Crest Whitestrips’s current TV commercial warns us: “If
you’re not whitening, you’re yellowing!” Well, this scare tactic ad reminded me
of the title given to one of the most notorious villains in fiction: “The Yellow
Peril”. Well, that title was of course bestowed upon Fu Manchu, the Chinese
super villain of English fiction. Well, that title might seem a bit racist
nowadays to apply to a person (it is, actually: Fu Manchu was a Chinese bugaboo
for Brits in novels from 1913 through 1959: not the most racially sensitive of
times. But I didn’t come up with it as his title, so please don’t blame me for
it; I’m only suggesting it as a joke for a Crest Whitestrips ad.), but it could
very appropriately be applied to a Crest Whitestrips (joke) ad, since these ads
definitely proselytize for white supremacy as it applies to tooth color. In
fact, they are so insistent upon white teeth being superior, and the whiter the
better, it practically invites a skewering of this nature.
So here’s how this (joke) ad would work: Fu Manchu would
kidnap Nayland Smith (his heroic British nemesis) and some beautiful
aristocratic British woman, and he would threaten them with a fate worse than
death: turning their teeth yellow (!!). So here the term “The Yellow Peril”
would not apply to Fu Manchu, but rather to the threatening things he uses
against his victim’s tooth color: for example, Fu Manchu would make them drink
coffee, smoke cigarettes, and eat blueberry pie and curried dishes, all of which
reportedly cause yellow teeth; and it is these things that are referred to as
“The Yellow Peril” in this scenario (or the teeth’s exposure to things that
cause yellowing).
So we would see Fu Manchu’s lair, and we would see Nayland
Smith and the beautiful aristocrat heroine of the piece tied up and with
something tied over their eyes and mouths. So they would be untied, and Fu
Manchu would welcome them to his lair, and offer them some coffee, tea,
blueberry pie, cigarettes, etc. So they would accept and begin to indulge in
this stuff, and Nayland Smith would ask what part they are to play in Fu
Manchu’s fiendish plans, and what he intends to do to them. So Fu Manchu says:
“Nothing that I haven’t already done!
Mwa ha ha!” So Nayland Smith says: “You’ve poisoned the food, you fiend!” And
Fu says: “Worse than that for you, my friend! I have tricked you yourself into
exposing your precious white teeth to… The Yellow Peril! And soon I will have destroyed your accursed white
teeth!” (Fu Manchu was always trying to destroy “the accursed white race” in
movies.) So the woman screams: “My God, No! You wouldn’t… You, couldn’t!” And
they look into a large mirror Fu Manchu’s henchmen bring over, and they see
their teeth have become bright yellow. They scream, and Nayland threatens
revenge, as Fu Manchu laughs maniacally in triumph.
Then the announcer says: “Are your teeth threatened by ‘The
Yellow Peril’ of coffee, tea, tobacco, blueberry, and curry stains, and other
yellowing foods and drinks? Yellow may be the color of fear, but with Crest
Whitestrips, regardless of the threat to your teeth, yellow will not be the
color of your teeth! No matter what yellow peril threatens your teeth, Crest
Whitestrips will defeat it!” Then Nayland Smith is rescued by the British Army,
and the commander gives Nayland Smith some Crest Whitestrips to clean his
teeth, and Nayland Smith says: “Thanks! That’s mighty white of you!”
(<That’s an old expression from around the same time period of the Fu Manchu
novels that I believe also has a bit of racism infused in it. I just think that
with all this insistence on tooth white supremacy from Crest Whitestrips ads,
it’s fun to make fun of them with old pulp fiction tropes like this.) Then the
announcer says: “Crest Whitestrips: It’s mighty white for you!”
Then further ads in this Fu Manchu campaign (all filmed as
period pieces) could show stuff like in the 1960s Fu Manchu movies with Christopher Lee, where Fu Manchu is
plotting some evil master plan against the United Kingdom. So in this one, Fu
Manchu is secretly adding something to the water supply to turn everyone’s
teeth yellow, so he can demoralize the Brits and conquer the world! Oh, but the
British government simply sends out rations of Crest Whitestrips to the
populace, and they use them and remove the yellow stains, and once again, Fu
Manchu and the “yellow peril” of tooth yellowing he threatened everyone’s teeth with are defeated!
(Hooray!)
And so Fu Manchu could become a surrogate “Spotmaker” for
teeth yellowing, as in the old Calgonite commercials from my childhood.
Calgonite, by the way, was some kind of dishwasher soap, and here’s the ad with
the Spotmaker everyone who has ever seen it will never forget (Maybe there
should be a movie series about the Spotmaker, and how he threatens everyone’s
dishes and stuff: he could fight some Batman rip-off hero who shoots Calgonite
at him out of supersoakers {since he looks like the Riddler}):
