I was given the chance yesterday to watch a banned collection of commercials from all over the world in the recent Eye Opener Seminar held in the Metropolitan Museum of Manila inside the Central Bank of the Philippines compound. I was invited to come and write reactions about the seminar along with 25 other young Filipino and foreign writers. In the seminar, I saw hundreds of commercials banned from being noted as racist, sexually oriented, child prostitution among with others. There were commercials from Europe that were banned because they use disturbing characters and call it a Kids Show. There are some from Australia that shows gory executions while promoting anti-terrorism against Afghanistan. In Great Britain, there is a commercial showing a baby drinking beer right after it was born. But what caught my attention was the same denominator most of these countries have in their banned advertisements, its them being racist.
Particularly, most of the banned "racist" advertisements are all pointing to Japan. They were either bashing Japan for killing whales, for killing millions during the World War II and for raping millions of Chinese, Koreans and Filipinos and turned them to what they call comfort women. However, these ads were downed to support anti racial movements against Japan.
I noticed an specific commercial from Australia where a Japanese is eating in a restaurant and yelled at the staffs with "The whale experienced!". With that he meant of giving him the best food and treatment. But the staffs did what really whales experienced in the hands of the Japanese. They shoot him with a harpoon on the chest and electrocuted him. They literally gave him the "whale experience". It was kind of morbid but it really shows how Australians hate the whaling culture of the Japanese. The commercial is dubbed as "Its Payback Time." There were 33 commercials from different countries that were condemning the Japanese for different bad doings. Next in number are the Chinese for their efforts of keeping the Olympic in good way and also because of their fight with Tibet. Next are the Americans for different doings as well.
There will be an open-to-the-public version of the seminar this Saturday, starting at 9am. Only 18+ and above are allowed and there is a limit of 200 persons so come early if you want to watch those banned advertisements.
