I was at a Super Bowl party when somebody made the tried-and-true remark: “we watch for the commercials.” While I would disagree with that claim after spending five hours smoking chicken wings and a Bacon Explosion, it’s rooted in empirical evidence: people who watched the Super Bowl viewed four times as much advertising as they did time in which the football was in play.
One advertisement that struck a particular nerve for me was The Journey, 84 Lumber’s 90-second spot about a mother and daughter traveling through Central America to the United States. I knew of the ad weeks in advance thanks to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article that documented how the original ending was rejected by Fox due to imagery of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
84 Lumber was one of many companies that included themes of diversity into their advertisements, a timely message in the wake of a new federal government. Though I and other partygoers welcomed the messages affirming diversity in our society, I couldn’t shake the sense that something was amiss in celebrating these ads. Two key puzzles remained for me: first, the implications for how messages are conveyed in these ads; second, the lessons we take from them.
To the first point, I’ll draw on a concept from communications theorist Marshall McLuhan: the medium is the message. At its core, this means that the methods by which we communicate—written word, audio, video, or otherwise—shape the meanings of what we say. Imagine this essay in video format: as a plain scroll of text, it wouldn’t be very interesting. In the written medium, consumers can perceive ideas in their own image, but there aren’t the same visual cues or eye-catching moments that you get from aural and visual productions. We can imagine a mother and daughter traveling across a continent using this sentence, but we cannot comprehend the scope of their efforts without the artistry of a short film.
The lessons we take from advertisements is the second point of concern, and another communications theory helps to explain how to understand them. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno argue that Kulturindustrie is the way in which people use mass media in order to craft a narrative about the world and make people complacent in their beliefs. In discussing film, Horkheimer and Adorno say that mass market film “trains those exposed to it to identify film directly with reality.”
In this sense, there is a two-stage communication going on in commercials: companies are using television advertisements to shape emotional cues around a subject, and using those cues to shape the lessons we take about the company. For 84 Lumber, they create imagery of an arduous journey and tie it to a message of opportunity—that is, the mother and daughter’s hard work will be rewarded with acceptance in America. (Left unspoken is the question of whether or not current Americans have put that level of effort into citizenship.)
Does it make sense for a company like 84 Lumber to use immigration in an ad? To an extent, yes. Construction and other blue-collar jobs make up a majority of positions for undocumented workers, so affirmations of immigration make sense for the company. But when the rubber meets the road, what exactly is the company going to do to help immigrants get jobs in the U.S.? Will they sponsor green cards so new immigrants can work for them? Will they lobby for immigration reform?
I’m hard-pressed to answer anything but a firm “no” to these questions. The company’s Twitter feed offers an explanation that this commercial touches represents a “symbolic journey toward becoming legal American citizens.” In an interview with People Magazine, 84 Lumber CEO Maggie Hardy Magerko called the wall “a need,” saying it represented “security” for America. This runs up against the hard facts that not only are immigrants less likely to commit crime than natural citizens, but also that illegal immigration from Mexico is near a record low. She sees the ad as an opportunity to celebrate the hard work of the mother and daughter, but Hardy Magerko makes no mention of corporate efforts to improve the lives of immigrants.
I see and hear a lot of disconnect between political belief and reality living in Western Pennsylvania. While the best features of Pittsburgh—the region’s cultural center—are a product of its diversity, the surrounding area struggles with economic hardship and rigid xenophobia. I’ve heard people openly complain about biracial children, ballot access for minorities, and jobs going to “people who can’t speak English.” The grand irony, of course, is that the region is filled with people whose ancestors were not considered white when arriving in America. Their children’s families crossed ethnic lines; their political rights were crippled by companies like Carnegie Steel; their jobs were sent overseas by people who speak English—and the language of greed.
So while 84 Lumber has an economic and cultural connection to immigration, there are two points that undermine the message in the ad. First, we aren’t dealing exclusively with the legality of immigration. Rather, this is part of an overall effort to dehumanize people of color, including Hispanic and Latinx people. Our new president said Mexico is sending rapists across the border—and “some” good people. It’s language that reflects an illness of the soul, a moral compass pointed firmly towards evil. Americans have worked for centuries to overcome the sins of their fellow citizens through battles in legislative bodies, the courts, and the fields of places like Antietam and Gettysburg. These are sins we cannot afford to give new life to, and they cannot be
Second, we’re facing a challenge in which immigrants are not defined by their worth as individuals, but are defined in what they provide to America. Look on the internet and you are sure to find story after story about how immigrants and refugees are opening new businesses and beautifying neighborhoods. This lets those of us who are rooted in America off the hook: we don’t ask ourselves if we, as a society, are doing enough to provide for those who are most in need of help. Companies like 84 lumber have to not just preach support for diversity, but they must also take action to ensure that these aspirations are met.
At face value, the political themes in these advertisements do not invoke complacency in audiences. But when consumers uncritically accept the messages of these companies, we are not simply being complacent, but also complicit in using diversity against itself. Now is not the time to be complicit or complacent. We must not only affirm messages of diversity—we must loudly and righteously demand it.
Brain Nourishment 