Superbowl Coke commercial brings out the hate.
It’s troublesome that people are so upset about the Superbowl Coke commercial in which America the Beautiful was sung in different languages. I saw the Coke commercial and it didn’t stick out to me in any major way, other than thinking at one point, hmm…I don’t know what language this is now. While the hate seems to be all over the place, this is the first article I read about when someone “liked” it on Facebook.
Newsflash – we all come from immigrants. Many of our families probably came to the US not speaking strong English, unless they happened to be from English-speaking countries. Just because the commercial shows people singing in other languages, doesn’t mean they don’t know how to speak English or won’t learn. Some people actually know more than one language. Many people who live in other countries learn to speak English EVEN THOUGH IT ISN’T THEIR NATIVE LANGUAGE and they don’t intend to live here. That doesn’t mean that they are disrespecting their own country, it means that they are more educated than us and can actually interact with us when we go to THEIR countries. I always hear people say “if they’re going to live here, they have to speak OUR language”. First of all, it isn’t “OUR” language..other countries spoke it first and brought it here when then immigrated here. It only became America’s language because so many people first came from English-speaking countries. Since it’s a language that came from immigration, why can’t other languages be brought from immigration? Secondly, how quickly must they learn “our” language to be acceptable? 1 week? 1 year? 5 years? How many years of a foreign language did you take in high school? 2-4? Can you fluently speak that language? Probably not. You have to give people time to learn. And in the meantime, they are going to need the ability to communicate and be productive citizens (calling banks, schools, government offices, etc), so bite your tongue and just press 1 to hear the message in English, instead of freaking out that you have to select a language for phone calls in your OWN country. How long did it take you to press that button? .005 seconds? Big deal. English is not America’s only language…it is just the primary language.
If you’ve ever traveled to another country and spoken to people, one or two of them probably said – I love America! Of course, many of them think that all of America is like NY or Las Vegas, or whatever major city they may have visited, but whatever…. the rest of America is actually prettier than those cities. The Coke commercial could have been showing people who were all just visiting America – it doesn’t mean that they are immigrants and refusing to learn our language. Why do people have to make enormous immediate negative presumptions? Many people who commented in the negative seemed to have forgotten that America the Beautiful isn’t our national anthem. Is it unacceptable to sing any song written by an American in another language? Must you be so angry that “others” are celebrating our country as beautiful?
I think the commercial was open-ended. It let people draw their own conclusions, and sadly, the conclusion drawn from many of these responses is that many Americans are a-holes. It’s great to have pride in your own country, but not at the expense of being ignorant to anyone whose family didn’t arrive before 1965.
My take-away from the commercial was more like “We may not be from America, but we still think it’s beautiful”. Why would you be pissed at that?! Coke is a product that is (for some reason) loved worldwide. So is America.
If you have a problem with that commercial, I hope that if you ever go to a resort in Mexico, to Paris, or any other vacation destination where English is not the primary language, you sure as hell better be speaking to everyone there in THEIR language. But chances are, you won’t have to…because they’ll be able to speak to you in YOUR language in THEIR country.
Want to boycott Coke? Go ahead…no one cares. Grab a Hater-ade.