McDonald’s Japan shared a cute anime-style ad to its X (formerly Twitter) account on September 20. The advertisement featured an anime-style family eating at a McDonald’s restaurant. While the U.S. McDonalds’ is currently running a Loki campaign, McDonald’s Japan has been advertising its new Halloween toys with its anime ads. However, the family in the ad was more fully engrossed in enjoying their meal together than the toys, with the mom feeding the little girl a french fry as the dad munched on chicken nuggets.
Somehow, the cute ad has sparked a torrent of homophobic, transphobic, and racist backlash. Looking at the ad, though, you’ll see that it depicts a heterosexual nuclear family that appears to be white. So, you’re probably wondering how this ad could possibly elicit so much hatred and bigotry. It turns out that even when people receive non-representative and non-diverse advertisements, it still fills them with rage because, apparently, it reminds them of all the inclusive advertisements they’ve seen in the past.
Conservatives invent controversy over McDonald’s ad
McDonald’s Japan ran a few anime-style advertisements—which should’ve been the end of the story. However, conservatives started losing their minds over it and then turned around and started accusing liberals of losing their minds over it. Aside from the racist and homophobic backlash, no one else was talking about the ad. So, the majority of the discourse turned into conservatives cheering and jeering over how the left was so triggered and was melting down over the ad. According to them, the left was wholly obliterated by one ad depicting a happy family.
The only problem is that none of these conservatives could provide any examples of the left melting down over the ad. One user did reimagine the advertisement as “WokeDonalds” in a super cute work of fan art, but there certainly wasn’t any complete political party meltdown or spewing of hatred from the left. One person basically just said, “Oh, that’s a cute ad; let’s make it cuter by drawing in two dads!”
Meanwhile, the people who were melting down and spreading hatred were actually—you guessed it—racist and homophobic right-wingers. It wasn’t enough that they got an ad they wanted and got to manufacture a response from the left; they also had to use it as an opportunity to spread their disgusting and hateful views. According to them, the United States has no advertisements featuring a nuclear family. All of the ads are filled with political agendas. As an example, they pulled up Imara Jones’ ad for McDonald’s, in which she pleads for people to stop killing and attacking Black women. This advertisement, which conservatives have used as a prime example of America’s “woke” advertising, is from 2020. McDonald’s ran the ad specifically for commercial breaks during the BET Awards.
It’s certainly not like the typical ads that McDonald’s runs, though even if it was, it shouldn’t be a problem. If someone has a platform, why not utilize it to share important messages with the world? However, conservatives and right-wingers began spreading more misinformation, claiming that the Jones ad and the Japan ad were running simultaneously. In reality, they specifically dug three years back on the internet to find an advertisement they could be mad about and use to back up their ridiculous demands that all advertisements feature only white, heterosexual individuals.
Meanwhile, Jones’ 2020 advertisement has begun drawing hate comments from right-wingers, promising they’ll never eat at McDonald’s again … even though they’ve admitted to eating there for the past three years after the ad was initially published. It feels strange that we have to explain that the left didn’t have a meltdown over the advertisement, but it is important. It demonstrates that it is possible for people to view and enjoy fast food advertisements, movies, or TV shows without immediately making it political or about themselves. Unfortunately, the right hasn’t yet learned how to demonstrate this presence of mind. So, it doesn’t matter if they see an ad with a white heterosexual family or a transgender Black woman; they’ll find a way to victimize themselves and twist and contort whatever they see to support their hateful views.
It can be true both that Japan’s advertisement was cute and non-problematic (especially since its next ad featured a werewolf lesbian couple) and that BIPOC and LGBTQ+ individuals very much belong everywhere, whether it be in McDonald’s social media posts or elsewhere in advertisements, film, or TV. If you truly can’t handle seeing people who aren’t white and straight, perhaps you should just stay in your homes and get off the internet because no one is going to hide to placate you.
(featured image: McDonald’s Japan)
