everything is OK
From the FEE daily brief:
Okay Airlines?! That name doesn't inspire confidence.
Reminds me of driving around the midwest twenty years ago and reading all the different state license plates. New York was, of course, the Empire State. New Jersey was the Garden State. I think DC had recently changed their licenses to read "A Capital City!" duh
The less popular states were adopting more self-promoting slogans. I can't remember any of them. (That's how successful they were!)
My favorite: "Oklahoma is OK"
Not great. Not even good. Just OK.
No, I get it. It's a pun. Their postal code is OK the way New York's is NY and Pennsylvania's is PA. It's not that I fail to see the humor, it's just that I'm surprised to see such self-deprecating humor from a state bureaucracy. Not exactly a promotional slogan, is it?
I just can't decide if it's deadpan humor -- not something Oklahomans are known for -- or if it's just dumb.
So a Chinese airline -- probably destined to become one of the 21st century's biggest -- is Okay. They're not the world's greatest airline; they're an Okay Airline. Again, is it ignorance of English? Is it anglophone self-deprecation? (Are all those hilariously mistranslated fortune cookie "fortunes" and instructions on chopstick wrappers actually evidence of highly self-aware humor?)
Here's a frightening third option. Maybe it's not ignorance, in which case the Chinese know what "Okay" means in English. And neither is it a joke at their own expense. Maybe, in fact, it's because they don't care what English-speaking customers think. Maybe they consider us irrelevant to the long term of the 21st-century economy.
Maybe "Okay Airlines" is a big middle finger proferred to us complacent, self-satisfied Anglo-American Westerners!
Private Airline to Start up in China
10/18/04
"China is to launch its first private airline -- named Okay Airways -- by the end of the year, according to state media reports." (BBC News, Monday)
China continues to develop, at least economically.
FEE Timely Classic
"China's Entrepreneurs: Keeping the Faith after Tiananmen" by Sheila Melvin
Okay Airlines?! That name doesn't inspire confidence.
Reminds me of driving around the midwest twenty years ago and reading all the different state license plates. New York was, of course, the Empire State. New Jersey was the Garden State. I think DC had recently changed their licenses to read "A Capital City!" duh
The less popular states were adopting more self-promoting slogans. I can't remember any of them. (That's how successful they were!)
My favorite: "Oklahoma is OK"
Not great. Not even good. Just OK.
No, I get it. It's a pun. Their postal code is OK the way New York's is NY and Pennsylvania's is PA. It's not that I fail to see the humor, it's just that I'm surprised to see such self-deprecating humor from a state bureaucracy. Not exactly a promotional slogan, is it?
I just can't decide if it's deadpan humor -- not something Oklahomans are known for -- or if it's just dumb.
So a Chinese airline -- probably destined to become one of the 21st century's biggest -- is Okay. They're not the world's greatest airline; they're an Okay Airline. Again, is it ignorance of English? Is it anglophone self-deprecation? (Are all those hilariously mistranslated fortune cookie "fortunes" and instructions on chopstick wrappers actually evidence of highly self-aware humor?)
Here's a frightening third option. Maybe it's not ignorance, in which case the Chinese know what "Okay" means in English. And neither is it a joke at their own expense. Maybe, in fact, it's because they don't care what English-speaking customers think. Maybe they consider us irrelevant to the long term of the 21st-century economy.
Maybe "Okay Airlines" is a big middle finger proferred to us complacent, self-satisfied Anglo-American Westerners!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home