{"id":17648,"date":"2013-05-03T12:26:33","date_gmt":"2013-05-03T16:26:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theredphoenixapl.org\/?p=17648"},"modified":"2026-04-22T09:22:31","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T14:22:31","slug":"mountain-dew-pulls-terrible-racist-ad","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/2013\/05\/mountain-dew-pulls-terrible-racist-ad\/","title":{"rendered":"Mountain Dew Pulls Terrible Racist Ad"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Tyler,<\/a>
Tyler, the Creator
Photo by Frazer Harrison\/Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By<\/span>\u00a0Aisha Harris<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Mountain Dew recently released three new ads featuring a crazed goat voiced by rapper Tyler, the Creator, who was also the mastermind behind the commercials. The goat is seen attacking a waitress after she gives him the soda, fleeing a cop after getting caught with a car trunk full of the soda, and then threatening that waitress from behind the window of a criminal lineup after his arrest. That final ad has<\/span>\u00a0now been pulled by the beverage company<\/span><\/a><\/span>\u00a0amidst howls that it is racist and misogynistic. And those howls were right. What happened?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

In the ad, the waitress, covered in bandages and hobbling on crutches, is asked by the detective to identify her assailant from a lineup of several black \u201cthugs\u201d and the goat. \u201cYou shoulda gave me some mo\u2019,\u201d he sleazily whispers to her, supposedly in reference to the soda. \u201cKeep yo\u2019 mouth shut,\u201d he continues as she screams, frightened. \u201cI\u2019mma get outta here and I\u2019mma do you up.\u201d Such misguided attempts to make fun out of violence against women really have no place in commercials, as should be entirely obvious. What\u2019s more, the ad reinforces racist stereotypes about black male aggression. Tyler\u2019s manager, in a statement defending the rapper\u2019s intentions, refers to his client as someone who \u201c<\/span>grew up on Dave Chappelle<\/span><\/a><\/span>.\u201d So did I. But Chappelle used a half-hour show and occasional hour-long comedy specials to get his (insightful, sometimes controversial) points across. Not 60-second TV spots pushing soda.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

If you\u2019re familiar with Tyler, the Creator, the face and leader of the hip-hop collective Odd Future, you know that shock and offense are the tools of his trade. Known for his violent lyrics (\u201cYou\u2019ll see the meaning of stalking\/ when I pop out the dark to find you\/ And that new dude that you\u2019re seeing with an attitude\/ Then proceed to fuck up your evening\u201d), the rapper is committed to crossing boundaries of taste and decency. \u201c<\/span>I\u2019m not homophobic<\/span><\/a><\/span>,\u201d he once said of his music, \u201cI just think \u2018faggot\u2019 hits and hurts people.\u201d The rapper confounds critics, who have debated whether he\u2019s a smart, intuitive artist, or a vacuous provocateur. I tend to the latter opinion. We can debate that. It\u2019s a good argument for critics to have. And Tyler the Creator can create the music and \u201cart\u201d he wants to create. We don\u2019t have to like it.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

But when a corporation like PepsiCo\u2014whose ad-makers were surely aware of Tyler\u2019s music beforehand\u2014decide to exploit that button-pushing for their own money-making ends, they deserve to be called out for it.<\/span>\u00a0Tyler tweeted in March<\/span><\/a><\/span>: \u201cThey let my stupid ideas come to life, thanks Dew!\u201d And they are indeed pretty stupid ideas. Everything in the ad is left on the surface, unexamined. The frightened, beaten white woman. The goat, coded as black, due to the \u201cgangsta\u201d vernacular it employs.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Perhaps PepsiCo were as ignorant as the people behind Ashton Kutcher\u2019s Popchips ad, in which, for reasons still unknown,<\/span>\u00a0the actor donned brownface<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and a strained Indian accent. Ignorance is\u00a0the go-to excuse<\/span><\/a>\u00a0companies employ when called out for their foolishness. And maybe they assumed that because Tyler himself is black, the ad itself wouldn\u2019t be deemed racially offensive. (If so, that was a terrible and wrongheaded assumption to make.) What seems more likely is that they knew what they were in for and\u00a0wanted<\/em>\u00a0to spark some controversy\u2014the better to sell their soda.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Perhaps PepsiCo accomplished that. The other two commercials that are meant to precede the pulled ad are still in rotation. And those stories put the final ad into better context\u2014but they don\u2019t redeem it. Hopefully, other companies will think twice before giving birth to any more of Tyler\u2019s empty ideas.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Update, May 2, 2013:\u00a0<\/strong>This post originally included video of the three ads for Mountain Dew by Tyler the Creator. PepsiCo has had them removed.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

Fuente<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0Aisha Harris Mountain Dew recently released three new ads featuring a crazed goat voiced by rapper Tyler, the Creator, who was also the mastermind behind..<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":38063,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[149,37,43,84,46,97,106],"tags":[357,345],"class_list":["post-17648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discrimination","category-lgbtqia","category-media-culture","category-statements","category-tvfilm","category-us-news","category-women","tag-racism","tag-reactionary-watch"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/redphoenix.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/149825220-crop-article250-medium.jpg?fit=250%2C373&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17648"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39550,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17648\/revisions\/39550"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redphoenix.news\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}