All ads are weird. Some are really weird. Then there’s Pepsi.
Fi l med c o mmercial advertisements have become very strange objects in the 21st century. Commercials are a medium that does not quite have a home anymore. Stand-alone advertising spots were originally developed to safeguard t elevision artists from having to personally flog soap and pills through product placement, heavyhanded introductions, or awkward interruptions in the action of teleplays. (“Before we fight, good Laertes, let me point out that the Queen’s refreshing cup of wine is brought to us by the craft and skill of the Gallo Brothers ... “)
Capitalism was handed lemons by the great writers of early TV, and it made lemonade. It had at least as much money to recruit creative talent as sitcom and soapopera producers did, and the 30- second commercial — competing, in a way, against actual content — started to acquire some of the characteristics of art. Well, you’ve all seen Mad Men.
It is the nature of media to become invisible, and the short filmed ad, invented to meet the needs of crude proto-TV, is now outlasting its purpose. Commercials j ust kind of ... materialize now. They can capture the world’s attention without ever appearing on any broadcast. They slide out of the creative birth canal onto YouTube, and then they are just out there, appealing to our curiosity on their own merits. They swim in the world independently: atavistic, bizarre, unattached, like a trilobite or a coelacanth.
The other feature of commercials that make them increasingly weird is that they make so little show, not even a vestigial or a superstitious one, of appealing to reason or taste. For decades advertising creators have started their careers knowing that even the most naive viewer is in on the game; that one brand of sugar water is no different from another in a provable or scientific way; that we all consciously buy things knowing we do not really need them. And so we end up with stuff like the Kendall Jenner Pepsi ad.
The ad, which has united the world in laughter, rage, and disbelief before Pepsi announced i t would discontinue it, was probably just designed to get me to say the word “Pepsi” and attract YouTube hits. Fine: I’ve got nothing against Pepsi. The spot depicts Miss Jenner doing a modelling shoot in a short silver dress when a street protest of some kind begins to file past the window. “What manner of rabble be this?” she seems to think as the non- specific many- hued protesters mysteriously fail to kick in the window and pelt her with garbage.
But a nod from a Cute Magic Asian Guy electrifies her, and, in a moment of superhero transformation, she doffs her blond Aryangoddess wig and joins the protest as a brunette. ( Real- ity TV viewers are perhaps meant to be thinking of Kendall Jenner as enticingly ethnic — mistakenly — because of her Armenian blended family.) She then shares a Pepsi with a uniformed policeman who looks kinda like Jake Gyllenhaal, and there is a collective orgasm of joy as the cop enjoys a cool, tasty drink. The protest has accomplished its goal, which may have been to poison the incautious Jake in order to avenge a police killing. One cannot be certain.
The commercial is being castigated by liberals and black civil rights groups for being a clueless, dismal act of appropriation. They suggest that the ad intends to refer subtly to recent news images of black anger over police brutality for self-serving commercial purposes — that Pepsi is co-opting an intense, ongoing racial struggle, and doing it with white actors in the leading parts, while making the predatory blood-fanged American state seem well-meaning and friendly at heart.
When people speak of “appropriation” I tend, for better or worse, to hear “impoliteness”: when someone is accused of appropriating a piece of culture, they have, most often, been thoughtless or stupid rather than guilty of intentional harm or insult. On that level I am not sure Pepsi has any defence. (Conservatives are not really defending the ad — they are mostly just cackling at the indignation and dismay it has caused.) Street protest in America has a way of oscillating between genuine, destructive racial strife and a polite form of amateur theatrics for the middle class. There exists a sort of historical temperature cycle, and Pepsi has, though corporate dorkiness, picked the wrong moment to err.
The ad did not really mean to hint that Pepsi will cure racial hostility in America if applied to the right throats. In a way, its message is much more profound and, to a hardcore leftist, objectionable. The company meant to associate its brand with spontaneity, courage, and expressive f reedom. Modelling is not very hard work, but the intended core message of the commercial was a statement about work. Specifically: “some things are more important than work; work is not the essence of a person’s existence.”
This is one of the oldest themes in the tool box of American advertising (“You deserve a break today”), because the U.S. and other capitalist countries traditionally make you work your heinie off to keep a roof over your head and have nice things. Americans who aren’t TV stars can’t really set aside their jobs on the spot to join a fun artsy- craftsy peace protest — especially if they are freelancers working on contract, as fashion models typically are. Who needs the Wagner Act or Obamacare, as long as the Pepsi is cold enough?