Lidl: the backlash

[asthfghl]

Notice something wrong on these pictures? Well yeah, duh! A famous church in Santorini, Greece, was used to advertise a Greek cheese product in one of the Lidl stores (a German chain). Except, the most prominent feature of that landmark (beside the blue roof) was removed:

Lidl airbrushes Christian cross from church pictured on its Greek food range because the supermarket chain 'does not wish to exclude any religious beliefs'

Well, guess what. You've done just that - excluded a religious belief. And I'm saying it as non-believer. Savor the irony.

There was indeed a huge backlash (mostly around the social networks) about this picture. Lidl even had to come up with an official apology for screwing up on this one. People were shocked, shocked I tell you! Selling Greek products while trying to remove an important part of the Greek identity from sight. People have called for boycott. And probably rightly so. Why?

Because it's one thing to be sensitive to religious and ethnic identities, be inclusive, tolerant, etc. But it's quite another to bend over backwards and scrap one identity for another, for the sake of pandering to a particular customer segment. This is just business, some would say. You're free to go buy crappy food elsewhere. Sure thing, Ahmed! (HA!) And that's exactly what people are doing here. Voting with their feet. And with their wallets. You wanted to appear super-tolerant and super-inclusive, and attract a few Muslim customers? (Hey, Lidl may claim they don't want to offend anyone so they prefer to remove all religious symbols from their shelves, but how do you explain the fact that their German and Dutch stores have entire sections dedicated to Halal food!?) I guess you were prepared for the backlash from non-Muslim customers, then! Being inclusive through exclusion - how does that work, Ahmed?

Removing the cross from a Greek landmark is NOT an act of religious neutrality. It's an act of cowardice. It's removing the very identity of that landmark, the part that makes it Greek. The cross is probably 80% of the "Greekness" in that Greek landmark, like the crescent is 80% of what makes a Saudi, Saudi. And to use Photoshop to delete this, and hope no one notices? Wow. You've got to have balls for that much cowardice (amazing, huh?)

That's cultural castration, sorry to say it. It's multicultural idiotism. It's PC schizophrenia. And no, this isn't just about some food store, or just about a business, one of many. It's a symptom of a much wider phenomenon. The same one forcing German mayors to look their own constituents in the face and advise them to avoid walking near certain areas of town while wearing short skirts from now on, lest they offend the refugees residing there.

I'm all for cultural inclusiveness. But this is not right. It just isn't.

Comments

[johnny9fingers]

The tone argument, as you put it, is part of context. Just another variable. However the tone argument doesn't invalidate any other of the OP's points, but it is unfortunate.

[kiaa]

You'll forgive me if I don't believe our pal here who "called out" the OP for using a word when they're applying "context" here - it's them who have demonstrably ignored the context of Lidl's actions in the first place. They present the case as if it had nothing to do with appeasing Muslims, which is ignoring the context of Europe's problems with Muslim cultural assertiveness. So yeah, context.

Can we move away and beyond the tone argument now?

[fridi]

Where's the fun in that.

[johnny9fingers]

More than happy too. I mean it doesn't take a soothsayer of penetrating insight to guess at my position on cultural vandalism and wilful misrepresentation.

Greek Orthodox architecture ain't one of my areas of expertise (though I have a general interest in cathedral church architecture in Europe) but it seems wrong to use a picture of a Greek church to illustrate "Greekness" or Greek culture, and then to remove the religious symbols from the church, which are also integral to the building itself and the reason for the building's existence.
It reminds me of airbrushed models providing impossible body shapes for women to aspire to. A sort of fake unearned perfection. Whereas this is a fake representation of Greekness made anodyne to agree with some marketing person's idea of what will sell more.

Still, Advertising and PR Agencies. Bell Pottinger? We do exactly the same as uncle Vlad. It's just we've monetised it better. [Throws up slightly in mouth.]

[kiaa]

Indeed, it doesn't take an expert in Greek Orthodox architecture to realize how dumb it is to take a church or cathedral of national importance to a certain culture, strip it of its religious symbols, and present that as a specimen of said culture (the Greek one, in this case). That's just insanely stupid, not to mention how offensive, insensitive, and outright cowardly it is. And mind you, I don't care about Orthodox Christianity or any other form of Christianity very much (I do like Greek beaches and gyros, though). It's just absolutely absurd. I don't care if they wanted to pander to Muslims in particular (which they likely did), or if they were genuinely trying to be religiously neutral (which their treatment of Halal demonstrates they likely weren't) - they've done more damage than good. Both to their brand and to cultural harmony in the community they serve.

[mahnmut]

On the other hand, if the use of "Ahmed" is the only problem some may be having with the post, then the post must have been near perfect. ;-)

[nairiporter]

Always the optimist.