Red banners with white swastikas on top of iron crosses hung Saturday from the ceilings of some of the firm's 14 stores. The banners also carried a sign that resembled the symbol of the Third Reich: an eagle above a swastika. One branch broadcast Nazi propaganda films on a wall with a projector.
This isn't the first time Nazi symbolism has been used to get attention in Asia; some years ago, a Taipei restaurant covered their walls with images of Holocaust victims and a bar named the Third Reich, replete with Nazi propaganda posters and uniformed waitresses, opened in Seoul. Perhaps over there, the whole Nazi thing is seen by some as just kitschy retro exotica?
Posted by: mark | http://donotuselifts.net/ | Mon Aug 11 11:49:07 2003
Like how stuff from Stalinist Russia appeals to many people in the West, I suppose.
Posted by: dj | http:// | Mon Aug 11 12:29:08 2003
Yeah, i think you've both got it just about right. Another one is non-US people using the General Lee flag without having any real idea of what it means in the US.
Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com/ | Mon Aug 11 16:33:12 2003
Don't forget all that Che crap.
Posted by: Karen | http:// | Mon Aug 11 19:41:00 2003
Well, this certainly goes several steps beyond the "ethnically derogatory clothing" of Abercrombie & Fitch:
http://www.boycottaf.com/
"We personally thought Asians would love this T-shirt." -Hampton Carney, A&F spokesperson
The HK and Seoul Nazi-themed commercial ventures would be analagous to A&F starting a "comfort-woman" line, and a Hard Rock-offshoot "comfort women bar".
I find it hard to believe that these particular HK and Korean business people did not realize the significance of the Holocaust.
Posted by: mark | http://donotuselifts.net/ | Tue Aug 12 06:07:46 2003
Indeed, it might've been useful for A&F to actually *ask* Asian people what they thought of it first.
(What are "comfort women"? Sheltered life...)
Posted by: Graham | http://grudnuk.com/ | Tue Aug 12 09:52:09 2003
Heh. If Arthur Calwell were alive, he'd sue A&F.
Posted by: michael | | Tue Aug 12 16:14:19 2003
Ahh, Nostalgia!
Everything old is new again!
Just keep buying this stuff, eventually all meaning will be drained out of it, and replaced by corporate propaganda. Come to think of it, this has happened before, hasnt it
Posted by: acb | http://dev.null.org | Tue Aug 12 16:25:05 2003
And what does that have to do with the thread?
Actually, Michael, have you thought about starting your own blog?
Posted by: Karen | http:// | Tue Aug 12 19:46:09 2003
Mark--
"Comfort women are the young females of various ethnic and national backgrounds and social circumstances who were forced into sexual slavery by the Japanese Imperial Army before and during the Second World War."
http://online.sfsu.edu/~soh/comfortwomen.html
Perhaps my suggestion was wrong, after all.
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Posted by: mitch | http:// | Mon Aug 11 11:03:44 2003
As I recall, in *The Ends of the Earth* Robert Kaplan describes visiting a Thai bar and seeing a girl who dresses as Khmer Rouge in order to be sexy. But then Nazi uniforms are apparently a standard part of the Western fetish scene, and sexuality is notoriously a domain in which forbidden things are done. It's a little more mysterious to see traumatic historical events referenced like this in the banal context of public commercialism. But it probably is as simple as this - our history is not their history, our reference points are not theirs, and vice versa. For them, the Holocaust is just one of many bad things that happened long ago and far away, and not an event pivotal to their whole worldview. Perhaps a mainland Chinese would find it incomprehensible that Billy Bragg could write a cheery song about "the Great Leap Forward", which was actually disastrous for China. http://www.ccrs.org.cn/big/dcoglfcp.htm