Screw Christmas and birthdays — my favourite day of the year is when the annual lamb ad comes out.
‘Will this year’s feature lambassador and Australian treasure Sam Kekovich?’ I ponder on lonely late nights in bed.
‘Will the vegetarians and vegans come out throwing flames of wild fury and try to have it banned?’ I muse.
Oh, the anticipation is always rife.
And people, I can officially say this year’s ‘Love our Lamb’ ad delivered. Boy oh boy, even in the absence of Sam Kekovich it BLOODY DELIVERED.
Why? Because it starts with Luke Jacobz (the dude who was on Home and Away like, uh, five years ago) saying, "I'm here to address concerns that too many perky white males are contributing to a lack of diversity on our screens."
From there, Luke Jacobz-with-a-Z transforms into an Indian-Australian actor by the name of Arka Das, and things get about a kabillion times weirder/more amazing from there.
Here are some of the glorious quotes:
- "Hey, let's not be space-ists."
- "We've got all the 'stans. Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and... this guy... Stan.
- "We've got our white-whites, translucent whites, beige whites, red whites, and our dark whites who are darker than the light-dark guys."
This ad literally accounts for every human in the human race... unless they happen to be vegetarian. (You can only ask so much from an ad about meat, ya know?)
But the absolute best moment was when Arka Das picked up the barbecue tongs and asked the long line of Australians, "Right, who was here first?".
Because guess who responded? The Indigenous couple.
GOD BLESS THE LAMB ADS AND THEIR BLOODY ON POINT SOCIAL COMMENTARY.
Top Comments
Do you not see how the deep rooted racism in your culture make this TVC so repulsive? BTW I'm a big fan of lamb and diversity.
Yes. There is horrendous, deep rooted racism in Australia. I would not say it is in our culture, because people in my culture find the history of this country shameful, and the racism doesn't just affect our indigenous rightful landowners. We had a 'white Australia' policy until not too long ago. And obviously our elitist, predominantly white male privileged government still very much values whites over any other group of Australians. And this commercial makes that very clear. Who knows? Maybe putting this in the populations face in a lighthearted way, rather than the refugee propaganda that is spewed out to the public could actually open people's minds just a little bit. Personally, I love this ad. Being quiet and polite about our racist leaders certainly hasn't helped any!
I like how the white guy at the end just basks in the sunlight while he waits for one of the minorities to bring him some chops.