#PEPSI and KJ: Corporations Are Missing the Point

By now, most of us have probably seen the Pepsi ad rocking the Internet, and if you haven’t, look it up and prepare yourself.

Pepsi’s ad featuring Kendall Jenner is offensive for different reasons, but the first that struck me was its commodification and whitewashing of protest movements. As we have been learning in class, protest is not glamourous – it is necessary. In African American history, there is a long tradition of insurrections, rebellions, liberation movements, and protests for human rights, and Pepsi’s ad featuring a rich, white, 21-year-old supermodel blatantly ignores it. In the ad, Jenner is supposedly on a modeling job, and she is struck by the protest going on in the street. She stops what she is doing, wipes her perfectly applied lipstick with the back of her hand – so rugged – and she joins them. The protesters are smiling, young, white hipsters, and they are clearly enthusiastic about being part of a movement. This depiction of protest movements being confronted by police is so opposite to the actual news footage of the Black Lives Matter movement that it disgraces its legacy and image.

Rather than an image of struggle and confrontation, Pepsi’s idealization of protesters presupposes that protest is a young-man’s game, and not only young, but also young and white. The music plays into this notion further – it blares “We are the lions, we are the chosen/We gonna shine out the dark/We are the movement, this generation/You better know who we are” while the camera pans in slow-motion to display the protesters. There is not a single angry or upset person in the crowd, and moreover, the majority of the protesters are not black or brown.

Online, some people are calling Pepsi’s ad “tone deaf,” and I don’t think there’s a better phrase to describe it.

They entirely missed the point of the Black Lives Matter protest movement and the tradition it comes out of – instead of featuring black and brown women, they chose Kendall Jenner. The ad reads like a Coachella advertisement – blaring music It plays into the notion of the “white savior,” featuring a Muslim woman taking Jenner’s photo while she gives a cop a can of Pepsi. It supposes that ameliorating the issue of a militarized police force and state-sanctioned violence is as simple as calling a white person to bridge the gap. In asserting that ending violence is as simple as popping open a can of Pepsi, the corporate company profits by reducing the struggle of the Black Lives Matter movement and its ancestors to little more than a street squabble.

What’s worse is that Pepsi later apologized to Jenner – she signed the contract and knew the content of the ad before filming. By apologizing to her, Pepsi attempts to absolve Jenner for agreeing to participate in an ad that disgraces the name of African American activism. Moreover, Pepsi is a huge company that profits from imperialism by outsourcing, so what gave them the idea that this ad would not be controversial?
Here's a link to the ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dA5Yq1DLSmQ