Tuesday, April 4, 2017

Pop go the world's problems



So, here's that Pepsi Max ad that made lots of people angry.

Why? Because it seems to imply that the problems of police violence, especially against people of colour, can be solved by a member of the Jenner/Kardashian clan with a cold beverage:






What a different time we live in than 46 years ago, when Coca-Cola quite successfully co-opted the hippie zeitgeist at its very end:


What's different?

Imagine if Coke's iconic "Hilltop"ad,  instead of showing a bunch of people singing on a hill (like in The Sound Of Music) instead showed them facing down armed National Guardsmen (like at Kent State in 1970):


Instead of killing four students and wounding nine, in this Coke ad in an alternative 1971, the Ohio National Guardsmen are stopped by a cold beverage. How would the friends and families of the dead and wounded students have felt about the trivialization of their tragedy?

That, I understand, is how many racialized people feel about this week's Pepsi ad in the context of Black Lives Matter.


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