COLUMN: Super Bowl ads highlight diversity of the American Dream
A hardcore fan of Mad Men, I have watched the entire series … twice. Through seven seasons Don Draper taught me that the best advertising stems from memories and nostalgia and is driven by common desire. What do people want? What do they all have in common?
It all comes down to the so-called American Dream, which isn’t as cheesy as it sounds. We live in a society where your status is defined and determined by material wealth. What you own demonstrates, albeit wrongly, how hard you’ve worked and how good you’ve got it. However, the commercials that aired during the Super Bowl last Sunday struck a different note. Praised for their diversity and their subversion of Trumpian values, they focused not on the products they were selling but on the universal benefits that come along with them.
Above all, these commercials demonstrated that the American Dream, and what lives inside it, is pervasive and endless. It touches all of us, regardless of who we are, in the same way. Sure, depicting diversity can be seen as corporations capitalizing off the turmoil of the times, but consider the risks of airing such messages during a program that is heavily popular with white men (the majority of whom voted President Donald Trump into office). How were companies to know that their carefully and boldly-crafted statements would not alienate consumers?
The Coca-Cola ad, for example, featured different scenes of people singing “America the Beautiful,” in languages from regions across the world. Perplexingly polarizing, many decried the ad on social media for playing the song in non-English languages. Jump to the other end of the spectrum, however, and you’ll see people and headlines celebrating the commercial’s bold diversity — how defiantly good it must feel to play a commercial like this in the face of all the hate and ignorance in the world.
And yet, why do the very images of people of color speaking different languages necessitate a commercial being “political”? Clearly, the Coke ad is a stunning testament to diversity and multiculturalism packaged neatly in a marketing scheme to sell soda. But be careful about being too giddy about advertisements that depict minorities, about the hard-hitting headlines declaring last Sunday’s commercials to be “political” through their depiction of diversity. Be careful about this reaction because what I can tell you is that no person of color wants to be held up on a throne to joyous cries of, “Look at this diverse person! Look at how proud we are of ourselves, for putting non-white people on TV!”
It is a hard road to take, because the very existence of people of color doesn’t make something “political,” and saying so would make it tokenism. But at the same time, Trump and his administration have proven time and time again that minorities are not welcome in their vision of America. What could rile him more than images of people of color joyously partaking in the American experience, clutching onto this part of their identity with so much strength as if to say, “Look at us. We make this country beautiful. We are here to stay.”
What’s striking when you watch these commercials is how they present, in earnest and without regard for politics, the promise of a country shared by everyone. In both the content and collectiveness of their messages, the ads are remarkable not because they are thrusting diversity in our faces, but because they exist so easily on their own outside of context. In the Coca-Cola ad, an Asian American dad and a white dad rollerblade with their daughter. What’s so political about a happy family?
A handful of Sunday’s commercials, nevertheless, were clearly and suitably more overt in their anti-Trumpian gestures: most notably a moving commercial for 84 Lumber that depicted a mother and her young daughter traversing Mexican deserts, streets and a river as they journeyed toward the border. A second portion of the commercial, determined too controversial for air time, can be accessed at journey84.com, with the pair coming to a sprawling, insurmountable wall blocking their path. They enter through a door left behind by one of the construction workers, the commercial closing with the statement: “The will to succeed is always welcome here.”
Call me a sap, but I cried.
It is indeed a movement in the making when on the day families and friends sit down to enjoy the most American of pastimes, they converge at their television sets to be confronted instead with an inescapable truth between the plays: the reality of a diverse America, happy and strong.
Two viewings of all seven Mad Men seasons taught me that good advertisements are tied always to people’s heartstrings, and the best ones know exactly what it is that people want. Ads align themselves with the American Dream, asking us to envision a more fulfilled version of ourselves and our families. In this way they manipulate us into giving them our money, but they also clearly parallel current American values. In a year so fraught with our differences and divisions, this year’s Super Bowl commercials dared to wager that what we all want is the same.
Maybe it is the wish to raise headstrong daughters. Maybe it is to come home to your parents, to tuck your kids into bed. Maybe it is to spend the rest of your life with the person you love. Or maybe, for all of us, it is as simple as a Coke.
Zoe Cheng is a sophomore majoring in writing for screen and television. Her column, “Cross Section,” runs every other Tuesday.