Media You Can’t Do That on Fernsehen
posted by on July 28 at 11:07 AM
Please enjoy this three-minute IKEA commercial, made in Germany in 2006, that mocks the Christ out of the Swedes and their midsummer parties as brutish, drunk, and dumb.
Looks like fun to me—pretty much what went down at Smoke Farm a few weekends ago:
The Kamprad family, which controls IKEA, axed the commercial.
Two footnotes—one etymological, one social—below the jump.
1. According my translator Patrick, “Fernsehen”—which, he says, is German for television—literally means “far-seer.” Which, I guess, is also what “television” means.
2. I know some of you are going to be all: This is so old, I saw this 14 years before you were even born, welcome to the internet, douchebag, blah blah blah. And to those people, I say: please, restrain yourselves. There’s no need to vaunt your encyclopedic knowledge of YouTube, your heroic dedication to spending interminable hours in front of your computer screen, nobly foregoing the outside world—even intercourse itself!—for the sake of knowing more than anyone about everything on the internet.
We already admire and appreciate you—there’s no need to brag.
Can we start using "Thank you for forgoing intercourse" as an all purpose internet insult? especially with Fnarf, Will in Seattle, Elenchos, Bellevue Ave, and Mr. Poe?
Life without Mr. Poe is like a day without the summer sun.
@1
Seconded.
How would this entice you to buy Ikea?
#1 You just named the four people who make reading Slog fun.
I think you and Patrick wanted to use "Fernsehen" (television) as opposed to "Fernseher" (television set).
You are right, Simac. That was my mistake, not Patrick's.
Wow. When I was in Scandinavia, we just drank moonshine out of cereal bowls. It had been "flavored" by dissolving a Fisherman's Friend cough drop in each bowl, leaving a nice scum slick floating on top.
Then everyone went outside on a frozen lake and lit firecrackers and held them in their teeth while they went off.
For some reason it just never occurred to me -- though it seems obvious now: Ikea is the European Wal*Mart. It's a giant super-distribution network, controlled by one family, with extensive price-fixing and vertical control of its product line that moves into local economies and destroys them. The Ikea where I lived in the UK had furniture, appliances and groceries, pretty much like a Wal*mart, and it was just far enough outside the center of town to be destructive to the city market's foot traffic.
So, you know, further proof that Europeans are at least as avaricious, short-sighted, acquisitive -- and, evidently, racist -- as we colonials.
the fat women looked more like americans than scandinavians.
@9- they don't sell many foods or toiletries, clothes, etc. In europe, Ikea is not somewhere a family goes a few times a week for "essentials", but a destination store for furniture. It is quite different from WalMart.
Now, Carrefour, on the other hand, is more like WalMart ...
But it's French.
wait. can we talk about the video for a second? how it's better than about 80% of art video out there? wow. this thing made my day.
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