Did you watch the 2014 Superbowl?
If so, you’re not alone: more than 11.5 million people tuned in to the biggest football game of the year and to witness the Seahawks smash the Broncos.
Probably equally as famous as the football are the Superbowl’s commercials, which any self-respecting multi-million-dollar corporation would gladly spill some precious bucks on for 30 or 60 seconds of airtime.
Coca-Cola was one of those companies, and aired a spot featuring people doing “American” things (horseback riding, surfing, camping, eating street vendor hotdogs, running through canyons) to America the Beautiful as the background track.
If you tuned in to the opening ceremonies from the Winter Olympics in Sochi, you might have seen the special 90-second version of the ad that debuted.
However, there was something about the 60-second Superbowl spot that seemed to really tick some people off.
Apparently, the offensive part of the commercial was that different parts of the song were sung in different languages.
Apparently, many people consider English the language of America.
One tweet from Superbowl Sunday read: “I’m not racist but, This [sic] is America! We speak English!”
Ironically, many of these Twitter users crying in outrage about English being the quintessential American language do not seem to know how to use it properly.
One even wrote, “Speak American if your in America commercials are dumb [sic].”
My guess is the irony is lost on them.
Not long after the commercial aired, the hashtag #SpeakAmerican was trending on Twitter. Seriously!
Maybe some people’s rage can be chalked up to different languages confusing them as to which song it was. Some thought it was the national anthem, while others thought it was God Bless America.
Many users of Facebook and Twitter vowed to boycott Coke from then on. (I hope they have considered all of the Coca-Cola Company’s subsidiaries, including Dasani, Minute Maid, Powerade and Sprite, to name just a few in the beverage industry.)
Who knows, maybe all this hot-headed promised boycotting will lead to a reduction in America’s obesity epidemic.
Coke has since responded to the “controversy” by standing by both the ad and its message, that America is “beautiful” not in spite of its citizens’ differences, but because of them.
Situations like these tell me several things. For one, some people have absolutely no idea about their country’s history. Two: knee-jerk reactions to some “offensive” stimuli only leads to more offensive statements. And three: the very thing that makes social media so attractive (its accessibility) is also one of its most repulsive qualities.
But most of all, while I find it baffling that people seem to have no problem spewing incredibly ignorant comments for all to see, I am even more baffled that in this day and age, this commercial, simply by virtue of featuring more than one language and people from many ethnicities, is considered “controversial.”
