- Hello, I'm Chris Chan.
I'm a Visual Anthropologist here at Cut.
And I thought we would start using Chanthropology
to actually start working through
real contemporary problems
that are also visual problems.
And use a little bit of
visual anthropology inside some methods
to help unpack to decode
some of the stuff that's happening around us,
including this really stupid Pepsi commercial.
So this Pepsi thing happened.
And there's been a lot of well deserved outrage
and controversy about it.
Especially because it kind of appropriates
real protest and real people's anxieties
in a really cheap ways on a really stupid product.
This ad obviously fails on several registers.
But, it actually kind of succeeds as an advertisement
and that's because we're all now doing the labor
circulating and reproducing it
every time we Tweet about it
or write about it on Facebook,
or share a Thinkpiece about it,
or make a meme about it.
(crickets chirp)
Yeah.
It's basically placed this product back on
the tip of our tongues
and in the forefront of our consciousness.
Years after we actually even forgot it existed.
So,
we'll think about this as an invitation
to visually decode the images that we see in this ad.
We're primed to actually think about images here
because the entire story in this commercial
is about photography,
and the camera as themselves are actually kind of actors
in this story.
So, one is pointed at the false Kendall Jenner.
And the other is pointed at the supposedly real one,
who molts out of the dead skin of her wig
and her signature dark lipstick.
One is used to paint a kind of consumer fantasy
at a photoshoot.
The other, is trying to capture some transcendent,
real authentic political act of disobedience
at a protest.
One is operated by a
probably a freelance photographer
and played by a corporate client.
The other is being operated by
a Muslim woman who is objectified
as a political token of oppression.
One captures Jenner wearing this metallic sheet dress,
almost industrial.
And then the other captures her wearing
this proletariat blue denim
and literally with a blue collar.
Yet, there's a third camera
and it's the one filming
all these competing photographic stories.
This is the camera that's actually filming the commercial.
The camera that we're sitting behind as we watch it.
And this camera is telling us
none of these cameras are capturing anything at all.
None of these images are real.
The real Kendall Jenner is also a fake.
Or reproduction.
An image.
In fact, we've seen this commercial before
and Coca-Cola released it
in 1971.
And the message is saying in that commercial
as it is in this one.
And that times were just as turbulent
and fraught with tension then
as they are now.
People were dealing with anti-war protests
against the Vietnam war, Civil Rights,
Women's liberation, the Stonewall Riots,
these are all social movements and protests
that were brought to American audiences
in their living rooms by the same TV
that also brought them these ads.
You might remember the finale of Mad Men
where Don Draper is sitting and blissfully at peace
at his hippie retreat,
before we cut to this now iconic Coca Cola commercial.
A landmark for the advertisement industry
in which then understood that consumers desire
more than function from its products,
but what we really and truly desire
is something realer than that.
And that's the job of advertisers
and that's exactly what they seek to deliver us.
Remember that the television also broadcasted to us
the daily threat of nuclear apocalypse
and the horrors of the Vietnam War?
What did people truly desire in 1971?
Bottled refreshment?
Or world peace and harmony
on the brink of mutually assured destruction?
And thus the invention of the brand
which tactically confuses in the ideology
with the consumer product,
and it confuses the commodity
with the solution
for that horrible and crushing alienating anxiety.
But there is an unfortunate kernel of truth
that's presented in the Pepsi commercial.
It's that we live in a world
bombarded with the visual evidence,
of police brutality of racism,
Islamophobia, transphobia, et cetera.
Activists have taken to the streets
to demonstrate that there is a real crisis underway
and it has to do with people's real material safety
and well being.
But we have also all been guilty
of the same sin of the Pepsi commercial commits.
And that's confusing political ideology
with consumption.
We participate in consumer activism all the time.
We readily choose to vote with our dollars
over other kinds of political activities
like protesting
or direct action
or actually literally voting
because it's just easier and more convenient
and because it makes us feel better.
Even the starving artist chalice
that we see in the beginning of the Pepsi commercial,
can still afford a can of Pepsi,
because it's also imbued with it
kind of political mythology
that assuages him about the alienation of being poor
under modern capitalism.
Marketing has had to turn consumers into brand activists
who pledge their allegiance to brands
that somehow reflect their own politics.
It turns us into digital canvassers
whenever we Tweet or Facebook product endorsements
for things that we like.
But did we ever stop to think
that if Pepsi loses us, or our business
because of the saccharine and distasteful commercial
that we're just aligning ourselves with Coke instead?
And what happens when we divert our money
into one cola company over another?
It certainly didn't create world peace in 1971,
and it definitely won't end police brutality,
or xenophobia,
or racism, or violence against trans people.
The commercial promises us we are not alone
because this commodity finally brings us all together.
When in reality,
we really know that all we're left with
is the same cloying sugar water
and a bitter aftertaste.