Er’body has an opinion about Pepsi Maxx’s Superbowl commercial featuring an ‘Angry Black Woman’ emasculating her African-American spouse and knocking a flirtatious white woman in the head with a Pepsi Maxx can when he takes a peak at her…. Who’da thunkit? Why is everybody mad? It’s just a mean and violent commercial, right?
I’m ambivalent about the ad myself. Over the years I’ve learned how to not be reactionary. After all, it is just a television commercial.. Then again, it subscribes to the negative attitudes stereotypical of black women in our culture. I’m not an angry black woman, so the moniker doesn’t affect me. I’d rather focus on making a change instead of talking about what somebody else (read Pepsi Maxx) needs to change. However, I get why the ‘angry black woman’ stereotype is making black women, well, angry. We get enough bad press.
The ad is salvageable though.
If I worked in the ad room at Pepsi, I would have suggested that they keep the all of the races the same. Violence to another person of different a different race in a commercial (and life) could be easily deemed racist – and it was! Perhaps if the husband was of the same race as the temptress, or instead a trio of cultures were cast, (further pushing the one world ethos) it would have been less ‘racially’ offensive.
…and if that didn’t work, I’d suggest that the actual ‘chucking’ of the can was too violent anyway. (She launched it like a missile, son.) A good old-fashioned tripping of the blond would have hilariously sufficed. Then Pepsi’s attempt to go viral wouldn’t have had such detrimental consequences. You know the old mantra tho: There is no such thing as bad press.
What do you think?
ayokortni 