[Tailândia] T-Shirts com imagens caricaturadas de Hitler fazem furor

[André]

Bangkok's 'Hitler chic' trend riles tourists, Israeli envoy

 

Thai youth are strutting around in T-shirts bearing cartoonish images of the Nazi dictator. Critics blame it on ignorance.

 

A shopper poses with a large "McHitler" dummy soliciting donations for flood relief. Its head has since been covered by a Lucha Libre wrestler’s mask

 

Cartoon pandas, Teletubbies, Ronald McDonald. At first glance they don’t seem to have much in common beyond a certain childlike quality. But during a visit to Bangkok you may discover another trait these popular cultural icons now share: their resemblance to Adolf Hitler.

In the Thai capital’s latest outbreak of Nazi chic, pandas, Teletubbies and Ronald have metamorphosed into cutesy alter egos of the Führer, who seems to exert a childlike fascination over some young Thais.

 

With any luck you can spot trendy young souls strutting around in T-shirts bearing cartoonish images of the Nazi dictator.

 

In a particularly popular design, Hitler is transformed into a cartoonish Ronald McDonald, the fast-food chain’s clown mascot, sporting a bouffant cherry-red hairdo and a stern look.

 

On another T-shirt the Führer is shown in a lovely panda costume with a Nazi armband. On yet another he appears as a pink Teletubby with doe eyes, jug ears and a pink swastika for an antenna. He pouts petulantly like a spoiled brat while flashing the Nazi salute.

 

Shirts cost from 200 baht to 370 baht (US$7-12) apiece, and some come in matching outfits for couples. Adolf McDonald’s partner is a transvestite with fuchsia hair, lipstick, long lashes and a timid Mona Lisa smile. Panda Adolf’s manlier doppelganger sports a brown stormtrooper uniform.

 

Cute or disrespectful? These T-shirts might be popular with the locals, but the Israeli ambassador isn't laughing.

 

Not amused

 

“Some foreigners get upset [when they see my T-shirts on sale] -- they come to my shop and complain,” acknowledges the owner of Seven Star, a small clothing shop at Terminal 21, a new designer mall in central Bangkok on Sukhumvit Road which is a popular tourist haunt.

 

He’s a 30-something fellow who identifies himself by his nickname “Hut”, and is a graduate of a local university’s arts program. Hut does brisk business selling his T-shirts. Seven Star's most popular items, Hut notes, are his McHitler designs, which he sells alongside his caricatures of Michael Jackson, Che Guevara and Kim Jong-Il.

 

Standing invitingly outside his shop is a large dummy of Hitler as Ronald with its motorized left arm going up and down in the Nazi salute. Thai shoppers love posing gleefully with it.

 

“It’s not that I like Hitler,” Hut insists. “But he looks funny and the shirts are very popular with young people.”

 

As Hut well knows, some foreigners are not amused. Israel’s local ambassador is one of them.

 

“You don’t want to see memories of the Nazi period trivialized in this manner,” stresses Ambassador Itzhak Shoham, whose embassy is right behind Terminal 21. “It hurts the feelings of every Jew and every civilized person.”

 

Shoham recently remonstrated with Hut. “I said to him, “I don’t mind the doll; just take the face off,’” the ambassador says.

Hut’s McHitler doll's face is now covered by a Lucha Libre wrestler’s mask.

 

Shirts like these have been a popular buy among some young Thais.

 

Nazi chic bonanza

 

Across town at another fashion mall, another small shop hawks its own cutesy caricatures of Hitler plastered on T-shirts. Panda Adolf takes pride of place among impressionistic Smurfs, pop stars and Japanese manga characters.

 

“Hitler shirts are very popular, especially with teenage boys,” notes the shop’s 30-year-old owner, whose family operates a clothing factory.

 

Meanwhile, on Bangkok’s backpacker haven, Khao San Road, other T-shirt designs boast Photoshopped prints of the Führer, including one depicting him sunbathing naked on a tropical beach.

 

Shoppers looking for Nazi flags, reproduction Third Reich propaganda posters, pennants with Iron Crosses and Nazi eagles and faux SS crash helmets can find them at the Chatuchak Weekend Market, where they’re on sale alongside Bob Marley portraits and Rastafarian accoutrements.

 

Some foreign tourists see such Nazi chic as just a peculiar aspect of Thai youth culture.

 

“I guess one could say ‘boy, it’s a pretty ignorant world and kids today,’” notes Mark Goldberg, from New Orleans. “I doubt people who are [into these designs] would even know their significance.”

 

That’s a safe bet. Most young Thais seemingly know precious little about the Nazis and their crimes beyond their eye-catching pageantry. And so they are drawn to Hitler and his regime’s hallucinogenic visual propaganda.

 

A Teletubby has never looked so sinister.

 

Last September in the northern city of Chiang Mai, a group of high school students showed up for sport day in homemade Nazi uniforms, complete with swastika armbands and toy guns. Leading them was a teenage girl dressed in a faux SS uniform with a fake Hitler mustache.

 

Locals cheered the students merrily from sidewalks as foreign tourists reportedly looked on aghast.

 

In 2007, hundreds of students at a Bangkok school staged a similar Nazi-themed costume parade.

 

Following international outcries, teachers at both schools apologized, saying they had no idea the students had planned to dress up as Nazis.

 

In 2009, a waxworks museum in the seaside resort town of Pattaya advertised itself with a giant billboard featuring the Führer with the legend in Thai: “Hitler is not dead!”

 

Cue another hue and cry. The museum’s managers quickly pulled down the billboard, insisting they meant no offence.

 

“It’s a lack of exposure to history,” notes Harry Soicher, a Romanian who teaches at a Bangkok high school. “If you don’t live in Thailand, you may find it hard to believe they really mean no harm.”

 

“You don’t want to see memories of the Nazi period trivialized in this manner,” says Israeli Ambassador Itzhak Shoham.

 

Nazi chic cavalcade

 

In Thais’ defense, the Nazi chic phenomenon is hardly limited to their country. The misuse of Nazi symbols for fashion purposes has also been common from India to Japan.

 

Some years ago 7-Eleven stores in Taiwan sold dolls and key chains with Hitler’s likeness. In Hong Kong a clothing store chain once decorated a shop with Nazi flags and banners. In South Korea and Japan Nazi-style clothing is often a part of cosplay, which sees young people dress up as their favorite Japanese comic book characters.

 

Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre in Los Angeles, which monitors neo-Nazi activities worldwide, agrees that manifestations of Nazi chic in the region largely come down to sheer ignorance. Yet locals should wise up about Hitler and his pernicious ideological legacy, he insists.

 

“If the Nazis had won the war, Hitler’s racist ideology would have eventually targeted all races he deemed inferior, including Asians,” Cooper notes.

 

CNNGO

Editado 28 Fevereiro 2012 por André

[Black Hawk]

Que tempestade num copo d'água. São imagens caricaturadas, algumas até fazem escárnio dele e do nazismo. Os judeus ainda não ultrapassaram o holocausto (e não os censuro por isso), mas não podem obrigar o resto do mundo a fazer o luto com eles.

[André]

Também acho que sim.

Aquela dos headphones com a suástica, admito que possa incomodar um bocado, mas nas outras não vejo mal nenhum... Não percebo como é que uma coisa destas pode virar moda, mas ok.

A t-shirt amarela :lol:

 

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Notícia relacionada:

 

'Hitler is not dead' billboard rattles Bangkok envoys

Wax museum manager claims no offense was intended

 

 

A billboard featuring a saluting Adolf Hitler advertising a new wax museum in Pattaya has shocked the Israeli and German ambassadors to Thailand. And not in a good way.

 

The offending billboard, which has since been covered up, was put up on the main highway into the seaside resort town as part of an advertising campaign to promote next month’s opening of the Louis Tussaud's Waxworks. In Thai-language, the billboard reads: "Hitler is not dead."

 

The Post reported that German Ambassador Hanns Schumacher told officials in Pattaya, “this kind of utterly tasteless advertisement would hurt the feelings of many people” and asked that the billboard be taken down.

 

Israeli Ambassador Itzhak Shoham was quoted by the Post as saying: “It is totally unacceptable to have such a monster like Adolf Hitler on public display. How this could happen is beyond my understanding and comprehension.”

 

In other reports, Louis Tussaud’s Waxworks manager Somporn Naksuetrong said that the idea came from an advertising agency and was neither meant to cause offense nor celebrate Hitler, merely to point out the infamy of a historic figure.

 

"We think of Hitler as an important person, but not in a good way," Naksuetrong was quoted by the Bangkok Post. "In the museum we don't show him with other world leaders, we show him in the scary section."

 

Local blogger Talen of Thailand, Land of Smiles weighed in on the controversy: “One can only wonder what they were thinking when they could have used other historical figures set to be on display such as Gandhi, Michael Jackson or martial arts legend Bruce Lee. Of course they wouldn’t have generated the publicity that Hitler has, and everyone knows that there is no such thing as bad publicity.”

 

This is not the first time a wax image of the former German leader has attracted worldwide attention. Berlin’s branch of Madam Tussauds faced Israeli and German outrage in May for its lifelike image of Hitler. On the opening day of the wax museum, an enraged man even ripped the head off of the wax figure.

Here in Thailand, Talen says there’s a very real fascination with the Nazis and their symbolism.

 

“Just two years ago a Thai school put on a show that had students dressed in Nazi regalia complete with guns and swastikas,” he wrote on his blog. “After all was said and done, many apologies were made and the teacher in charge of the event was let go. The school has since implemented Holocaust lectures into it’s curriculum in a bid to promote understanding of the atrocities committed by the Nazis.”

 

CNNGO

 

Mas também digo que não sei se gostava que a minha cidade estivesse cheia de coisas alusivas a Hitler e ao Nazismo, ainda que seja meramente humorístico. :|

Editado 28 Fevereiro 2012 por André

[Victarion]

Critics blame it on ignorance.

 

é basicamente isto.

aqui é um exemplo de limites. se umas caricaturas têm piada, o excesso e o abuso torna isto numa palhaçada de ignorantes a pavonearem a sua burrice.

[Klebergol]

http://i.cdn.cnngo.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/inline_image_300x400/2012/02/14/shirt_3.jpg

 

:lol:

[Kaká]

O que é: "Tailândia"?

 

Eles que se comam!

[Guest fiasco]

O que é: "Tailândia"?

 

Eles que se comam!

 

 

Olha que a Tailândia até conhecida por isso.

Comer criancinha. :mrgreen:

 

São eles com o Hitler e nós com o Futre.

Venha o diabo e escolha.

[ZeeSpecialThree]

Em relação ás t-shirts é para o gozo e tal, em relaçao ao cartaz sobre o museu, podiam usar outra personagem para o cartaz...mas eles lá sabem

[Niculae]

Não sabem o que hão-de inventar mais, depois dá nisto...

[Burkina2008]

wow...the crazy thais....

[Edin Dzeko]

Hitlertubbie é bem giro :carinhoso: :mrgreen:

[Pistolas]

 

Artista alemão cria papel higiénico com cara de Hitler

 

 

Há liso, com flores, quadrados, animais... e agora com a cara de Hitler. Sim, falamos de papel higiénico. Um artista criou um rolo de papel higiénico em que é impossível não se limpar à cara de Hitler. Todas as tiras do rolo têm a face do ditador alemão.

 

O rolo foi idealizado pelo alemão Georg Buchrucker, de 32 anos, e já gerou muita polémica. Mostra Hitler sem o seu bigode característico e convida os compradores a acrescentarem o que está em falta, de cor castanha, no sítio apropriado, de acordo com o «Huffington Post».

 

«Tenho recebido numerosos e-mails e encomendas desde a América à Austrália. Estou francamente contente por a minha ideia ter ganho tanta popularidade mas há também quem me critique e quanto a esses... gostava que se libertassem dos preconceitos», disse.

 

Para os críticos este papel higiénico banaliza os crimes cometidos pelo ditador. Buchrucker defende que «o seu papel higiénico, além de prático, tem sentido de humor». Afinal, «que outro homem com bigode mereceria este tratamento mais do que Hitler em toda a história da humanidade?»

 

http://www.tvi24.iol.pt/acredite-se-quiser/hitler-adolf-hitler-papel-higienico/1337196-4088.html

 

:laugh:

 

Fotos no link.

[Scirea]

LOL Tá fixe a ideia de lhe "fazerem" o bigode. :lol:

[rinka]

A Tailândia é um país que me surpreende a diário

[freudianslip]

Também há as do Hipster Hitler que têm muita piada, confesso.