Addressing the most pressing marketing issue of our time: Was the wife in that old Calgon commercial actually a feminist icon?

I've been thinking recently about a commercial that first aired in the early 1970s and ran for years without incident, and then collectively we found it a little off-putting (or worse), but now it’s time for a re-consideration.

I am, of course, talking about Calgon’s Ancient Chinese Secret ad:

https://youtu.be/1fBDaJi0TbI

If you haven’t seen that ad (because you’re younger than 47) and you’re too lazy to watch it (can’t blame ya), here’s the short version:

A woman walks into a full-service laundromat and has this conversation with the proprietor:

Woman customer: How do you get your shirts so clean, Mr. Lee?

Mr. Lee: Shhhhh, ancient Chinese secret.

Mr. Lee’s unnamed wife: My husband, some hotshot…here’s his ancient Chinese secret: Calgon.

Voiceover: [Some blah blah blah about how great Calgon is.]

Mr. Lee’s unnamed wife: [Waving a box of Calgon in front of the customer] We need more Calgon.

Woman customer: [mind blown] Ancient Chinese secret, huh?

So I think that in the 1970s this ad likely wasn’t notable at all. The idea that Chinese Americans owned laundromats was rooted in some truth (Chinese Americans DID own many of the laundries, especially on the West Coast, for historical reasons that we can discuss some time when we’re hanging out together in person). Also in the 1970s, nobody cared about anybody’s feelings, viz. their ethnicity (or, really, anything else.)

Then people started to question the whole premise of the ad, with its Chinese laundry and its ancient Chinese secret - it kinda felt gross, and the commercial became lost in the dustbin of culturally inappropriate stuff we used to think wasn’t inappropriate.

But when I went back to watch it a little while ago I was struck by something:

It’s actually about undermining cultural stereotypes and empowering minority groups to use those stereotypes to their own advantage, and also about feminism.

No, really. (Possibly?)

That white woman (let’s call her Karen) walks into the laundry, and I think it’s debatable whether she’s asking Mr. Lee about his laundry prowess because she’s happy with how her clothes turn out or if she’s asking about his laundry prowess because she thinks, “all Chinese people know how to wash clothing.” Like if someone came up to me and said, “Mr. Blank, how did you get so good with money? And also, why is your nose so big?” I mean, maybe I AM good with money and have a big nose, but also maybe that’s not why they’re asking.

Mr. Lee senses an opportunity to keep Karen’s business forever - after all, if the secret to clean clothing is only something Chinese people know, she’s never going to take her filthy clothes and wash them herself. So he makes up some shit about an ancient Chinese secret, and waits to see if she believes him.

And she does! Because maybe she was just a little bit racist in the first place, and she actually DOES assume that all Chinese people learned some secret about how to wash her filthy garments.

Karen’s perfectly satisfied with that explanation. She was ready to take her pile of shmatas, made clean by a 1,500 year old secret from China, and go home.

But no - and this is the real mystery of this commercial:

Why does Mrs. Lee go and ruin the secret? Why does she tell Karen that there’s no secret at all, and that if she just goes and buys some Calgon she, too, can have her clothes equally clean without paying the Lees’ markup?

I’m sure you’ve been wondering this too. (In addition to wondering why I’m writing 1,500 words on a 50 year old commercial…I’m also wondering that).

And I think the answer is in the phrase, “some hotshot.”

She definitely thinks Mr. Lee is flirting with Karen. Maybe this has been an issue in their marriage. I don’t know. Maybe he did hook up with one of their customers, and he used that line about the ancient Chinese secret to lure her into bed. Clearly Mrs. Lee has heard all this nonsense before.

So she has a choice to make - do I support my husband’s desire to make this racist woman think that Chinese people have some special talent for washing towels, or do I undermine him and block any chance he has at, to coin a phrase here, “hand-washing her delicates.” (Or whatever.)

The real story here is that the only character in this three-hander who has a name is Mr. Lee! We never actually hear the names of “Karen” and “Mrs. Lee” - they’re merely pawns in his grand plan to use his ethnicity to bed local white women (white like her sheets after being washed with Calgon!) while keeping his wife in the back room, where she’s not even allowed to go out and buy more detergent without running it by him first.

Mrs. Lee has decided she’s had enough - she’s putting a stop to all this nonsense. She tells Karen that there’s no secret. And if you watch that commercial, Karen is PISSED about this. She really wanted there to be an ancient Chinese secret.

But there was no ancient Chinese secret.

Well, there was, except the secret was that no Chinese wife is going to put up with philandering from her hotshot husband and she doesn’t care if she destroys the entire business to make that happen. Good for you, Mrs. Lee!

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