Sure, why the hell not. Like Frank Yi said they copied his way.
I mean the publicly listed Chinese fashion sportswear company, Xtep, whose recent commercials during the Olympics caught my attention because of the music used. The song is called “It’s My Way” and it doesn’t take a New Jersey-born fan of 1980s hair rock to know that the song is a rip off of Bon Jovi’s “It’s My Life”…I don’t know who the singer of the song is, but you can tell that they are going for the same kind of vocal style as well.
The commercial features some of the hottest youth stars from Taiwan and Hong Kong, including Nicholas Tse, the Twins, Jolin Tsai, and Wilber Pan, most of whom I thoroughly detest. From what I can tell on the commercial, their shoes look like shite too, but nonetheless, they are still a fairly big player in the China sportswear market, where they are still behind Anta and the now household name of Li Ning. And apparently they are also part of the Carlyle Group’s portfolio, which given the affiliations behind that group make me incredibly cynical about the world and reinforce an outlook which could be summarized thus: some shit capitalists are out there making shitty derivative products, and yet there are some powerful and elitist capitalists out there making sure that the former succeed for their mutual benefit.
Here’s a vid of the commercial, this one meant for the Olympics in particular:
and here’s the whole song:
A couple of thoughts on that commercial: firstly, it always get my goad when Taiwan and Hong Kong stars shil for mainland based products, just because if you are famous and from those parts of nominally free China, I somehow feel you ought to shil for some better brand–I mean what does it say about you that these shoes cost 150-300 RMB? On the other hand, I know that they’d never be remotely considered for brands like Nike and Adidas, who go for the real top-flight athletes. In that sense, Xtep is smart because they go for the youth demographic, for the fashion sportswear market, sell the image, sell the lifestyle. It’s not and has not been about the specs of the shoes for a long time.
It’s also ironic because the commercials plays on those common Olympic tropes of “1.3 billion people’s dreams and hopes”, which nauseates me to no end, and again, makes me wonder why Taiwanese and HKese stars would go for that. Oh yeah, maybe they are proud of the Olympics, and maybe they are getting paid a fuckload of money. Oh well Peijin, hold your nose and look the other way.
Last thought on this is the Wilbur Pan’s role in the commercial, where he plays the role of a street basketball player—that cheesy layup at the end and his knife across the neck motion—it’s like he’s some bad-boy gangsta baller, but I bet he’s a weakling on the actual basketball court. I doubt he really plays in the streets of anywhere, not even Taipei, where, if you know where to go, there are some ballers wid skeels. Wilbur is basically a pretty boy that likes to appropriate the tropes of hip-hop and b-boy culture to sell his image, which he can then parlay into record sales and concerts, sportswear and soda commercials. There is no need for him to be anything other than what he is. It’s one unified image, and all he’s selling are the various products that help him realize his lifestyle, one which, provided you outfit yourself with the same shit, you can have too.
Unfortunately, that’s another aspect of greater Chinese pop culture that I detest too—and I know that there’s no point in crying about the commercialization of hip-hope or black culture, that’s been the status quo for years and it’s not going to change. It’s just that to me, it’s even more meaningless when it comes from Chinese people. I know pop culture has an easy, lowest common denominator type universality to it, but somehow there’s a very atavistic and inchoate impulse towards Chinese purity that I cannot quite explain. It’s not that everything has to be traditional, it’s more that I was hoping that one day even in the realm of popular culture and lowbrow consumerism, Chinese people might do something that at least strikes people as having one or more iotas of originality.
Li Ning vs. Nike and Adidas, Lenovo vs. Apple, Baidu vs. Google—the west has a head-start and a superior advantage. Mimicry is a form of flattery. I talk of inspiration and originality, while these Chinese brands are locked in a fierce to the death battle for every percentage point of market share they can get.
Not sure what to think from here. Maybe better solution would be to put on some Bon Jovi, which always reliable source of low dosage escapism: