From movies to commercials...

[El-Khash Najib]

Hello to All,

(Sorry for the double posting of the info about the
American screenings of [Little Birds])

In a review of Japanese media published in the Japan Times
earlier this month, Suntory's Black Oolong Tea was chosen
as last year's best TV commercial, and the Daihatsu Mira
commercial as the worst (it wasn't clear who made the
decisions).

That was apparently for the insensitivity of the Daihatsu
Mira CM makers who found humour in the story of a mother
telling her child that she is going for a little drive and
then walking away on her three children for ever,
especially that the film was based on a (quite recent)
true story.
Here is the article:
"Bringing out the gongs in the world of media"
Japan Times
Sunday, January 7, 2007
By Philip Brasor
http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=60476

I wonder what Koreeda has to say about it. I had heard
from someone who was kind of involved in the early stages
of making Nobody Knows that some discrepancies between
Koreeda's scenario and the "original" story (based on
Police records and other sources) draw criticism from
people (laywers, support groups...etc.) with links to or
knowledge of the real boy (portrayed by "You"). The
protest was that any major changes would be offensive to
the boy (who is currently a young man supposedly living
under another name somewhere in Japan).

I know for a fact that a friend of mine and his wife were
able to stop a Nova commercial with one fax protesting the
racist image of gaijins in the commercial. The fax was
headed with the name of a human rights group that in
reality had only two members (my friend and his wife) and
was created while typing the fax. Another friend working
in the commercials industry mentioned that a car
commercial was refused by Japanese TVs because it showed a
teenage girl waiting in front of her home at night to get
on a car with her friends. The TV stations feared that
someone may find the commercial motivational for teenagers
to run away from home (the commercial doesn't mention
anything about running away from home).

That and other anecdotes show how easy it is to force a
stop or a change on commercials broadcast on Japanese TV.
It is peculiar that nothing happened in the case of
Daihatsu Mira.

Najib El-Khash
www.arabasian.net





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