I'm sure you've seen the commercial on TV; if not, search
YouTube with relevant keywords "dodge", "
nitro", and "
sirius".
A group of people in the all-new, spacious Dodge
Nitro are looking for a space in a parking lot, but the only one available is next to a luxury car whose driver had not taken the time to park sufficiently carefully (more on the sense of entitlement rich people exhibit in a future post). The Dodge
Nitro is able to squeeze into the space, but none of the passengers can exit the vehicle, as they are too close to vehicles on either side to open the doors. The driver says something along the lines of, "Don't worry; I got it," and proceeds to change the station on his Sirius satellite radio apparatus to Hip Hop nation, and proceeds thence to jack the volume
waaay up. We the audience watch as the thumping bass causes the luxury car to submissively skulk back into its own parking space. Cut to the interior of the car, where all the passengers smile approvingly and open their doors, now able to exit the all-new, spacious Dodge
Nitro. Cut to exterior, where all the cars in the immediate vicinity are cowered in a hulking circle a safe distance from the
Nitro.
Where have we seen this scenario before? Loud, bass-thumping black people (according to Professor M. Richards, the new PC term is Afro-Americans) come into an urban area and scare the living daylights out of the wealthy white people, who flee as fast as they can, leaving the inner city an empty shell and situating themselves in a circle of outlying suburbs. Dodge is using a parable of white flight to sell its all-new, spacious
Nitro.
"But, wait!" you interject; "thou dost protest too much, for seventy-five per cent of the people in the
Nitro are white, and so thus how can white people in a
Nitro represent the criminal element who induce white flight?" Hey, it's not my fault if Dodge is confusing its metaphors; the core element of rap music (= black) driving away luxury cars (= white) remains the same.
Labels: advertising, criticism