New York subway trains were covered in Nazi insignia to promote Amazon Prime’s The Man in the High Castle and commuters aren’t impressed
'I chose to sit on the Nazi insignia because I really didn’t want to stare at it,' said a commuter
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Given that Amazon’s new series The Man in the High Castle imagines a New York City in an alternative timeline in which the Nazis won World War II, some kind of mass viral campaign was inevitable, but you might have thought the streaming service would have the sense to stop short of emblazoning the city with Nazi symbols.
It didn’t go as far as swastikas, but benches in 42nd Street subway cars were covered in the Iron Cross associated with Nazi Germany, along with the Rising Sun emblem of Imperial Japan.
The show’s advertising campaign also includes subway station posters, and runs from 9 November through to 14 December.
Amazon of course must have expected (and perhaps hoped for) controversy, but people are questioning whether it should have been allowed to use such inflammatory imagery at all, especially in such a currently unstable world.
“Half the seats in my car had Nazi insignias inside an American flag, while the other half had the Japanese flag in a style like the World War II design,” a commuter told Gothamist. “So I had a choice, and I chose to sit on the Nazi insignia because I really didn’t want to stare at it.”
An MTA spokesperson defended the decision however, saying: The updated standards prohibit political advertisements. Unless you’re saying that you believe Amazon is advocating for a Nazi takeover of the United States, then it meets the standards. They’re advertising a show.”
On Tuesday it was reported that Amazon had to pull the advertisments to be removed, hours after Mayor Bill de Blasio called on the company to do so.
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