There are already too many reasons to dislike the tone-deaf ad that Pepsi dropped yesterday. It exoticizes minorities, it suggests racism can be stopped with a soft drink, it depicts Kendall Jenner as the white savior of police brutality, it erases the Black Lives Matter movement, it shows Kendall chucking her wig at a black stylist, and it features terrible non-protest signs. The list goes on. It also rips off two iconic images of a revolutionary protester in a silent standoff against riot gear-clad cops. Ieshia Evans peacefully protesting the murder of Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge last summer, and Rosario Dawson in a Chemical Brothers music video from 1999.
Eerily reminiscent of Chemical Brothers”Out Of Control”vid we shot in Mexico City ~15 yrs ago sadly minus the point: https://t.co/LTI9mJ7zjS https://t.co/DqBjKdQylS
— Rosario Dawson (@rosariodawson) April 4, 2017
The WIZ-directed visual for the electronic music duo’s collaboration with Bernard Sumner also featured a woman squaring off against cops armed with sexiness and a soft drink. But while the Chemical Bros were satirizing big-bucks corporate advertising — Rosario’s fizzy weapon is a generic “100% chemical” cola — Pepsi’s ad literally is corporate advertising. Peer into the Chemical Brothers’s crystal ball below.
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Text Hannah Ongley