Pepsi recently ran a bizarre commercial featuring Kendall Jenner. For those of you who don’t know Kendall Jenner, she is most famous as a member of the degenerate Jenner/Kardashian family who typifies 21st-century America. The commercial features Jenner wearing a blonde wig and doing a photo shoot. Amidst some weird hip hop music a protest is proceeding down the street right outside where Jenner is being photographed. What are the people protesting? Who knows. The signs being held up are vague references to “starting a conversation” accompanied by peace signs. The protesters are nothing if not diverse. So diverse are the protesters that one wonders what could possibly bring so many different people together for a common cause. Jenner is beckoned to join the protest by a young Asian hipster. She leaves the photoshoot, casts off her blonde wig, grabs a Pepsi out of a cooler, and then proceeds across the protest to a white cop standing behind a barrier. Everyone cheers. The commercial ends with the message, “live bolder, live louder, live for now.”
The commercial has received backlash from the internet commentariat. Pepsi has been accused of appropriating the righteous indignation of the Black Lives Matter movement in an effort to push their product. SJWs have also accused Pepsi of presenting its product as the solution to all of the world’s problems. If only “Dr.” King would have had Pepsi, all those poor innocent black boys wouldn’t have been murdered by those hateful, bigoted white cops. Others pointed out the instant in which Jenner hands her blonde wig to a bewildered black woman. All of this has led Kendall Jenner to follow rituals of public piety by apologizing and expressing her regret that people have found her commercial offensive. Two brief comments are in order.
First, the Left has virtually nothing more to complain about. Pepsi signaled hard to the Left by actively promoting multiculturalism and multiracialism. They’ve said as much themselves, but for all their efforts they are still labeled as “racist.” Liberals have to dig deep to find things to complain about, since liberalism is rooted in discontentment with established norms. As liberalism has won virtually every battle in the culture war since the 1960s, there isn’t much to get excited about. All that remains is for liberals to parse the meaning of advertising under the regime of globalist commercialism. Hunter Wallace observed this same problem with civil rights icons like John Lewis, who still argues as though he was living in the 1960s.
To liberals it will always be the early 1960s in the fight for black voting rights and civil equality. This Pepsi commercial with its unauthorized “appropriation” of Black Lives Matter is just one more example of ubiquitous white supremacy. The reaction from the Left to this Pepsi ad reminds me of watching A Conversation About Race in which Craig Bodeker interviews several non-whites and white SJs about race and what they perceive as “racism.” The incidents reported as “racist” by non-whites were (and still are) incredibly stupid. Blacks identified “racist” encounters when they believed that whites were overly friendly or when they believed that whites were over-complimenting them. In this instance Pepsi is being called “racist” for promoting the protest culture that drives movements like Black Lives Matter. All this is but one more example of the Left throwing a tantrum to maintain their narrative as victims, no matter how weak their complaints.
Second, there is much in this ad to hate from an ethnonationalist and traditionalist perspective. Advertising in general has taken on a messianic character in recent times as Western nations have abandoned faith in the Christian God. Pepsi is like other mass-produced merchandise whose use will allegedly provide lasting comfort, fulfillment, and peace. In this commercial Pepsi is presented as the solution to police brutality. This is just as ridiculous as the Leftist narrative on police brutality. Pepsi’s promotion of multiracialism is yet another example of soulless commercialism on full display. Personally, I think that Pepsi should return to advertising like their original television commercial.
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