Kendall Jenner Ad Is Not The First Time Pepsi Has Ridiculed And Demeaned A Protest — There Was FTII Before

While going through my morning dose of reading, I bumped into this medium piece about a Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner (suggest you watch the ad before reading any further). Whoa! It felt like I have been living under a rock in some Saharan desert. Little more reading and damn, this had in fact been huge. There has been so huge a backlash that the Pepsi has now taken down their ad. They say, “ Pepsi was trying to project a global message of unity, peace and understanding. Clearly we missed the mark, and we apologize. We did not intend to make light of any serious issue. We are removing the content and halting any further rollout. We also apologise for putting Kendall Jenner in this position.”

Bernice King, daughter of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. tweeted,

If only Daddy would have known about the power of #Pepsi. pic.twitter.com/FA6JPrY72V

— Be A King (@BerniceKing) April 5, 2017

Most of the controversy, I hear is over the stark similarity of image the ad portrays at the end. Kendall Jenner hands a Pepsi can to a rather ‘cute’ policeman against the now iconic image of Ieshia Evans.

Iconic image from ‘Black Lives Matter’ protests.

A prominent member of the Black Lives Matter movement, DeRay Mckesson had this to tweet,

If I had carried Pepsi I guess I never would've gotten arrested. Who knew?

— deray mckesson (@deray) April 5, 2017

Some are also pointing out how Jenner threw her wig at a Black hair stylist. And then there are more. But for a Indian (myself) looking at all this from India, I just have been scratching my head over all the backlash. Why? Because Pepsi had already mocked a prominent protest by students at a University here and no one batted an eye.

Students from Film and Television Institute of India (FTII) have been protesting against the appointment of television actor Gajendra Chauhan as president of the FTII because he was from ruling dispensation, favored most of government policies, so on and so forth. People saw the protest as against the government at large (and BJP) by classifying the protesters as ‘left wing’ etc. But a little reading would have enlightened anyone that it was not just that. They were protesting not just against Gajendra Chauhan but also the appointment of four of the eight members appointed as member of the governing council under ‘Persons of Eminence’ category. All four had strong Hindu right wing connection — now if that’s right or wrong is different debate. But this was the move students were protesting against. When a similar question was posed to Vikas Urs, secretary of the FTII Students’ Association, he said, “Students did not oppose the appointment Vinod Khanna despite the fact that he was a BJP MP at the time of his appointment as the chairperson of the FTII’s governing council. It was because he is an artist and knows art. Our fight is not against a person or a party. Our fight is against the vision of the government and the visible degradation of the premier institution.”

This protest went on for 139 days with relay fasting, rallies and all sorts of acts a protest includes. And then Pepsi came with below advertisement ridiculing students who rallied against what they believed in and sat on hunger strike for days demanding action and removal.

Pepsi Thi, Pi Gaya — There was Pepsi, I drank it! How cool?

Some articles were written how this was “not cool” but apart from that, nothing substantial came out. No apology, no clarification.

To speak for myself, I personally believe in free speech, my government does or not is another matter but I do. So although I disliked the ad , I kept quite. But today when I read about the whole scene that played out in US, I wonder if I (or fellow Indians) were wrong to ignore this trivialization of protest from Pepsi or yatra.com (which mocked Kanhaiya Kumar and protests at JNU, another University that raised its voice against government intrusion in educational institutions). Or is it that the Indians are comfortable with people making fun of their protests by and large against the Americans?

The protests don’t just happen on their own. You can’t just pull out a mike from airport desk and start sloganeering (like yatra.com ad portrays). Huge amount of thought, pain and emotions go into a protest. People don’t just arrive on street to get a pretty picture in tomorrow’s newspaper, they do so to fight against the injustice meted out to them. There are protests where people lose their life fighting for their cause, give away food for 16 long years, stand in water for days, monks who have set fire to themselves and lot lot more. They don’t do it for kicks or for you to trivialize them another day or be a meme, they do it for their rights which governments and big corporations snatch away from them, against injustices meted out to them.

Don’t trivialize protests. Don’t mock them. Just don’t. It is not easy to go out, stand and raise voice against the powerful. Not all have courage to do so. But few do, few go out there, stand and face the might of people in power. They don’t just overcome fear but also tear gas, pellet guns, water cannons, lathi charge and god knows what. Don’t belittle their actions.

Leaving you with this…