Oh Fine, Pepsi, I'll Go

Yeah. Pepsi has me linking to the ad but I don't even mind, because I survived the cola wars of the 1980's and I sleep like a baby. All my readers need to know is I only drink water, tea, and booze. That's it. I couldn't tell you the last time I had a Pepsi product or even Coke and Jack. So, I have nothing to say about what this ad has to do with Pepsi. This is a New Generation Pepsi-type ad. (Not to be confused with a "New Power Generation".) Trying to say one's flavored, carbonated beverage is hip with the kids is nothing new--I mean, talk about Dr. Pepper trying to co-opt everybody:



But I think that the cultural signifying here went beyond Coca-Cola signifying levels:



Because, although we don't know if the protest that Kendall Jenner, rich white lady, co-opts, is about Black Lives matter or is just a pussy hat riot or some other thing that a multi-cultural group of millennials might be protesting about, conspicuously including an Asian cellist male and an hijabi photographer, we do know that it is meaningful that this model sheds her blonde wig to reveal she is brunette and woke as all hell (and gives her blonde wig to a black lady). So woke she marches right to the middle of things to give a soda to a police officer. To symbolize--"He looked thirsty-m'kay?"

Huh?

Even the intro to Watchmen made more sense:

The handing of a soda to a policeman only makes sense if, somehow, there was a law against cops drinking soda. Otherwise, I feel like we are lacking the context that makes a brunette model giving a soda to a police officer the solution to anything--but then again, giving the world a Coke probably wouldn't have done anything either forty+ years ago. I think giving the world a few gin and tonics might be great--especially if it included me--but beverage choices pretty much aren't sufficient politics in the face of all the shit we deal with. See Temperance Movement, for context. This isn't worse than all the attempts to link flavored carbonated beverages to youth movements before. This is just weirdly obvious in a particularly media-savvy age. But I guess that's no reason not to drink Pepsi if that's the sort of thing you like.