This past Saturday, Steve Carell was the guest host on Saturday Night Live. Ricky Gervais, the star of the original British sitcom presents the “actual” inspiration for The Office in SNL’s “digital short,” which takes place in Japan with some of the typical stereotypes of a Japanese office, done with the best of intentions with humor - which I found hilarious, especially since I am a fan of NBC’s The Office. At the end of the digital short, Ricky Gervais says “It’s funny because it’s racist.” Do you think the video is racist?
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Moye wrote:
agreed. it’s hilarious.
Posted on 20-May-08 at 9:29 am | Permalink
Toro wrote:
There was nothing remotely racist in the japanese dialogue. I think Gervais just said that to be funny. The cultural differences of a japanese office being played by American actors from the same series were cute and humorous.
Posted on 20-May-08 at 5:57 pm | Permalink
TheMadHapa wrote:
I was pleasantly surprised that the actors were actually speaking Japanese. That’s a lot of work! Okay, their Japanese wasn’t perfect, but “Stapler doku deska?” . . . that’s classic.
Posted on 21-May-08 at 9:08 pm | Permalink
John wrote:
Yeah, I thought it was hilarious that the actors were actually speaking Japanese. It’s kind of hard to fake speaking a foreign language realistically. I wonder how many takes it took to get this skit done. I really like the fact that the actress playing the Japanese secretary was giggling and her voice was very high pitched…
Also, the “commercial” in the middle with Regis Philbin was classic. I remember the first time being in Japan and watching Japanese television and shocked to see TV commercials with so many American stars that never did ads in America.
Posted on 21-May-08 at 11:27 pm | Permalink
DJKuulA wrote:
I think the “It’s Funny Because It’s Racist” may have been added for the benefit of people who aren’t familiar with Japanese TV, because I doubt they would have really gotten much of the humor in the skit.
Posted on 02-Jun-08 at 1:23 pm | Permalink