Word: asterix
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Delon and Gérard Depardieu as well as sports icons like soccer god Zinédine Zidane, basketball wizard Tony Parker and motor-racing legend Michael Schumacher. But the undisputed star of the show is the feisty, moustachioed comic strip hero upon whose adventures the movie is based: Asterix...
...Gallic national treasure, Asterix is revered and adored by the French far more than even Mickey Mouse is by Americans. Everyone knows that he lives in ancient Gaul, in a remote village on the Brittany coast surrounded - but never conquered - by the mighty Roman Empire. Asterix and his fellow Gauls were invented in 1959 when a new comic magazine, Pilote, commissioned René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo to create French characters able to resist the invasion of American comic strips...
Like the Romans before it, the empire of the Golden Arches has finally succumbed to the indomitable spirit of Asterix the Gaul. As of Wednesday, Ronald McDonald has been retired as the icon of McDonald's France, replaced by the Gallic nationalist comic-book hero. Ironies abound, of course, since Asterix had been something of an anti-Mcdonald's icon, appropriated by anti-globalization protestors such as Mac-basher Jose Bove to symbolize French resistance to foreign encroachment. Resentment of the perceived "McDonaldization" of their culture runs high in France - the influential daily Le Monde, for example, warns that Mcdonald...
...That may sound a little hysterical to the rest of the Mcworld, but spare a thought for those who actually have to market Big Macs to a population primed to view them as alien invaders out to ruin their sacred "alimentary behavior." Co-opting Asterix may simply have been a case of the judo of globalization - use your enemy's momentum against...
...protestors that take McDonald's to symbolize all that America stands for; the company's own marketers work to identify the brand with the tastes and cultural preferences of the target population. In France, that has meant deploying "ugly American" caricatures in its ads and substituting Asterix for Ronald McDonald. The general idea is to make the famously malcontented French youth (in their Levis and Nikes) feel comfortable stopping in for a Big Mac on their way home from an anti-American demonstration...