Saturday, January 13, 2007

Cartoons and Crab Meat

Last night, I was flipping through channels looking for something interesting and found myself on the Japanese Cartoon Network. It's similar to the one in the U.S. except the cartoons are bilingual when they are in English and there is a mixture of Japanese cartoons as well.

The cartoon I happened to land on was Peanuts which was just finishing before Bugs Bunny started. Since I'm a fan of old Bugs Bunny cartoons, I decided to let the commercials play through and watch the upcoming cartoon. This is where things got weird.

The commercial that aired was a really long one about crabs. This is the sort of ad where some woman stuffs huge gobs of the featured food into her mouth while shrieking orgasmically. At one point, she looked like she was trying to gag herself by inserting the better part of an entire leg into her mouth and sucking off the meat. I'm not kidding. She easily stuck 4 inches of it in her mouth and it looked like more. No wonder her eyes were bugging out and she was making loud noises. I'm sure her uvula was bruised.

Anyway, the commercial was offering up 7 enormous spiky-looking crabs for about $100 so I was wondering who they think is watching cartoons at 9:00 pm. I'm doubting kids are jumping up and down begging their mothers to buy them crabs (though they may grow up thinking they may prove useful in foreplay after watching those ads). So, I'm wondering who this type of thing is aimed at.

I guess it could be the mothers of children who watch cartoons with their kids but my image of kids parked in front of the T.V. is one where it's an electronic babysitter while mothers are off doing the thousands of little things they must do to run a household and care for their families. Perhaps all the over the top expressions of delight are meant to force the mothers to come rushing into the living room to see if their kids have stumbled across some pornographic programs only to become entranced by the great value and obvious deliciousness of those monster crabs...or at least make them wonder if they can seek the gratification they're missing elsewhere in their lives through seafood consumption.

5 comments:

Helen said...

I haven't seen the commercial that you mention, but that's one of my pet peeves about Japan. So much of the TV here is related to food. I don't mean cooking shows, that would actually be welcome! Go to some place, stuff yourself silly, it's the only way to "experience" another city.

I could go on and on about this topic, but....

Shari said...

I could be wrong but I think there may be some cash crossing palms in regards to all the food programs. Those shows are not only cheap to produce but they also serve as advertising for the featured restaurants or whatever.

The reason I think this is that there was a show on several months ago which covered the top 15 or so places in my neighborhood. Some places got a minute or more of coverage. Others got about 10 seconds. I have to wonder if the whole thing was sponsored by a conglomeration of merchants.

The thing about those food programs that boggles my mind how many tiny, dainty women shovel a huge gob of food into their mouths and attempt to gracefully chew it (as their cheeks bulge out like gorged chipmunks). What is it with stuffing all the food in at once like that?

mitzh said...

Have you seen this local tv show ( I don't know the title and I can't remember the channel either..I'm SORRY)..

Anyway, I've come across this particular show, it's a competition on who can eat the most food.
It amazes me yet at the same time it makes me sick seeing those woman gobbled down on foods...

The worst was when they were eating Ramen :D

I guess they were timed for 30 minutes and the one's who had the most numbered of plates WINS...

Lil' Lisa said...

Hello Shari!
This is your old OBC pal Lisa. Joseph pointed me in the direction of this site, so I thought I'd visit and say "Howdie!"
Hope you and Tito are both doing well, drop me a line sometime...

Shari said...

Hey there, Lisa! TIto and I just wrote back to you (the letter went out today so your timing is very coincidental). I didn't know that Joseph knew about my blog (I don't recall telling him). The following post was actually about you: http://tinyurl.com/y2kkoh

If you've got a new e-mail address that you often use, please drop us a line. We still use the same one!