The Super Bowl is a wonderful and strange spectacle that blends the right mix of sporting flare and commercialized hyperbole. It is a truly American event because it is fun with an agenda. Laugh, eat, but please buy this, too. Sure we watch the game, but most tune in to see talking babies flack for a financial services firm in a quickly forgotten commercial or another boob slip. Those in the latter category were sorely disappointed as all they saw was a bunch of shirtless 50-year-old men jam with a shiny-jacketed Bruno Mars.
Unfortunately, many fans took their opinions to social media after Coca-Cola’s “It’s Beautiful” ad was broadcast to the 100 million-plus people watching the game. The ad was simple enough: a diverse group of Americans singing “America the Beautiful” in eight different languages. One portion showed a man with a cowboy hat riding his white horse across a beautiful western expanse.
It looked like a scene ripped out of one of those HD default channels that you watch for about five minutes in order to validate your purchase and shore up your already dwindling self-esteem. Just me? Oh, well another section displayed a family watching a movie at a theater – typical Americana. And yet another part of the advertisement showed a gay couple teaching their daughter how to ice skate.
Whoa, hold up. I didn’t know gay people could ice skate; I just thought they spent their time plotting the downfall of traditional marriage and the family unit.
People on Twitter seemed to agree, according to a Tumblr page titled “Public Shaming,” which collects dumb things people say on social media.
According to that source, one Twitter user tweeted in a rush of patriotism, “I feel un-American for drinking Coke today. I took an oath to defend this country. How is a song to our nation sang in different languages?”
A famed political theorist wrote in all caps, (maybe because he does not know how to turn them off) “WAS THE COKE COMMERCIAL USED TO PROMOTE AMNESTY? SORRY BUT NOT ALL MEXICANS AND FOREIGNERS ARE PATRIOTIC AND NEITHER ARE SOME AMERICANS.”
A respected and highly cited cultural anthropologist needed to make something clear after watching such an outrageous ad: “I’m not racist but, This is America! We speak English! #Coke.” Notice the use of the #Coke to truly mark the import of her declaration, like a modern-day Martin Luther nailing her ninety-five theses to the front door of a over-sized carbonated soft drink.
I love the smell of xenophobia in the morning, don’t you? But really, though, these people argue that multiculturalism is poisoning the country. As the tired “Schoolhouse Rock” cliché goes: “America is a great big melting pot and always has been.” We’ve always had a wrong-headed, reactionary element to changes in our culture. Only now we can mock them in real time and in 140 characters or less.
Rich Robinson is a junior majoring in telecommunication and film. His column runs biweekly on Tuesdays.
