American
television loves sporting events. It loves them because they're popular, but it
also loves them because they provide numerous opportunities for commercial
breaks, which at this point are pretty much the primary art form in North
America. During the recent Superbowl and the Sochi Winter Olympics opening
ceremony, Coca-Cola used these commercial breaks to air an advert which would
appeal to the emotions of the millions of viewers and get them to buy more of
the weird sugary brown water that they sell. The spot featured a number of
children singing 'America the Beautiful' in a range of languages, highlighting
the diversity of the USA and the ability for people from all backgrounds to
come together and celebrate the history and achievements of the country. It's
an incredibly cheesy advert, which rather obviously plays on the 'cute kids'
angle, but I guess it does its job.
However,
some of the viewers of this harmless commercial have been outraged. A number of
people on Twitter and Facebook, among other places, have been arguing that
English is the national language of the US, and songs like 'America the
Beautiful' should only ever be sung in English. This ignores several important
things – such as the fact that the US does not have an 'official language', and
that the original European settlers spoke Dutch, French, German, Swedish, and
Spanish for hundreds of years before English became the de facto
national language. But it does highlight the growing tensions between white,
English-speaking Americans, and those from other backgrounds – particularly
Latinos.
The
US has long been a nation of immigrants, and has so many Spanish speakers that
it will soon be the majority language. There are Chinatowns in every major
city, where Mandarin and Cantonese are regularly heard. There are even pockets
of French speakers in states like Maine near the Canadian border. In theory,
language shouldn't be a big issue in the US – the diversity of tongues should
simply be an everyday fact that people have adjusted to. But it isn't. It
remains a highly emotive issue that is able to whip part of the country into a
nationalistic, borderline-racist frenzy. This shows how well conservatives in
the US have done in moving the debate away from economics and towards culture.
Look
at the so-called 'Tea Party' for instance – the ultra-conservative movement
that sprang up in the wake of Obama's 2008 election. Many of the people
complaining about the Coca-Cola advert have no doubt voted for or otherwise supported
Tea Party candidates in the past. The movement is most popular in the poorest
states, but it is bankrolled by some of the richest people in the country. The
result is a movement which ignores the low wages, corporate subsidies, and
exporting of jobs to Mexico and China which keep its members poor, and instead
blames 'foreigners', Latinos, Muslims, the disabled, and the unemployed for
their problems. The response to the Coca-Cola advert is the latest example –
the idea that the big problem facing America is its languages, rather than its
economic policies and institutionalized inequality, would be laughable if so
many people didn't believe it.
This
focus on cultural issues rather than economic ones is a masterstroke by the
rich elites that run these social movements – they have got the poor white
English-speakers of the US to focus their hatred on other marginalized groups,
rather than realizing their similarities and combining their power to focus on
the rich and the corporations who are encouraging inequality and poverty in
order to line their own pockets. And as long as this continues, we will keep
seeing ridiculous controversies like the one over this commercial.
[ sporting events, coca-cola, sochi winter olympics, america the beautiful, twitter, facebook, tea party, economic policies, social movements ]
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