Roving New Mandala photographer, Tim Forsyth, spotted this bizarre image on a mobile phone advertisement at Chiang Mai airport. No doubt some will be offended by its crude exploitation of ethnicity (as zoological oddity) in pursuit of profit, but to me there is something eccentrically inclusive about it. Perhaps even less pernicious (as stereotypes go) than some of the ethnic clichés that circulate in scholarly writings on the region!
5 responses so far ↓
1 Grasshopper // Mar 25, 2008 at 5:27 pm
I can’t say I agree with you Andrew, those Thais are completely out of line trying to be in on the Panda’s huge, global appeal. Less pernicious?! There are only 2-3,000 Pandas left, yet there are 63 million Thais!
With this ratio of around 1:25,000 (Pandas to Thais), that there is one Panda in the advert, more highlights there being 99,996 missing Thais. That there are not will totally desensitize DTAC customers and potential customers into believing that the Panda is fine, not endangered and able to be forced into slave labor, (driving your cart, pre-chewing your shoots) like those common elephants.
Maybe soon the coat and skin of the Great Panda will be accepted as symbolism for political authority!
2 Srithanonchai // Mar 25, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Since when are advertisements required to take social-science sensitivities into account? Ads placed in Bangkok are not any better than this one. That is, to me, most ads are bizarre anyway. Interesting that the Panda on loan from China has now been naturalized into a northern Thai icon. In fact, there are two of them in the Chiang Mai zoo. But the second one is truly northern in using AIS!
3 Grasshopper // Mar 25, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Srithanonchai: Didn’t you hear? Everything from China is illegitimate now. Moving the Panda to northern Thailand and making it native in the minds of citizens, re-legitimizes the Panda and it’s survival! Thank you DTAC!
Advertisements always take social science intricacies into account. However, unlike social scientists, those advertisers use the science and intricacy for wrong! I will refrain from the Star Wars analogies.
4 Srithanonchai // Mar 25, 2008 at 8:55 pm
Grasshopper: But the Pandas are a lot more cute than PM Samak, whose Chinese family has been around for much longer than the Pandas!
5 Leif Jonsson // Mar 26, 2008 at 3:38 am
I look at this as a tourist (of sorts) and to me it says “provinces”, there is Lampang (horse and cart), Maehongson (the flowers, the “long neck”), Chiangmai (zoo/panda, peasant, maybe the beauty with her parasol), and Chiangrai (hill tribe kiddo). That is, the photo suggests a splash of the north, and it’s all sanuk mak or muan tae. A part of what is interesting here is the anchoring of visual icons to administrative divisions (provinces and such). I have worked in Phayao and of course I feel slighted by the hegemony of some other provinces when it comes to imagining the north, as Lanna and otherwise, and “we” are best known for the girls of Dok-Kham-Tai …
I vaguely recall a shampoo ad from about 1994 that showed people from all over the country, with their regional and ethnic markers, all somehow united through clean hair. While silly, it was nice to have the image of some Mien people, southern Muslims, and others as belonging to the assembly of imagined Thai. There is plenty of the opposite, of some well-dressed urban moderns as the only visual association available when commercial products are being hawked
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