Sex, China, Coke, and World of Warcraft
An interesting commercial out of China:
For the few of you who don't recognize it, this is a cooperative venture between Coca Cola and Blizzard Entertainment, of World of Warcraft fame. The commercial is intriguing for me on several levels.
First, let's take a look at what happens in the 30 second spot.
Three young women who are watching a WoW video with a large Orc in it are told by a music producer (which I'm basing on the fact that his office is decorated on all sides by gold records) that sexy sells. As he's telling them this--beginning with his calling them girls--he holds up an image of a Western, white woman and asks them if they get his drift. They firmly tell him no; he takes offense and says, "what do you mean, no?" and in the process is transformed into the Orc warrior the women were watching earlier. The young women don't back down and firmly respond "no means no" as they too are transformed into WoW characters, a Night Elf hunter (notice the ears and the bow), a human mage, and a human warrior. Sorry. I've played this game a lot.
The producer appears to be a formidable enemy, though he never scores a hit against any of the three women. These agile avatars, meanwhile, pwn this poor guy, and he goes down, leaving some phat loot to the players (a chest full of ice-cold Coke) in the process. Flash back to reality, where the women are drinking their Cokes and the producer now stands nearly naked himself and reaching to cover his genitals, clearly emasculated. Score one for the young women, right?
On the surface, this appears to be a feminist, anti-capitalist narrative. And in some respects, perhaps, it is. I'm certainly no expert on China or Chinese culture, so I won't pretend to be. Indeed, this commercial was in many respects a revelation for me. Yet, I do know something about feminism, and something about the game of WoW as well--enough, certainly, to feel that there's something disingenuous about this feminist narrative.
First, there's the issue of the Night Elf hunter. As anyone who's ever played the game can tell you, there's nothing more sexualized in WoW than female Night Elves. I'll leave you the task of finding a video of Night Elf females dancing, but suffice it to say that their moves would threaten the livelihoods of the best strip club pole dancers out there. Second, speaking of costumes, look at the way the women are dressed. Only the mage is dressed in a fashion that's remotely modest. Indeed the warrior seems to be absent any decent armor whatsoever. Watch how the camera follows them, which parts it focuses on as the action progresses. Finally, focus on that tableau at the end of the animation which then segues back into the real conference room/office. How are the women dressed? How real is their triumph, really, if it is meant to be a rebellion against his attempts at sexualizing them?
All of which leaves aside, doesn't it, the whole notion that it's Coke they receive as the boon for their valiant efforts. Again, the multinational appears to liberate us while really intending to put us back in our place, purchasing their products and, hopefully, seeing that as an appropriate and just reward for our labors. Maybe, just maybe, there's an unintended moral to this narrative. Isn't it the case, after all that, despite all of our heroic struggles, the rewards that we reap in support of governments and mainstream culture are meager and completely out of proportion to effort we put into gaining them? As consumer culture marches further and further across the globe, into places (like China) where I would have never expected to see it a mere generation ago, it's good to be reminded of the essential emptiness of the pursuit. You'd just better hope that it pays you a living wage.
In the final analysis, the rewards must be intrinsic. The extrinsic ones are just far too meager.
Food for thought.
Peri
Comments
A couple things you may have missed. When they return to reality and the "producer" (no capitalist pun intended) is "emasculated," he happens to be wearing the same outfit as the western (American?) woman in the photo he holds up earlier.
I also had to do a little checking on the symbolic significance of red in China. Here's what I found:
"Red, a bright, auspicious color associated with warmth, life and the Fire Element, denotes good fortune and happiness. It emerges as a sacred and vitalizing color used on festive occasions. In China, the color red not only serves to express joy, but also to ward off evil influences. The Chinese regard red as the "lucky color." At Chinese New Year, children in Chinese families are given little red packets or envelopes packed with money or treats as tokens of good wishes. The color red is also featured prominently in the clothing and other ritual objects pertaining to the traditional Chinese wedding. In fact, Chinese brides wear red dresses and wedding invitations are printed on red paper." http://www.colortheory.org/D_ColortheroryChineseColorTheory.htm.
So beyond the potentially sexual objectification of their attire, the red dresses worn by the women contain all kinds of associations: warding off evil, money, and brides. So does the women's attire reinforce or undermine Chinese notions of feminism? Not an easy question for a westerner to answer.
Does "sex sell" in China the way it does in the (corrupt) capitalist west? Again, not an easy question for a westerner to answer. In an article on the effects of capitalism on women in China, published in The New Republic, Lisa Movius has this to say:
"Chinese women are among the most liberated in Asia, thanks to Communism. Now thanks to Capitalism they enjoy unprecedented freedom - of education, of lifestyle choice and of personal appearance - but the market-driven transformation has also brought diminishing respect for women as equal participants in the economy and the society...One source of neo-traditional social stereotypes is Western-style mass media entertainment and advertising, a new phenomenon over the last 15 years. In the absence of an open press, they provide most Chinese with their primary source of information about their changing society and its norms. The suspicion through which they filter government news sources does not, amazingly, extend to unregulated advertising claims; medications promising to make students smart, women beautiful and men successful clog the airways and enjoy brisk sales.
"'Ads never build the image that women should be strong or successful, just that they should be pretty,' observes Zhang Zheng, a 25-year-old brand manager. Professional women are only depicted in terms of their consumption of beauty care products. 'There are only two images of women: the pretty girl and the good mother.' The pretty girl predominates, and invariably is dangerously thin, scantily clad, and listlessly passive. Grrrl Power has yet to arrive in China; female frailty is in. Seeking an impossibly unhealthy beauty ideal, many professional women are malnourished, reinforcing stereotypes of feminine weakness.
"Mass media's sexual objectification of women has created a society where women are judged primarily by their appearance, secondarily if at all by their personality and accomplishments."
http://www.movius.us/articles/TNR-sexism-original.html.
If this is an accurate description of how women are presented in Chinese ads, and I have no reason to doubt that it is accurate, then this ad is much more radical, and I would argue more liberating, than it might appear.
Thanks for the opportunity to learn more about Chinese culture.
m
Posted by: Margaret | July 16, 2006 12:15 PM
Margaret,
You're right. I did miss the fact that the producer is wearing the same garb as the Western woman was. Even more emasculating indeed. Good job spotting that.
Even if this is moving the women toward more agency, I would still argue that it does objectify them. As the camera focuses on their movements as they're attacking the Orc, we see too many T & A shots (more A than anything else) for me to conclude otherwise. But you're right that it's difficult for me to step outside my cultural milieu and state that with any objective authority. But then again, as we all know, it's impossible for anyone to wield Archimedes lever from outside one's own system.
It would be great (cough, cough) if someone could get her Chinese students to take a look at this and get their feedback.
Thanks for such a thoughtful response.
Dennis
Posted by: Dennis Bennett | July 16, 2006 04:37 PM
I think attempting a western feminist analysis on a Chinese pop-culture commercial is a pretty complicated task. If it were Japanese, I'd say there'd be more potential parallels to Western feminism because of the influx of Americanized stuff and because of the very large gender-gap in Japan.
But, this is Chinese. One thing that I think is very important to note in the commercial is the fact that it's a western woman that the producer is holding a photo of while he says that "sexy sells." That, and the fact that the three women reject this notion didn't necessarily signal to me that they were rejecting the idea of "sexy" sells, but rather that "westernized sexy" sells. If, for a second, we can pretend that Coke and WoW were NOT western products, the commercial could be a critique of the influx of Americanized pop-culture in the form of blonde half-naked, fur-clad blonde women selling stuff to the Chinese consumer population.
In China, if what Margaret above said is true about Chinese women being some of the most liberated due to Communism (which I think is correct), the women in the commercial are saying "dumb-western sex doesn't sell, stupid. Check out what kind of sex DOES sell!" and proceeds to kick some westernized-chinese-producer ass.
I'd say they're demonstrated how "hot female-empowerment" depicting women actively participating and standing up for themselves at the same time as being sexual powerful beings, sells better in China than a bikini-clad bombshell stroking a shiny car would.
So yeah, the commercial is complicated to us because we're used to seeing feminist criticisms of ANY sexualization of women. We're used to seeing that as Bad and Sexist(tm). I think it's much closer to being a rejection of WESTERN ideas of chauvinism but a kind of celebration of sexually powerful women who are active and aggressive (and like Coke, apparently).
Also, the three girls are from the Chinese pop band "S.H.E", which I actually used to listen to a lot back in my Freshman and Sophomore year. I'm trying to google for more info about them, but Google takes out the periods from my search query, which makes it a search for the word "she"... useless. :( I'll find more later and comment again if I remember. :)
Posted by: Emily | July 16, 2006 06:09 PM
I don't know if I am up to the task of commenting on this post given the other entries, but I'll give it my best shot.
For Emily's benefit here is a link of a bunch of good information(in English) here on Wikipedia.
I tend to focus on the commercialization(or over-commercialization) of everything. From my perspective The red dresses both in real-life and their avatars re-enacting a WoW battle served to more closely tie WoW and Coke together. The more important aspect was tying the red in the to WoW by having all their avatars in red armor. With the following that WoW and other similar games have in China it would serve for anyone who has watched the commercial as a reminder to buy or drink Coke when they saw other characters wearing predominantly red armor.
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July 18, 2006 08:34 PM