The Hmong Hilltribe: Whopper Virgins
Posted on December 15, 2008
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The new Whopper Virgins advertising campaign from Burger King features the Hmong, one of Thailand’s many hilltribes, but manages to completely ignore their rich culture and history.
It seems the only thing they are interested in learning about the Hmong is do they prefer a Whopper or a Big Mac?
The concept behind Whopper Virgins is to conduct taste tests with people who have no preconceived opinion on the subject – by finding people who have never even heard of a hamburger before. It has already come in for plenty of criticism, having been described as insensitive and trying to impose American culture on the rest of the world.
Watching Romanian peasants trying to work out how to eat a burger is fun to a point. But, Burger King’s documentary pays little more than lip service to the idea that these people have their own culture, traditions and yes, food. For instance, the Hmong are the second largest of Thailand’s hilltribes, and were the last to arrive, migrating into the Golden Triangle area in the 1950s & 1960s, escaping civil war in Laos.
However, the documentary does have some nice shots of the American filmcrew eating Thai curry, but apparently the Eskimos still prefers seal meat to a whopper!
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