Welcome to the Commodification of Wokeness

This past year, I became interested in exploring what I term, ‘the Commodification of Wokeness’ (COW). COW refers to the use of racialized bodies, knowledge, and voices as a mechanism to promote products and brands, while also cementing the legacy of slavery, misogyny, and colonization. I studied this through a content analysis of two commercials: Colin Kaepernick’s Nike advertisement “Dream Crazy” and Kendall Jenner’s “Jump in” Pepsi commercial.

The Nike commercial starts with non-diegetic piano music, as the camera is focused on a male skateboarder who repeatedly falls down concrete steps. A male voiceover from Colin Kaepernick begins to narrate, “if people say your dreams are crazy; if they laugh at what you think you could do, good.” As this voiceover is playing, a montage sequence flashes on the screen. The images showcase a young Black impaired wrestler fighting and a close-up of a racialized woman wearing a Nike Hijab. The montage concludes, and Kaepernick’s voice continues “[let it] stay that way, what non-believers fail to understand is that calling a dream crazy is not an insult, it is a compliment.” Throughout the entire commercial, Nike uses images and phrases to portray their company as progressive. The commercial signs off by stating, “So do not ask if your dreams are crazy, ask if they are crazy enough” and ends with every person in the commercial projected on buildings with the tag line “it is only crazy until you do it.”

In the same manner, Pepsi attempts to portray the company as progressive by starting the commercial off with a fair-skinned male violist drinking a can of Pepsi on top of a skyscraper. As the music starts, the camera pans to a crowd protesting and walking on the street with various modern-day peace signs and a sign calling to join the conversation. Following, there is a multi-racial montage with the camera focusing most of its time on a racialized woman with a Hijab looking at pictures with a Pepsi can on the table. The lyrics in the background music say, “if you took all my rights away, and you are telling me how to pray, if you won’t let us infiltrate.”  The camera then focuses on a blonde, skinny, tall, White woman being photographed, who is Kendall Jenner. Pepsi continues with its attempt to be perceived as progressive by making Jenner stop her photoshoot to join the protest. The company showcases Jenner as the influencer of the movement. She hands a can of Pepsi to a white male officer, who drinks the soda and then everyone celebrates. The commercial concludes with Jenner leading the protest and ends with the tagline “Live Bolder, Live Louder, Live for Now.” The commercial received criticism for appropriating Black Lives Matter imagery.

In my findings, I identified 56 incidences in which the newspaper articles discussed outrage in describing the Pepsi commercial compared to 13 incidences of articles discussing outrage against the Nike commercial. There were only 5 incidences where the newspaper articles discussed the Pepsi ad as progressive compared to the 40 incidences the Nike ad was suggested as progressive.

Within these commercials, I identified three themes and tropes that are commonly employed: i) easy to spot, ii) the essential subject, and iii) the progressive profit, to demonstrate how my findings are an example of the ‘Commodification of Wokeness.’ The trope “easy to spot” refers to how criticism and backlash of the commercial can be easily identified because Kendall Jenner’s white body is a representation of white supremacy that allows the commodification of Blackness to be easily identifiable. “The essential subject” refers to the use of black bodies like that of Colin Kaepernick as a commodity of Wokeness and treats them as merely a racialized subject for profit. In turn, this makes Kaepernick an essential subject to the continued exploitation of Black peoples. “The progressive profit” refers to how Colin Kaepernick, an African-American male activist, is used for his socially conscious awareness about race which allows the Nike advertisement to be perceived as progressive. However, through the guise of progressiveness, the ongoing legacy of settler colonialism, White supremacy, and patriarchy was further entrenched because this form of consumer activism is accepted which renders invisible the exploitation of black people for profit.

As we can see, businesses like Nike and Pepsi economically exploit Black bodies for their benefit and how this upholds the historical legacy of the commodification of Black bodies. While each commercial has a different approach in using black bodies to sell their products– some more seemingly subversive while others more superficially progressive, they both do so in a way that exploits the historical oppression of the black community as a ploy for their own economic gain. Instead of forwarding one commercial as less or more problematic than the other for their content, I demonstrate how each commercial uses exploitative measures while presenting themselves in a progressive manner. This illustrates how the subjectification of black people continues subtly throughout society. Companies use this historical legacy as a means to profit while not actively trying to fix systemic racism and violence.

In my analysis of both commercials, I avoid hierarchal constructions of political racialized subjectivities which posits that one racialized individual’s understanding or experience is better than another’s. We should not look to either commercial for a genuine depiction of the black experience since there are many intersections that shape this. I wish to add a radical understanding of black bodies that is both transgressive and liberating. In doing so, I include all those who do not reside in the domain constructed norm of state-sanctioned White upper- and middle- class heterosexuality.

My analysis of the illusion of Wokeness in the advertisement industry is not only applicable to commercial but also to the community in which we live. For instance, writing something like this blog post is complex when you are given a platform through corporations with a history and reputation like UofT. As students at the University of Toronto, we are inexplicitly tied to their corporate greed, their disproportionate responsibility for massive student debt, and their historical segregationist practices. For these reasons, I should unequivocally state:

 AJ Bedward is a Black male from Brampton with a specialist in Criminology and a major in Sociology from the University of Toronto. He will continue his studies at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. He hopes his research inspires critical reflection of the ongoing inequities that exist not only in advertising but in settler colonial nations at large. Lastly, he wanted to say that WHITE SUPREMACY IS TERRORISM.