Sunday, February 20, 2011

Oversensitivity

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y09z8lwOEYA
The commercial presents an overbearing wife constantly critiquing her husband's dietary habits. When they finally seem to agree on something, the fact that Pepsi Max is delicious despite having zero calories, a new problem is presented in the form of a jogging woman that is presumably younger than the wife. The wife hits the woman with a can that was aimed at her husband, then the couple runs away because they assaulted someone. Now, that does not seem to be that important; however, the couple is black and the jogging woman is white. With that addition, the commercial begins to offend some people. The overbearing wife becomes the angry black wife. The jogging woman becomes the jogging white woman. The husband's wandering eyes fall upon the attractive white woman instead of the attractive younger woman. The focus of the commercial becomes racial insensitivity rather than a mediocre commercial advertising Pepsi. The can hitting the woman at the end is one of the images that causes some offense to people. However, the couple could have easily run away because the wife assaulted someone and did not want to get in trouble. However, because the woman that threw the can was black and the woman that got hit was white, the views change. She did not run away because she hit someone and wanted to avoid a confrontation or assault charges, she ran away because she hit a white woman with a can and thought that it was a cardinal sin. The commercial should just be taken at face value; the advertisers wanted to sell a product, so they made a commercial.

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