This week, the third in a series of online videos for Mountain Dew created by a rapper/producer known as Tyler the Creator (see what Cedric started?)
was released. As you’ve probably heard by now, this latest spot showed a beaten,
black-and-blue old white woman on crutches surveying a police lineup of stereotypical black thugs, while a horny goat in a bow tie, voiced by Tyler himself, threatens her.
The unique,
goat-based humor included such creepy lines as “Snitches get stitches,” and “When I get outta here I’m gonna dew you up.”
But here’s the thing: T the
C is himself African-American, known for pushing boundaries and playing with stereotypes. As a rapper/skater (skapper?) and part of a 60-person entertainment collective called Odd Future, he sees
himself as a kooky outsider. What’s more, the threatening black “criminals” in the lineup were his friends and fellow performers wearing their own clothing.
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And here’s
the next twist: Pepsi pulled the work only after Syracuse University professor and social analyst Dr. Boyce Watkins, also an African-American, inveighed against the spot in a post on
YourBlackWorld.net, calling it “arguably the most racist commercial in history.” His comments blew up all over the Net (a video going viral in the worst way) -- and Pepsi was suddenly
deeply apologetic and yanked all the work.
Both Tyler and his critic are big on social media. Since then, there has been some backpedaling by Watkins, (in a tweet and video, he said his
daughters like Tyler’s work) and front-pedaling by Tyler’s manager (“This is someone who grew up on David Chappelle. This situation is layered with context.”)
Who’s in charge here, you might be asking. Certainly, the spot has taken on an afterlife of its own. And no one comes out of this looking good.
It’s one thing for an artist to
make a boundary-smashing career, and it’s another for a corporation like Pepsi to give him free reign.
The Creator himself didn’t help his own case much back in April when he
explained the history of the deal: “I'm gonna tell them some stupid idea I come up with five minutes before the meeting and they're gonna think it's f***in' retarded, and I didn't get my hopes
up," Tyler told Billboard. "And then I took a meeting with them and it was like, ok, uh, they were actually cool and young, a little older than me, and they were like, 'Tell us your
commercial idea.'
“Alright, it's a f***ing goat, right? It's a goat and he's going to drink the f***ing Mountain Dew, and he's gonna yell at the lady, and the cops are going to pull him
over, and then he's going to be in jail and then he gonna do PCP."
Comedy gold! Greenlight it, baby! Well, obviously my sarcasm is not helping in this very complicated situation. But Pepsi
executives also had to know of one of Tyler’s more famous songs, which included the lyric that he’d “rape a pregnant bitch and tell my friends I had a threesome.”
Back
in April, Tyler, now thrilled with Pepsi, told the press that "Finally someone looked past the rape or the devil worshiping or the immaturity which is evident in the ad….and they gave me a
chance and let me be fucking seven years old with their product."
I’m all for free speech, and letting artists be artists. But as his manager mentioned, context is everything.
Corporations like Pepsi do not sell art. Someone has to be a grownup here.
The aftermath is full of unfortunate and unintended consequences. The Pepsi people either look like idiots or
Kardashians, in terms of wanting attention of any kind.
Tyler himself seems furious, and after the charge of racism and the pulling of the spots, he responded by saying that Watkins is an
“older gentleman” who doesn’t get his generation. Then he became a little self-pitying, and angrier about Watkins’ wrongheadedness, and released this to the press: "It's a
young black man who got out of the 'hood and made something of himself, who's now working with big, white-owned corporations. Not even in front of the camera acting silly, but directing it….
But instead of looking at the positivity from that, he's trying to boycott Mountain Dew… Not only is it messing up opportunities for me, but also maybe opportunities for another young black
male who maybe looks up to me and wants to do that in the future. It's ludicrous."
The reality is that Tyler probably got the most out of it. He’s a household name now.
So is it
okay for a young black man to make a video that makes fun of the prevailing stereotypes of black culture to push a product to an urban audience?
It’s hard to tell where the jokes are
sometimes. In addition to the obvious racial stereotypes, T the C’s Mountain Dew videos also perpetuated a kind of violence and misogyny that is hard to watch. (My opinion is that young women
internalize that bit of cultural ugliness into self-hate. But that’s a whole other conversation.)
But as his manager suggested, it is all context. And while this work might have
been great for a cable show, it was not a good fit for a strictly commercial product like Mountain Dew.
But if you want to sell soda, you’ll never establish brand credibility by
piggybacking off a scary, racist, sexist, violent goat. As a result, Pepsi just comes off looking fake and cynical. You don’t even need to “be a 7-year old” to know that.