If the image on the right was the only time you’d ever seen a young woman next to a cop, then the ad might seem like a reference to that?
If you’ve attended dozens (or hundreds) or protests, then you’ve seen scenes like this every time, except usually with shouting at the cops instead of handing them soda.
But one is a famous image.
They don’t seem related to me.
Well therein lies the rub - different imagery means different things to different people.
I’d agree that images on the left are more common, less famous, but more common. And there are even examples of people trying to be cool with cops, giving them water, or trying to have a positive interaction. They make good memes too.
Question, have you attended protests, or were you using the royal you?
Quite a few. Am I being set up for some kind of rhetorical judo?
No no, I am just curious then, you commented on the comparison of the images, I wondered what your opinion of the ad was. It seem you are the demographic they are chasing after.
Pepsi already knows they have me hooked on the Dew. They could have commercials of people killing baby dolphins and I’d be like, “That’s a damn shame.” -slurp-
It seems more like we are supposed to identify with the cop.
He’s the one drinking the soda, isn’t he?
I’ll have to watch it again.
That’s the problem with trying to use the concept of “protest” to market a neutral product. Not taking a side is still taking a side. Or more eloquently:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
― Desmond Tutu
Either way, it’s recuperation. Not a good thing.
(like that lady who refused to relinquish her bus seat).
I’m guessing you know that is not how it happened but for the others…that narrative of Rosa Parks diminishes her great achievement.
She and Raymond had thought the NAACP was too elitist and cautious, but after learning a friend was involved she went to her first meeting in December, 1943. She was the only woman there, was asked to take notes, and was elected group Secretary that day, a position she’d hold for the next 12 years. As secretary, she recorded countless cases of unfair treatment, brutality, sexual violence, and lynchings, absorbing the pain of her community.
…
Mrs. Parks attended NAACP events in Jacksonville, Atlanta, and Washington D.C. where she received leadership training legendary organizer Ella Baker, the NAACP’s Director of Branches
…
Then on Thursday afternoon December 1, 1955, Mrs. Rosa Parks, the Assistant Tailor at Montgomery Fair Department Store, was asked to give her seat up to a white person on her ride home from work. She refused to give up her seat and was arrested. The same bus driver, James Blake, had thrown Mrs. Parks off his bus in 1943 for refusing to move. She said “I had felt for a long time that if I was ever told to get up so a white person could sit, that I would refuse to do so.”
and in closing
Psst…this song was coopted by the Neville Brothers but was actually written by Cyril Neville, the cool one on the Bongo drums, for his band. He hand many politically active themed songs praising powerful women.
i’ve worked in design and with advertising agencies too long, because i can totally see why they thought this was a good idea, and even though i also can see how it could be viewed as a tone deaf misfire, i also don’t think it has warranted all the scorn it’s been getting. it’s just a bland ad, trying to walk the razor-fine line between selling sugar water to millennials and referencing contemporary subject matter people will care about, and failing. i personally appreciate how they really tried to make it feel inclusive of various groups, for one thing. i also don’t think they intended to imply that a pepsi could solve all the world’s problems – only that in the end, we’re all human, and that sometimes we all enjoy a delicious cool drink, and isn’t that a place to start recognizing that common humanity? i could get behind that.
Now’s a good time to remember this little ditty.
Poor sentence construction on my part I guess. By “like that lady” I meant “conscious participants” not “people who…are simply jumping in” as Pepsi would have you believe.
It’s ok. I went to her museum in Montgomery a few years back. I feel the common story makes it seem like she was an accidental participant in history. She took tremendous personal risks to secure equality for women who were violently beaten and raped by the Montgomery bus drivers. She was a special woman.
I don’t imagine one “millennial” was actively a decision-maker in this ad campaign, and boy fucking howdy does it show. Even if you set to one side the appropriation of legitimate protest in the Trojan Horse of branding (and there’s no real reason to set that aside), you have, at best, an ad that is very much…
http://www.reactiongifs.us/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/fellow_kids_steve_buscemi1.gif
I used to think that. Now I think the opposite. The very nature of the careful planning that went into her protest is really the most important part of the story. The rewriting of history to make it seem like she was just one lone woman who stood her ground is counter-productive to acheiving social progress.
Actual progress takes real work, long hard hours, months and years of sacrifice for marginal gains and often complete setbacks until that one moment when everything aligns and real enduring progress happens. That final step can not happen without all the invisible work that comes before.
The myth of Rosa Parks as one woman who took on the system de-emphasizes all the coordinated effort. I think its another example of the ayn rand uberman / “rugged individualist” vision of life wrecking destruction on progressive activism. The whole story of Rosa Parks is a much better story because it is a blueprint for successful activism. It should be taught to everyone learning about Rosa Parks starting in grade school so that more people will understand how it works in the real world.
I thought the message was that we should all be overjoyed at the prospect of getting shot at by a militarized police force. So excited that we just can’t help but high-five and dance around at the thought of getting blasted by water cannons or tear gas canisters. And it’s so much fun, we should welcome it even if we’re not doing anything wrong, just having a conversation.
It would have been a little stronger if there was some shooting and if they’d had one of the urban assault vehicles roll into the crowd of gleeful protestors. Maybe have the water cannons result in an impromptu wet t-shirt contest while the people shot with beanbags picked them up and acted giddy about having gotten a souvenir.
I agree. Exactly. The “she was tired and didn’t want to give up her seat” trope diminishes that she was a committed activist. She knew the laws. She took personal risk to press forward with the lawsuit. She had the support of Dr. King and the network of activists who came together and built a WHOLE SEPARATE FREAKIN’ BUS SYSTEM overnight using some really huge ass station wagons that people all over the country donated to King’s church. They were organized. They were motivated. She was at the center of it, but she was not alone.
