On Super Bowl Sunday, the one time a year I become something even slightly resembling a football fan, one of my favorite parts of the whole thing is watching the commercials. Super Bowl babies? Puppies and horses? Um, yeah. Sign me up.
This year, the lineup of Super Bowl ads had, to me, a slightly different tone (save for Mr. Clean making household chores sexy). They were all remarkably, well, political. And poignant. And beautiful. The blend of different faces that told everyone in America that #WeAccept was an important statement, and Budweiser’s depiction of one German immigrant’s journey to America to go on to form Anheuser-Busch was inspiring and unapologetic in its views on what, exactly, makes America great.
What really swept me away, though, was a story of a young girl and her mother traveling from Mexico to the United States- on foot. It was an advertisement for 84 Lumber, which is, of all things, a building supply store. Only about half of the commercial was aired during the Super Bowl, as the second half was deemed “too controversial” to air on TV. At the end of the unaired segment, the mother and daughter finally arrive at the border after risking life and limb on their journey, and they are met with-you guessed it-a massive wall.
Well, I thought the commercial was amazing. I shared it on Facebook, I cried, I showed my friends. I thought that it was an interesting coincidence that a building company was making this commercial, but didn't think critically about it. It was then that I found out, it was pretty much a whole lot of manipulation. It was pro-Trump advertising that disguised itself as progressive and tolerant which, clearly, I desperately wanted it to be.
The part of the advertisement that showed the mother and her daughter looking up at the wall was basically right out of a Trump quote: he promised a "big beautiful door" to let in the immigrants who came to the United States legally (because some are good people, right?). Lumber 84 also made it very clear that this family was one who entered the country legally, effectively criminalizing those who don't- because they can't. Also, watching the commercial with a new eye...did anyone else notice the white guy coming to let them in and open the door at the end? Hello, white savior complex. To top it all off, the CEO of Lumber 84 is, herself, a Trump supporter.
Well, there it is. I knew this commercial was important, but the reasons I thought it was were all wrong. It is important, but not because it shows the welcoming nature of America, which is itself, at this point in our history, pretty questionable. What I thought was something that depicted the wall as a monstrosity actually glorifies it, and makes the prospect of entering the country legally seem like something that can be done easily, by anyone, which is baloney. That is why people do it illegally, not because they are criminals. Because it is hard, and frequently, virtually (or actually) impossible.
The thing I previously liked about the commercial was that it humanized immigrants, something which I argued should not be necessary, but in the era of Trump, the era of "bad hombres," inevitably, is. But it did so to only to achieve the company's own goals, to guise themselves as a progressive institution, even though they will likely benefit from the construction tremendously (yeah, I said it).
My article has changed drastically since I've realized what this commercial really means, what it really stands for. But I chose to keep one paragraph because it still does, and always will, apply:
These are the people that embody the American Dream that we
hold so dearly: a better life for our children, by any means necessary. Their
struggle, and their perseverance through that struggle, should be celebrated,
not criminalized, and certainly not boiled down to an angry tweet or soundbite.
These are the struggles of our ancestors, the struggles that made us who we are. The struggles that made America great the first time.
That is still true. But also, screw that commercial.
