Coca-Cola’s Super Bowl Commercial Is Met with Both Patriotic and Racist Responses
Some have called it one of the most inspirational and patriotic commercials to air during the big game while others are saying it's anti-American, but we say that you should watch Coca-Cola's Super Bowl 2014 commercial and judge for yourself.
Coca-Cola's Super Bowl commercial, 'It's Beautiful', features a rather simple and safe premise: it's a montage of people from around the country enjoying themselves as 'America the Beautiful' is playing in the background. The commercial depicts Americans from all kinds of lineages safely enjoying themselves and the company of their friends and loved ones. Of course, bottles of Coke can be occasionally seen on dinner tables and in people's hands throughout the segment.
The main twist of Coke's commercial is that the song goes from English vocals to a variety of other languages, while staying true to the lyrics of the song and remaining perfectly in sync with each other as the languages change. Coke actually made full song recordings of children from around the country singing 'America the Beautiful' in their native tongues in order to put them together for the commercial. The commercial's song ranges from English, to French, Keresan (a Pueblo language from New Mexico), Hebrew, Hindu, Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin and Tagalog (a dialect of the Philippines). Each of the girls whose voice was featured in the video released a full recording of the song, anyone who would like to see the full versions of the other recordings can do so by checking Coca-Cola's YouTube page.
'It's Beautiful' is also one of the first Super Bowl commercials to ever feature two openly gay dads interacting with their child on national television (which could have been done in response to Coke's backlash from their sponsoring of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics in wake of Russia's open-resentment towards members of the LGBT community).
Some people are in a rut about 'America the Beautiful's multicultural rendition, with many racist and bigoted comments being made on various social media venues. Many of the negative comments are shamefully racist and echo the ridiculous "if you can't speak English... get out!" mentality, but filled with a plethora of ethnic slurs. But what most of these people don't realize, is that all of these girls were actually born in America and all of them speak nearly perfect English.
Even better are the people who blindly mistaken 'America the Beautiful' for being our National Anthem, which it certainly is not. 'America the Beautiful' is a famous patriotic song that is intertwined with American history, and is used for various sporting events such as WWE's opening to their yearly Wrestlemania event. But 'America the Beautiful' is not our national anthem, 'The Star-Spangled Banner' is (which is the song that is regularly sang at sporting events nationwide). Perhaps people were confused due to Queen Latifah singing 'America the Beautiful' before Renee Fleming sang our National Anthem this past sunday. You would think that critics who are so gung-ho about the English language's exclusivity in the United Sates would realize that 'America the Beautiful' is not even our National Anthem.
One could argue that the controversy the ad has sparked will add to more attention to the soda brand, but we believe Coke made the commercial for three main reasons: one, to show that the patriotism and love for the United States doesn't have to be confined to English-speaking people; two, to show that Coca-Cola is a soda any person of any heritage can enjoy; and three, that 'America the Beautiful' is a breathtaking, patriotic song regardless of what language it is in and who sings it (hence the name of the commercial). All of the children who sing in the song are American, all of its video footage is American -- that's about as American as it can get.
Here is just a small sample of the negative responses that have spawned in response to Coca-Cola's commercial (courtesy of The Bizpac Review):
Do you agree? Disagree? Voice your opinions regarding Coca-Cola's 'It's Beautiful' commercial in the comments below.