A CULTURE WAR RECKONING FOR CORPORATE AMERICA

National Review

 

A Culture-War Reckoning for Corporate America

By JIM GERAGHTY

May 31, 2023 10:04 AM

 

On the menu today: You can try to ignore the ongoing culture wars in the United States, but it seems like every day there’s some new case of a corporation willingly tying its brand to some spectacularly controversial figure, group, or idea — Bud Light, Target, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and perhaps an upcoming film from the entertainment mega-conglomerate Disney. The odd thing is that these branding choices keep spurring boycotts and blowing up in companies’ faces — for example, Modelo is now on pace to pass Bud Light as the number-one beer brand in America. Are corporate boardrooms watching? Are they willing to learn the hard lesson being taught by America’s consumers?

 

Bud Light, Corporate America, and the Devil

 

A headline in New York magazine laments, “Bud Light, Target, and a New Era of Corporate Caution.”

 

A new era of corporate caution? Don’t threaten me with a good time.

 

Imagine a beer company that just wanted to make good beer and sell it to you. Imagine if that company wanted to sell beer to everyone but didn’t feel that its job was to make you more accepting of transgender individuals, any more than it felt its job was to warn you about the national debt or teach you the value of standardized testing in public schools or warn you about North Korea’s intercontinental-missile program. Imagine a beer company that liked its existing customer base and didn’t feel a need to reeducate those customers and get them to give up their “fratty, kind of out-of-touch humor.”

 

Imagine an everything store like Target that wanted everyone to shop there, but that had the good sense to realize that partnering with a brand that had “Satanist-inspired merchandise” was not the way to win over shoppers in a country that is still roughly two-thirds Christian. (Also note that almost every faith has a devil figure, so there’s no reason to think non-Christian religious customers are big fans of Satanic branding, either.) You want to put rainbows and “PRIDE” on your merchandise, go right ahead. It’s a free country. But if you partner up with a “Satan Respects Pronouns”* designer, don’t be shocked when lots of people choose to shop elsewhere.

 

Imagine a sports team that declared everyone was welcome but didn’t formally and publicly roll out the welcome mat for the quasi-pornographic Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. (Is the promotion worth it if you’re alienating your team’s star pitcher?) Last year, the Los Angeles Dodgers led Major League Baseball in attendance; with the exception of 2020, the Dodgers have led MLB in attendance for the past nine seasons. Marketing the Dodgers in Los Angeles is like marketing water in the desert. The Dodgers don’t need to reach out to the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence fanbase; they’re choosing to reach out, because someone in the organization likes that message. The irony is that a significant chunk of the attending fans, as well as the players, are Christian.

 

Hey, does any gay-rights group want to dress up as Muslim imams? Nah? Okay. We know the score. It’s safe to pick on Catholics, because Catholics are going to turn the other cheek and ignore you or offer mild protest. Dress up in drag to mock Muslims and there’s a good chance you’ll get firebombed. We saw this with the publication of Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses, we saw this with the Muhammad cartoons, we saw this with Charlie Hebdo magazine over in France, and we see it now. What those who enjoy mocking Christianity ought to fear is the day that certain Christians look at the Muslims and realize intimidation, threats, and violence are an effective way to make their faith un-mockable. American society is perfectly okay with threats of violence in response to blasphemous speech, but we only tolerate it for certain faiths. There are good reasons to doubt that double standard is sustainable.

 

(This marks the most uses of the word “Satanic” in the history of the Morning Jolt.)

 

Imagine a social-media company that just let you follow whom you wanted to follow and didn’t “throttle” or “shadowban” certain users or posts that it deemed socially unacceptable. We don’t have some sort of “moderator” regulating offline conversation, and there’s no Silicon Valley determining whom you’re allowed to talk to or befriend in the real world.

 

There’s a new Indiana Jones movie coming out. There’s a rumor going around that a scene features the new young feminine character lecturing Indiana Jones about stealing from indigenous peoples. I emphasize rumor, because the film was screened at the Cannes film festival, and that line hasn’t been mentioned in the reviews — and that seems like the sort of thing that at least one reviewer would mention.

 

But assuming for a moment that the scene is in the movie, or was perhaps filmed and cut . . . is there a single Indiana Jones fan out there who wants to see their hero getting lectured about stealing from indigenous peoples and the legacy of colonialism? Who in their right mind would possibly think that this was a key bit of dialogue in an Indiana Jones movie, or that the hero’s past methods needed to be rebuked, or that the titular hero needs to be put in his place by a more culturally sensitive modern voice? (I can already hear the comments section shouting, “Kathleen Kennedy, that’s who!”)

 

A few years back, I showcased this amazing amateur animation project, envisioning what an Indiana Jones Saturday morning cartoon would look like. It’s about two minutes, and it’s a perfect distillation of the fun and excitement of Indiana Jones — the far corners of the Earth, the old temples lit by torches and full of cobwebs, the deathtraps, the Nazis and/or generic Central European fascists, the literal and metaphorical cliffhangers, the last second escapes, the snakes and other deadly animals, the swinging on a bullwhip, the historical legends and hints of the occult, the chases of every kind, the fights of every kind, and the goofy sidekicks.

 

You know what’s not in there? Lectures about colonialism.

 

There are interesting debates about whether museums in the West are full of relics, treasures, art, and other artifacts that ought to be returned to their country of origin. In the not-so-distant past, prominent museums such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art used methods we would associate with smuggling. You can tell good stories about efforts to steal back artifacts and works of art from Western museums to return them to the countries where they were originally created.

 

But none of that is relevant to the fantasy, adventure, and thrills in the world of Indiana Jones. The realm of this character already has an extremely well-established tone, style, and worldview. These stories have always featured a clear dividing line between our heroes and our villains. Indy’s rough around the edges, but his heart is always in the right place. The villains are always irredeemably evil, and in some cases, literal Nazis. Having a “good” character tell the audience that Indy was morally wrong in his exploits all along undermines everything that’s come before. The Indiana Jones series already taught us about archeology — that it is the ongoing and ever-evolving study of a fascinating and long-forgotten past that can teach us important lessons and new and innovative . . . er, ways to kill Nazis. Of course Indiana Jones violated just about every conceivable method of careful and diligent archeology; that’s why he was denied tenure.

 

Why does everything have to be a lecture these days? Why do things that were once entertaining and apolitical suddenly need to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into becoming some sort of heavy-handed socially relevant lesson? Why are so many brands, products, and forms of entertainment suddenly controlled by joyless ideologues who seem to hate them as they are, and only see them as a useful tool for sociopolitical propaganda? Why are so many people determined to suck the fun out of everything?

 

The irony is that, so far, turning the marketing and branding controls over to the most woke and anti-Christian Left is working out terribly for Bud Light, Target, and the Los Angeles Dodgers. Unsurprisingly, lots of people don’t like being lectured, particularly if they suspect the lecturing is coming from some left-wing 20-something or 30-something marketing executive who can barely conceal his or her contempt for the existing customer base.

 

The top executives at Anheuser-Busch realized, far too late, that the Bud Light marketing efforts had been hijacked by a bunch of woke youngsters who didn’t really think their job was to use progressive agenda to sell Bud Light; the marketing department believed its job was to use Bud Light to sell the progressive agenda. Now, the company is buying back unsold spoiled inventory and, in some situations, literally giving the beer away for free.

 

Collin Rugg notes, “According to Bump Williams Consulting and NielsonIQ data, Modelo is on pace to pass Bud Light as the number one beer brand.”

 

If know-nothing marketers can wreck a brand such as Bud Light, they can wreck just about any other company’s image. Do the managers of the Fortune 500 companies realize this? Do they care? Do they want to heed the lessons?

 

*Does Satan respect pronouns? The whole point is that he wants to spread misery and lead humanity down the darkest path, to separation from God and up to our necks in all the troubles in the world — war, chaos, pain, abuse, ego, turning away from our brothers and sisters when they need us most. I’m not sure Satan really respects anyone or anything; we are warned, “Even the devil can quote scripture for his own purposes.” If the Devil seems to be respecting something that you respect, it’s probably a trick. Those who identify as transsexual have enough challenges in this life; I don’t think they need the added difficulties and burdens of making the public argument that Satan is the good guy here.

     

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