On the face of it, this video is quite funny. It ticks all the right boxes – awkward situation, guy is funny without even knowing it, analysis of interpersonal behaviour better than any professional behavioural psychologist.. The female actor isn’t quite attractive enough to have bitch-resting face, but why quibble..
The skit presents the case that it is mildly racist, perhaps unconsciously so, in this ‘settler society’ of ours, to make assumptions about someone based on their physical appearance, to assume that if someone looks Asian, they are to some extent Asian in terms of their culture and outlook.
Watching this, I realise how strictly I adhere, despite my own conservatism/ classical liberalism/ cultural libertarianism, to this unspoken social rule. If I interact with someone of Asian appearance of my own generation, I have assumed before we start speaking that I am going to hear an Aussie accent. If they don’t have an Aussie accent, I generally assume they must be an international student, but I digress, and my unconscious racism is showing.
There are two major inconsistencies, one frustrating and deliberately confusing, the other deeply disturbing, with this video.
The first is that we supposedly live in a multicultural society. We live in a society where people from different ethnic and cultural groups are encouraged to identify themselves by their ethnic or cultural grouping, we are encouraged to celebrate such “diversity,” and we are all told that it enriches us. If we truly lived in a melting pot, either in “progressive” west coast USA, Australia or Europe, such a video would make sense, because once we are in Australian, we are Australian. Chinese takeaway would be American takeaway, and pizza would be as dinky-di as Blinky Bill.
But, if we live in, as we are constantly being berated, a multicultural society, this video does not make sense. This poor chap is doing everything his “progressive,” multicultural society told him to do; showing an interest in, getting involved in, and celebrating the “diversity” of another person. But, seemingly overnight, the rules have changed, it turns out migrant communities want to be just like everybody else, the boundaries of racism were moved, and this slightly dorky fellow unwittingly found himself on the wrong side.
This brings us to the second inconsistency, and it is where things get seriously scary.
When the October Revolution occurred in 1917 in Russia, there were two wings of the Communist Party, the Bolsheviks, of whom you have probably heard, and the Mensheviks, of whom most will have not. The reasons for the existence of these two wings are tedious and unimportant. (If you really want to know more, Google is your friend, not your overarching corporate entity which determines the nature of your reality by deciding which search options are “good” and which options are “baaaaaaad.”)
What matters is the reason why most people will not have heard of the Mensheviks: the Russian Communist Party had the tendency typical of every left wing party, organisation, university club, etc that has ever existed – the tendency to purge. In today’s parlance, we would call it “they eat their own.” Some purges are less violent than others, and can range through expulsion from the party or exile, to imprisonment and execution. What they have in common is the effect of purging the party of those who do not toe what is deemed by those in power, at that point in time, to be the correct ideological line, and ensuring that those who are left, do.
This poor chap is suddenly finding out what it is like to be a Menshevik. He is not some redneck from Alabama, “clinging to his guns and religion.” He is from San Francisco, for Pedro’s sake. He most likely votes Democrat, cycles to work, is involved in Twitter mobs designed to shame into unemployment anyone who does not support same-sex marriage, and as previously mentioned, likes to celebrate diversity, possibly to the point that he hates himself on account that he is white.
But now, rather than being required to celebrate someone else’s diversity, he is expected to know, instinctively, the new rule – you must pretend that everybody is the same, except when we are officially celebrating diversity. But don’t worry, it is nothing a good dose of reeducation, public humiliation, social ostracism and self hate can’t fix. Dissemble your feelings, control your face, and do what everyone else is doing.
The final word on this video is that it is very unfunny. But it could be funny. If the actors were a little more willing to poke some fun at themselves, and at their own ethnicity, this could be a pisser. And that really is the solution to all of this social anxiety caused by political correctness – if we all just take a step back and laugh at ourselves, this sort of thing can be relegated to the fringes where it belongs. Instead, we are fed this overbearing, social engineering propaganda dressed up as comedy.
I am guessing that the actress’s bitterness over the fact that her obviously mixed race heritage gave her quite plain features has something to do with it.