Japan n' Jesus

[elrodondo]

okay so i don't know if you guys saw this already
this is a billboard on the tokyo subway for the japanese release of the Passion of the Christ DVDs which as far as i know is pretty recent.
it's bizarre.

Comments

[darklingthrush]

I don't think that's what's going on here. Actually, I don't think that anybody with more than a passing familiarity with Christianity would write that (center) copy, just because it's factually incorrect in a strict sense. It also has that J-vibe that I just don't trust Mel / American ad folks to recreate. I'd say with near certainty that this was written by a confused ad guy who was given the task of making a tagline for this movie to sell it to a Japanese audience. I mean, the only biggest push behind it in the States was religious faith and all the churches mobilizing to get parishioners there to see it, &c. In Japan, they don't have any of that -- you've got to find another angle to get people to sit through two hours of a dead ex-Jew being graphically tortured onscreen. I guess they thought "well, what came of Christianity for us, the Japanese?" and about the only thing they could find was Christmas.

This is not to say that this ad is not very, very whack.

[darklingthrush]

I guess if you wanted to be reeeeally generous, you could spin this as "we only have christmas because of Christ's death," which could be a relevant-ish message, altho I still question their imagery there. Hehe, I file this under the same category as the commercial for that energy drink that releases the afro'd, blackfaced minstrel show black man inside of everyone (with SMAP's Kusanagi delivering the unforgettable tagline "anata no naka ni BURAZAA ga hisonderu" / "There's a BROTHER lurking inside you"). Watching the commercial was intense -- they may as well have been saying "UNLEASH YOUR INNER NIGGER!!!" Some things just fly in Japan that don't fly here, and I don't think, as Americans, we can really ever understand it. And I'm cool with that. To borrow a line the Books borrowed from someone else, "I want all of the American people to understand that it is understandable that the American people cannot possibly understand."

[darklingthrush]

haha, and it says キリストが殺されて, not キリストを殺させて ^_^

-3点

[jamiemccrimmon]

i have no idea what to make of that. somehow i don't think mel gibson created it though

[ohmoni]

it looks to me like the japanese know how to turn something immensely depressing into something cute and fun. I mean, trying to remind the Japanese about the painful past of Christmas by juxtaposing the pictures to me seems ineffective. Because it seems that the ad reader is given a choice: either watch a depressing movie about what Christmas represents, or ignore what Christmas represents and go shopping with a pretty girl/handsome man.

I mean, to me it seems just ineffective. Of course I'd rather go shopping than see some soiled dude in a loin cloth and thorns die over a period of several days. Hello Kitty (or random kitschy kawaii object "x") and name brand designers never suffer.

Maybe I'm missing the message.