Skewered: Be friendly - even to foreigners
"Werbewoche" Editor Anne-Friederike Wilhelm on the Perpetuation of Racism
Integration is a great thing. If it works. On Tuesday, the canton of Zurich launched an integration campaign to help foreigners fit in better in their host canton. Nice. The subjects were presented by government councillor Markus Notter, SP. Although the SP likes to play to the left, it is not known for its exuberant willingness to help foreigners. So the well-integrated foreigner becomes suspicious.
After a completely unprejudiced look at the subjects, I am overcome, to put it mildly, by a nausea: A red-faced Stefan Raab look-alike, who, by the way, looks amazingly similar to government councilor Markus Notter, stares from a poster and makes it clear that not a single German can say "please. Thank you, Mr. Notter! A helpful contribution to further harden the already firmly cemented aversion to Germans in Switzerland. Do you really think that this poster could even remotely animate the Steinbrücks with Bitt-Hemmung to formulate their wishes differently? Even the Kosovars get one thing on the line: "Schtriit wanns muess sii, aber ... nöd Aug um Aug." Gopferteckel! All Kosovars are thugs. And speeders anyway. To make this clear to everyone, the poster shows an Eastern European in a fine rib undershirt next to the biblical doctrinal line. Just like these guys walk around. "Look, there he stands, fie, the Struwwelpeter!"
Everyone is a foreigner. Almost everywhere
The message of each poster is translated into ten languages. After all, the campaign's creators are not racist, but want understanding on a broad front. Helping instead of grumbling. Far too many other subjects give the helpless foreigners helpful tips for their everyday lives: be decent to women, go to the family doctor with a cold, pay attention to the welfare system, laugh more (?), eat Röschti (!), sort bottles by color. Oh, that's how Switzerland works! Foreigners must know that, of course. Finally, everything is in order in the canton of Zurich. Painfully missing, however, is a helpful hint about the burqa. How about: "Full-body veils interfere with fondue eating"?
A little mental exercise for the initiators of this sweeping, 150,000-franc grab: How do posters work? The viewer grabs the very first piece of information he understands and links it to his experiences and feelings. And prejudices. The Swiss media repeat clichés ad nauseam about "immigrants from the neighboring country to the north," "thugs with a migration background," and "robbers with a Slavic dialect." So everyone quickly knows what foreigners are like - getting to know and differentiating is unnecessary.
With this integration campaign, most Swiss will think: "That's right, that's how they are, these foreigners. It's good that someone puts them in their place!" ... not to say: behind the borders. It is unlikely that poster viewers from the Helvetic motherland will get the idea that the call to be nice to everyone and to separate bottles could also be directed at them. Foreigners who regard Switzerland as their home will swallow blankly at the sight of the unspeakable posters: Do Swiss people seriously believe that all Kosovars are thugs, all blacks savages, all Germans rude? Are the mountains really that high? And who actually believes that posters can integrate? Shameful. The only thing that comforts me is a Butterröschti and a Rivella red.
After a completely unprejudiced look at the subjects, I am overcome, to put it mildly, by a nausea: A red-faced Stefan Raab look-alike, who, by the way, looks amazingly similar to government councilor Markus Notter, stares from a poster and makes it clear that not a single German can say "please. Thank you, Mr. Notter! A helpful contribution to further harden the already firmly cemented aversion to Germans in Switzerland. Do you really think that this poster could even remotely animate the Steinbrücks with Bitt-Hemmung to formulate their wishes differently? Even the Kosovars get one thing on the line: "Schtriit wanns muess sii, aber ... nöd Aug um Aug." Gopferteckel! All Kosovars are thugs. And speeders anyway. To make this clear to everyone, the poster shows an Eastern European in a fine rib undershirt next to the biblical doctrinal line. Just like these guys walk around. "Look, there he stands, fie, the Struwwelpeter!"
Everyone is a foreigner. Almost everywhere
The message of each poster is translated into ten languages. After all, the campaign's creators are not racist, but want understanding on a broad front. Helping instead of grumbling. Far too many other subjects give the helpless foreigners helpful tips for their everyday lives: be decent to women, go to the family doctor with a cold, pay attention to the welfare system, laugh more (?), eat Röschti (!), sort bottles by color. Oh, that's how Switzerland works! Foreigners must know that, of course. Finally, everything is in order in the canton of Zurich. Painfully missing, however, is a helpful hint about the burqa. How about: "Full-body veils interfere with fondue eating"?
A little mental exercise for the initiators of this sweeping, 150,000-franc grab: How do posters work? The viewer grabs the very first piece of information he understands and links it to his experiences and feelings. And prejudices. The Swiss media repeat clichés ad nauseam about "immigrants from the neighboring country to the north," "thugs with a migration background," and "robbers with a Slavic dialect." So everyone quickly knows what foreigners are like - getting to know and differentiating is unnecessary.
With this integration campaign, most Swiss will think: "That's right, that's how they are, these foreigners. It's good that someone puts them in their place!" ... not to say: behind the borders. It is unlikely that poster viewers from the Helvetic motherland will get the idea that the call to be nice to everyone and to separate bottles could also be directed at them. Foreigners who regard Switzerland as their home will swallow blankly at the sight of the unspeakable posters: Do Swiss people seriously believe that all Kosovars are thugs, all blacks savages, all Germans rude? Are the mountains really that high? And who actually believes that posters can integrate? Shameful. The only thing that comforts me is a Butterröschti and a Rivella red.
