” commercial also wrote, “Hahah this is funny I can say so cause I am Indian too and yeah its just so stereotypical that I get a good chuckle out of it, 7 kids huh? It’s just nice to have an Indian character in a commercial. If these guys are okay with it, why all of this backlash?
I suppose one could argue that animation attempting to capture and satirize an entire race is hardly rare. Take, for example, Apu Nahasapeemapetilon, Indian owner of the Kwik-E Mart on the Simpsons. What is the difference between Apu and Ramesh? As Apu’s voice, Hank Azaria employs the same broadly recognized, one-size-fits-all South Asian accent. So why did the Simpsons get away with it, while the poor Sales Genie fell flat on his face? Are we all taking hyper-sensitive-PC crazy pills?
Doubtful. To posit a few differences: in the case of the Simpsons, no one character is safe from the dark shadow of stereotyping; the program pigeonholes in a way that is multilayered, self-aware, and consistent. The “Salesgenie” ads, in contrast, single out one race, Yunioshi-style. The only humor upon which they rely is the stereotype itself, and the writing is nowhere near clever or nuanced enough to distract from this. Secondly, the Simpsons is a television show with a specific, voluntary fan-base, whereas the commercial audience of the Superbowl – most basically, our entire nation – lends itself to an arena in which producers must either walk on egg shells, or be egged.—Katy Pinke