Burger King's greasy campaign By Derrick Z. Jackson (Boston Globe)

[YankeyMCC]

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WHEN EUROPEAN germs wiped out Indians, at least that aspect of conquest was unintentional. Burger King has no such excuse.
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The modern colonizers currently have an ad campaign called "Whopper Virgins." Commercials are running during televised sports events, and the company has a nearly eight-minute video on its website. In a bizarre parody of an actual documentary, Burger King sent a crew out to remote Hmong parts of Thailand, Inuit parts of Greenland, and a village in Romania where people have both never seen a hamburger nor ever heard of one through advertising. The narration starts, "The hamburger is a culinary culture and it's actually an American phenomenon ."

The first part of the video involved plucking some villagers to come to a modern office in local and native dress to compare Burger King's signature burger with a McDonald's Big Mac. Villagers are shown fumbling with the burger, with a patronizing narrator saying, "It's been very interesting to see their reaction to the hamburger because they've never seen such a foreign piece of food before and they didn't even quite know how to pick it up and they didn't know how to - from what end to eat. . . .It was really interesting. We were able to see these people's first bite of a hamburger."
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The WHO, not surprisingly, says, "Initiatives by the food industry to reduce the fat, sugar, and salt content of processed foods . . . could accelerate health gains worldwide."

But no, Burger King wants to colonize the farthest reaches with fat, sugar, and salt.

The irony was when the locals made the crew their native food in the video. The meal ladled out for them was smothered in vegetables. The crew yum-yummed "Nice," "Wonderful," "So good," and even, "Insane." That was the height of patronization given their mission. Burger King's violation of the "Whopper Virgins" is an insane reenactment of the worst of American colonial history.
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http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2008/12/09/burger_kings_greasy_campaign/

That opening statement might seem harsh, perhaps it is a bit, but this campaign is insidious and what it certainly will destroy in the short term, perhaps quicker than actually destroying all the people, is the local cultures.

It really is all about connections to the land, diversity of life, and food is fundamental to that.

[LisaM]

1. Those ads are terrible, not to mention offensive

I think the campaign will (thankfully) be a short one.

[rocktivity]

2. Condescending, jingoistic and coverty racist.

There are worse things to deprive a culture of than hamburgers.

x(
rocknation

[grasswire]

3. I don't think they are trying to spread whoppers to the world.

I think they are just trying to show that humans prefer flame-broiled meat to microwaved meat. Watch it again.

[soothsayer]

4. oh for godz sake, lighten up everyone