Knackwurst Envy

Submitted for your approval: The following video I ran across on You Tube the other day. Watch it before you read the rest of my post. Go ahead, I'll wait...

This is a television ad for the French automaker Renault. What's that you say? You've never heard of Renault? Oh, that's probably because cars made by companies like Renault and Peugeot don't get exported to this country... mostly because they suck. I'm pretty sure the only reason that France is still making cars is that with the most recent wave of E.U. expansion, they have been opened up to the markets of Eastern Europe, where people are just excited to have more options than Yugo and those oversized wind-up toys that the Soviets forced them to buy under decades of Communism.

I have a couple of issues with this commercial. We'll start with the sterotypes and their implications. As the French are wont to do with most other things, they have linked various national makes of automobile with food. First, we have what appears to be a Bavarian white veal sausage. Clearly, this is a reference to the German automakers (specifically BMW), and it implies that German cars explode upon impact. Owning a German car myself, I sincerely hope this isn't the case. Next we have what I believe is a spicy tuna roll -sushi- obviously meant to represent the Japanese cars. It meets a fate similar to the German sausage. After they clean up the sticky rice, they subject a large cracker to the side-impact test. Now, this reference is not quite clear to me, but since we've already made fun of Germany and Japan, I can only assume that this is meant to indicate the American car companies. If that is so, then not only are our Fords, Chevys and GMCs being slandered, but we as a nation are being called a bunch of crackers! I personally have been called a cracker on a couple of different occasions, and I didn't much appreciate it. I certainly will not take it lying down from the French.

The clip concludes with a nice baguette smashing into the test wall. It crumples a bit, but is otherwise unharmed. I don't know that bread is really the best metaphor for a car... well, maybe for a French car it is. There's a reason your mom always made you keep the loaf of bread separate from the rest of the grocery bags. At any rate, Frenchie... you can keep your limp-ass baguette. I'll take a German-engineered bratwurst any day. Mmmm... bratwurst...