Yes, of course, I'm scare-mongering. As with many other "imminent threats" from the unstoppable Chinese and their East Asian neighbors, the idea that Comedy Central will soon lose its #1 rank in politics-based humor is an exaggeration.
And yet....!! You can't minimize what the NMA ("Next Media Animation") group in Taiwan could be capable of. They've made an art form out of campy but compulsively watchable CGI reenactments of events in the news, with a rich helping of the tabloidesque. The first one that was widely noticed in the US was their dramatization of the Tiger-v-Elin Woods tussle last year.
Two election-related features from NMA to get on the record now, as the world watches America going to the polls. First, their distillation of Christine O'Donnell's campaign themes, including her warning about China's "carefully thought out and strategic plan to take over the United States."
The full clip is here and in embed below.
On the same China-menace theme, NMA has also done a remix of the famous/ infamous "Chinese Professor" ad. Perhaps it is one degree more obvious and less deft than the O'Donnell, Woods, or Sarah Palin items but it is still effective in its own way. (It's worth noting the rococo element to the satire here. In America, the "Chinese Professor" ad might evoke fears of Asians in general or ethnic Chinese as a group, which would certainly affect people in Taiwan -- but also specific fears of the government in Beijing, which at times is the object of fear-mongering in Taiwan too.) In any case worth seeing as a complement to the original ad, (whose audience full of "Chinese students" is actually the result of a casting call in the DC area) and for the surprising star turn by the surly panda at the end.
Read more at The Atlantic -James Fallows
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