![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
catsidheThe Nissan Murano. If you're in Australia and watch commercial TV, you've probably seen the ad.
A manly, rugged young bloke is washing the mud off his manly, rugged 4WD (SUV to you Yanks), as it almost imperceptably morphs as the mud comes off, to reveal (tada!) the Nissan Murano, only to have his girlfriend hop in when he's finished and drive it away herself. It's meant to be the 4WD you have when you want to drive in the city, unlike, for example, every other goddessdamned 4WD on the market today.
But anyway, it's meant to make those who would never consider a 4WD consider a 4WD. And the tag line at the end is "It'll convert you."
Now, the name is taken from this, although precisely what a Venetian Island known for its fine glassware has to do with bushbashing the suburbs is beyond me. But that's not the association this ad brings up with me.
For anyone who has a knowledge of Sephardic history, especially as it pertains to Jewish/Christian relations in late medieval and renaissance Spain and Portugal, then the catchphrase "It'll convert you" makes you think less of "Murano", and more -- much more -- of Marranos.
They may not have meant it, but it is still an insult, both to the wider Jewish community, and to those who simply refuse to have anything to do with the obscene waste of resources and danger to life and limb to everyone in the vicinity of these greedy, selfish monsters of the road. So those who won't consider driving a 4WD are 'pigs', who must be converted? Fuck you!
It is almost as if, in ignorance and with all good intentions, a car had the name Niger, and the tagline "Return to Africa". Especially if that 'g' is pronounced hard (as in 'gift' instead of in 'fridge'). How do you think the average African-American is going to take that? Even the ones who realise that 'Niger' is the name of a country in Africa, and they're merely following the convention of naming 4WDs after exotic, remote countries and exotic, savage tribes (the Touareg comes to mind)...
And the scary thing is that the tagline makes far more sense in the "Marrano" context than it does for "Murano".
Yes, I'm almost certainly over-reacting, but I still get insulted every time I see that ad, both for my Jewish relatives (by blood and marriage), and for everyone who has rejected Toorak Tractors and all their bastard offspring and everything they stand for.
PS: We now own Mirrormask. !GLEE!
A manly, rugged young bloke is washing the mud off his manly, rugged 4WD (SUV to you Yanks), as it almost imperceptably morphs as the mud comes off, to reveal (tada!) the Nissan Murano, only to have his girlfriend hop in when he's finished and drive it away herself. It's meant to be the 4WD you have when you want to drive in the city, unlike, for example, every other goddessdamned 4WD on the market today.
But anyway, it's meant to make those who would never consider a 4WD consider a 4WD. And the tag line at the end is "It'll convert you."
Now, the name is taken from this, although precisely what a Venetian Island known for its fine glassware has to do with bushbashing the suburbs is beyond me. But that's not the association this ad brings up with me.
For anyone who has a knowledge of Sephardic history, especially as it pertains to Jewish/Christian relations in late medieval and renaissance Spain and Portugal, then the catchphrase "It'll convert you" makes you think less of "Murano", and more -- much more -- of Marranos.
They may not have meant it, but it is still an insult, both to the wider Jewish community, and to those who simply refuse to have anything to do with the obscene waste of resources and danger to life and limb to everyone in the vicinity of these greedy, selfish monsters of the road. So those who won't consider driving a 4WD are 'pigs', who must be converted? Fuck you!
It is almost as if, in ignorance and with all good intentions, a car had the name Niger, and the tagline "Return to Africa". Especially if that 'g' is pronounced hard (as in 'gift' instead of in 'fridge'). How do you think the average African-American is going to take that? Even the ones who realise that 'Niger' is the name of a country in Africa, and they're merely following the convention of naming 4WDs after exotic, remote countries and exotic, savage tribes (the Touareg comes to mind)...
And the scary thing is that the tagline makes far more sense in the "Marrano" context than it does for "Murano".
Yes, I'm almost certainly over-reacting, but I still get insulted every time I see that ad, both for my Jewish relatives (by blood and marriage), and for everyone who has rejected Toorak Tractors and all their bastard offspring and everything they stand for.
PS: We now own Mirrormask. !GLEE!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-24 02:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-25 02:29 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-25 09:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-25 06:33 pm (UTC)Mirrormask - region 1 or 4??
(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-25 07:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-04-25 07:56 pm (UTC)Next stop - JB :)