Softbank Cellphone CM: White Family--The Talking Dog is Cute

Softbank has started a new CM series in addition to the Cameron Diaz one. In the White Family series, advertising a new cellphone series, for reasons unknown the body of the young Japanese son has been interchanged with the body of an American black businessmen and the Japanese husband has turned into a white dog.


Welcome to the Twilight zone, Japanese style, where untoward events are not freaky and scary, but rather just taken in stride, and well, rather cute. And, what would raise major issues of political correctness in the USA is again, well cute. I wonder if this can be interpreted as an aspect of post-bubble Japan, where untoward events are just to be accepted and perhaps the Japanese family is no longer homogenous and can be taken for granted. Perhaps, the young’ins and parental figures are so estranged that they may as well be different races or species. Or alternatively, perhaps the family unite in Japan is so cohesive that it doesn’t matter how out-of-the-ordinary one’s family members are. I am sure there is a post-structuralist dissertation topic in there somewhere.


Back to the narrative, which is a recent technique in Japanese commercials, having a running story line through individual commercials; a trend I first noticed with the Kinchiro bug spray commercials.

Anyhow, (and now for a complete sentence, maybe), the seemingly black businessman but actually elementary school boy has met his family with a girl in tow. Notice they stop walking arm-in-arm as the couple approaches the family. The Dog-Father says, “bijin hakken” (beautiful woman sighting). When asked if she is his girlfriend, they both respond “tada tomodachi” (just friends), and the older sister says, “muryō to iu koto?” (you mean, no charge?) [Wait ‘til feminists get hold of this one, but they are advertising no phone fee between selected fellow users.]

The Just Girlfriend reassures the older sister that she is indeed just “tada-tomo,” short for “tada no tomodachi” (just friend). The Dog-Father scolds her for shortening her words, and she says [my favorite part here], “Inu ga shaberunda! Kawaii!” (The dog can talk! How cute!) and the Dog-Father responds in typical embarrassed Japanese-man fashion, “Ah, sou desu ka?” thoroughly charmed as she puts her arms around him.

Adorable, or what? You be the judge.


The series of the Softbank White family commercials available on YouTube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXfOnvpgAZg&feature=related