I hate to get involved in the Culture Wars, except while in my own home where my husband and I like to mercilessly berate anyone whose views differ from ours and are therefore wrong, but it's late, and my sound judgement is maybe a little off kilter, and I'm just going to say this:
If anyone I know complains on Facebook about the SuperBowl Coca-Cola ad, I will de-friend them.
Yeah, it's maybe a little extreme, and I'm probably going to regret saying that in the morning, and in the end, I'll probably only remove you from my feed as opposed to full-fledged de-friending (maybe), but at this moment, when I'm feeling a little keto-woozey on my half-dram of Glenlivet, I am utterly disgusted with certain Americans right now. America the Beautiful? It is, but it's also made up of a lot of seriously un-beautiful jackasses.
"America the Beautiful" was sung multi-lingually in a Coke ad. It was a nice ad. It was ethnocentric (no, really, America, it was. It was America-worship.), but it was nice. Lots of people singing in their first languages. I heard some Spanish, some French, some German, was that some Arabic? and lots of other languages I'm not educated enough to recognize. It started and ended in English, of course. Me and my family, while watching the SuperBowl, joked that people were going to get all riled up, 'Murica-style about it, but we were only kidding. When Scott told me it really had caused a controversy, I thought he was messing with me. He sent me a link; I assumed it was a hoax site.
But no, really. People are ACTUALLY mad that Coke sang an American song in - gasp - a different language! You mean, all Americans don't speak American? Send those immigrants home!
Oh wait.
Seriously. I shouldn't even have to explain what is wrong with that line of thinking. There is so much wrong with it. I'm going to assume no one needs me to go into all the levels of wrong and stupid this is.
Because if you have a problem with this ad, you are not only an idiot, but you are an idiot. Yeah, I did that on purpose, because there is no other term for the idiocy that these racist Americans are spewing all over the internet. I have no respect for racists. I have some respect sometimes for idiots who can't help being idiots, but not for racist idiots.
MID-STREAM DISCLAIMER: Scott hates when I blog stuff like this. Sorry, honey, blame the whisky. Scott is not affiliated in any way with his wife. Except through marriage but that's different.
Apparently, part of the controversy is that they sang that particular song. Like it's a particularly English-only song. Either people are enraged because it's an American song sung by - gasp - bilingual Americans, or they think it's the national anthem. (To which I ask, why would that matter anyway? And also, it's not.) Is there something unpatriotic about languages that aren't English? Psst. Here's a bit of trivia for you. English isn't our language anyway. We stole it from, you know, England. Unless you are Native American, your own ancestors spoke a different language too upon arriving on this soil (unless they were from, you know, England). Come to think of it, if you ARE Native American, your ancestors also spoke a different language before the Europeans - some of them even spoke English - forced them off their own land and nearly annihilated their entire population with guns and disease.
Anyway, my diatribe is coming to an end. I've just run out of irritated steam. If you haven't seen the ad, here it is, in all it's linguistic glory.
***Now go read this to see what real-live Americans have to say about it.
Speak English!: Racist Revolt as Coca-Cola Airs Multilingual 'America the Beautiful' SuperBowl Ad
Alison and I totally get you on this.
ReplyDeleteWhen you live outside the US for a while, and especially when you marry a "fernor" your whole perspective about the "good ole' US of A becomes much less parochial.
The only other bigots in the world that may exceed the our ingrained redneck US bigotry are the FRENCH.....;o)
ReplyDeleteMy husband had reported that such sentiments had been showing up in his FB newsfeed. I did a pretty thorough scan on mine and didn't find any. Which is particularly reassuring, I think, given the demographic of my friends, who are mostly evangelical Christians and probably Republicans. Who'd've thunk it? I do confess that during that ad the thought crossed my mind that some of the scenery looked rather foreign, and I wondered if we were truly viewing America. But then I forgot abut it.
ReplyDeleteI would like this advert a whole lot more if it wasn't an advert for cancer causing coca~cola. But still a lovely advert to represent a diverse country.
ReplyDeleteDebbie, I think you hit the nail on the head! At the end of the day, the company is selling a product, and they were playing on emotions to do it! Did they realize it would cause such a backlash? Maybe. Is it promoting their label? You bet.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, people aren't upset about their emotions being played upon, or about the product itself. That would be a valid argument. Instead people are finding fault with the wrong thing - the diversity angle. People just showing their racism and xenophobia, and they don't even realize how humiliating they are to the rest of the continent.