reiszrie

SkylightActive said:

Personally, I feel the whole banning of this ad in Thailand is a lil overkill. Having said that this movement started with Western Expats living in Bangkok / Thailand who felt that Apple had misrepresented a place they now call home. To which Thai people caught wind and rallied with it. 

Extremism imagery like the use of the old airport terminal which hasn't been used for 15 years, or places that you'd have to really dig in to find such conditions is very far from truth. Not to say that there aren't, but it's becoming harder to find now. Im in Thailand at the moment and understand why people aren't ok with it. Bangkok has come a long way since the Vietnam war era. The imagery depicted in the ad is how it felt like. The old view of South East Asia during that era. Unfortunately modern day Bangkok (if you've visited it) you'd know that it's not like that at all. You can see it for your self on Youtube vloggers. Finding the supposed 5star hotel that looks darn old in the ad nowadays is hard. Most 3-4 stars hotel looks like 5 star hotels in western countries already. The massive roads and toll ways. The cab thing, even I haven't seen it in years (the whole vibe of third world Taxis). When I travel it's either the Metro/Skytrain or Uber (Grab) now. Even the busses are now converting to EV. Overall I think the people who call Thailand home (westerners or Thais) felt that what was depicted was very far from truth. Which is why they reacted as such. 

However, as a creative person who does these kinds of jobs, I think they nailed it. It's funny, nailed the brief. When you have a script like this, to make things funny, you need to use extremism and stereotypes in order to create humor. Which is why I get it why they used this extremism. Because it wouldn't be funny if it wasn't. Lavish offices or settings doesn't get people to laugh. To extrapolate it as insensitive is stretching it too far.