I will grant an exemption from one assignment (either Sept 23, Sept 30 or Oct 2) to the first person who will detect a blatant "racist" stereotype on this page.
http://kitchenette.jezebel.com/a-restaurant-is-deliberately-trying-to-be-the-worst-rev-1636532498/+Ubertrout
I will also give a bonus (to be determined later) to all the students who will add their comment after the discovery.
I believe the comment made about mentioning that Yelp is being compared to a 1930's mafia business model. Yelp is being compared to the mafia because they extort restaurants for money.
ReplyDeleteOK but you must be specific, enter the quote, tell us where it appears. What is the tone?
ReplyDeleteTranslation: "You're totally fucking with our 1930's mafia business model and revealing our website for the joke it actually is. It was stated more towards the end of the article. The tone was much more blunt and straightforward. The writer of the article wanted to put his opinion in on what actually was being said there
ReplyDeleteIn one of the reviews, a reviewer called the restaurant owners "Mafia capos" and goes on about how they performed other stereotypical Mafia acts to the Yelp staff, like goons and severed horse heads. I believe the tone is humor but it is a dry humor or satirical humor. The reviewer was attempting to ridicule the Yelp staff and was not actually aiming the comment towards the owners of Botto Bistro.
ReplyDeleteThere were actually a number of sterotypes in this article. One being in the section on the dumbest questions ever asked. It came across as if the customer thinks the chef is dumb and goes back and forth with him on a complete out of the world answer. Which led to a comment on gays which can be taken in the wrong way. It makes it look like Italians are homophobic which most are not. The Yelp fiasco took me back to the "Black Hand" the restaurant was bribing customers in order to make profit. Yelp on the other hand acts like a crime boss that will take your business down if your doing well. What I took out of this was the author of the article was writing about an Italian restaurant and immediately went to the mob references. Makes your wonder would there be references to terrorisms if the article was on a Afghani restaurant?
ReplyDeleteI think this all goes back to the stereotype that all Italian restaurants are in some ways connected to the mafia or some organized crime element. The word extort goes back the old Black Hand way or making money and how one of the mafia's biggest money makers was extortion. I think that's how it was racist with this article. If it was a different restaurant maybe a different word would have been used.
ReplyDeleteMore than one thing in the article struck me as racist. One of comments by Chris O caught my attention where he called the owners “Mafia Capos” and then continues to stereotype them by saying they left the “severed heads” of two horses for the Yelp people as intimidation which hits me as a black hand reference. Another example I found was from the actual website writing the article which also brought in the mafia saying they were messing with Yelp’s “1930's mafia business”. I just felt that if this article wasn’t about an Italian owned restaurant they would have never brought in the mafia.
ReplyDeleteThe blatant racist stereotype represented in this article is the idea that all Italian chefs are linked with the Mafia. Chris O. comments refer to the men at the restaurant as being "two mafia capos" and "the severed heads of two or three horses have been left in the beds of the Yelp honchos." Comments like this feed into the notion that if the people at this restaurant are not happy with Yelp, they can only go about in the most italian way possible and that's through "1930's mafia" attitudes and anger.
ReplyDeleteI know this is an Italian class and all but the comment where Beau G. ordered a double cheese bean burrito and they told him it wasn't a Mexican Restaurant was racist as well.
ReplyDelete