Select Month
- academia advocacy Afghanistan artist artists biennial Bilbao Brian Eno Bush camera Cheney Chris Matthews college commerce commercial community building containment creative thinking creativity culture jamming dancing deaths death toll Democracy Design Documentary drama film free free speech Gehry graphic design history immigrants immigration Iraq Iraqi civilians Iraqi refugees Israel London Manhattan Mapping maps McCain memory Mexican border Middle East movie music New Museum noise Obama Palestinians Palin play politics Popular Culture prisoners profit race Republicans segregation separation sound surveillance Tate Museum terrorism terrorist Theater Top Girls toys university US troops war website
Meta
bordertalksblog.com 
You know, this reminds me of Benetton (as in “The United Colors of….”), where it was sooooooo inclusive, what with all the different skin and hair colors of the models and the different races of the models. And, of course, the different sexual orientations of the models, as implied in their poses with each other (kiss-kiss, bang-bang). It’s so easy to be a unifier AND a revolutionary under the national flag of the Almighty Greenback. Almost makes you forget they want you to buy their clothes.
With this ad Absolut wants to draw upon (or revive or even invent) nostalgia for an earlier time in Mexican history in order to create brand loyalty and generate sales. The Mexican consumer buying Absolut (a global company with origins in Sweden) is doing so as a loyal Mexican act, a faux political statement that is really a corporate manipulation.
Yet I also know that Absolut advertised in gay American publications when many other corporations were more than reluctant to support these newspaper and magazines, allowing gay and lesbians publications to survive or even prosper. Absolut continues to market heavily to the gay niche–again this is sound business, but it also allows a minority group to gain media representation through glbt-owned and/or oriented business.
This map ad also reminds citizens in both nation-states that the borders “shared” by Mexico and the U.S. have long been contested and are not fixed. The post 1848 Southwestern region of the U.S has strong Mexican traditions long before the recent waves of “immigration.” The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, even as it robbed Mexico of so much of its land, guaranteed the property and civil rights of the Mexican residents who remained in what then became part of U.S. territory. In a sense to call someone of Mexican ancestry an immigrant is actually a falsehood.
Remember that the Treaty that ended the Mexican-American war occurred only 9 years after the publication of John l. O’Sullivan’s Manifest Destiny, which justified the expansion for the U.S. as a form of enlightenment. We are still prisoner of this flawed document, enabling this government to abandon constitutional restraint in order to advance the conquest of Iraq.
Truth be told, I might choose Absolut over Stoli tonight…
Well, I’m glad to hear that Absolut, as a corporation, has been ahead of the curve with their support of publications geared toward glbt communities. It’s true that many companies make no effort whatsever to do business in a socially progressive way, even when it could make them more money. So maybe they are now on the forefront of a new information wave: history narrative in the form of an ad. After all, we learn more about current events on Saturday Night LIve than we do on the evening news.
[…] commercial enterprise—see Esteban Chavez’s blog entry about Absolut’s print campaign, “La Frontera,” April 6), and by individuals are tracking their own histories and a re-imagining daily […]