By David Futrelle
So there’s a new Nissan ad featuring Brie Larson, and the internet’s biggest babies want you to think that they’re OUTRAGED.
I mean, maybe they really are outraged, I don’t know, but whether they’re sincere or just faking it, these performatively angry dudes (and a few dudettes) want us all to know about it. They’re trying to make Nissan into the next Gillette, yelling and screaming on social media, making videos, and doing all they can to convince the folks at Nissan that getting “woke” will make them broke.
The subject of all this alleged outrage is actually a rather tame commercial, a generally uninspired and unoriginal attempt to use “girl power” to sell cars. In the ad, we see a woman and her boss standing outside eating tacos from a truck. He tells her she’s not getting a promotion; she looks crushed. Suddenly Brie Larson appears in a brand-new NISSAN SENTRA!!! and tells her to “drop the taco, get in the car.”
Larson then takes the poor office worker on a speedy tour of the nearby streets, highlighting the car’s allegedly superb handling and some new feature that keeps you from backing into things. The idea is that if Nissan doesn’t “compromise” in kitting out this new model Sentra, the office worker shouldn’t compromise at her job. Larson deposits her new friend back at the taco truck and she stalks back to her boss to (we assume) demand the promotion she was unfairly denied.
Somehow this is supposed to make all sensible people FURIOUS. And indeed, a quick survey of some of the spots inhabited by the internet’s most furious reveals the standard outrage. In the comments to a YouTube video in which Larson explains her thoughts about the ad, internet piss babies drop their little bombs.
“Nissan. You went Full Gillette. You never go Full Gillette. “
“Nissan: Get In loser, we’re going bankrupt.”
“Just like that I’m no longer considering Nissan for my next car”
“‘He who goes woke, inevitably goes broke.’Old /pol/ish proverb”
“Now I have to sell my Nissan, thanks Brie. You blank face plank of wood.”
“I love watching companies burn to the ground. It’s quite entertaining.”
“Thanks to women like this, and companies like nissan, we are ushering in a new conservative age around the world!! Please, keep making ads like this, it will ensure atleast another decade of conservative rule. “
“BRANDS BE ADVISED, Going “woke” will lose you my business, I understand on the surface this whole “social justice” thing might seem like a positive force that promotes equality, but I assure you it’s not. Wokeness is an authoritarian extremist ideology of moral absolutism with nearly all the characteristics of a cult.”
And so on and so on.
On Twitter there were similar cries of anguish and anger.
“Congrats on your misandry, Nissan! Great marketing!” complained one Tweeter sarcastically.
“Dammit I just bought a Maxima and now it’s tainted with Brie Larson’s narcissism,” whined another. “Why, Nissan? WHY!?”
“Customers ain’t playing with Nissan acting like a simp for flatbooty clout,” added another.
No, I’m not quite sure what that last one means either, unless “flatbooty” is a synonym for feminist or something.
And if course there were the YouTube videos from the professional outrage-sellers.
It’s all a bit pathetic, really.
Yes, I rather doubt any of these outrage merchants care what I think. But this particular outrage campaign doesn’t seem to be catching on in some places where you’d think it would be an easy sell. Take the Men’s Rights subreddit, where the commercial has elicited some of the requisite outrage but also some yawns.
“Ehhhhhhhhhh… No,” wrote one commenter of the outrage campaign.
[The ad is] saying nothing different than what Jordan Peterson says when it comes to assertiveness and the wage gap. ..
Good for girls isn’t necessarily bad for boys.
“I see no issue with this,” added another commenter. “It’s just ‘don’t let women compromise.’ It doesn’t hurt men AT ALL.”
If this is the reaction from people in the Men’s Rights subreddit, maybe this manufactured outrage is getting a little stale, huh?
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@Couch Thing
I’ll do my best to translate:
I think that means “the progressive left wants me to act a little bit more respectfully towards groups I hate, so I’m going to project onto them that they are a cult.”
Projection is everything with these folks, conservatives form all kinds of personality and ideology cults.
I had the opportunity recently to try out one of the Nissan models, a compact car that I thought was really cute. I thought it was nice. It handled well, but felt a little cramped.
Other than that, the ad, and everything else is bog standard, and unremarkable stuff. Apparently, these guys have not learned that being (faux) mad about this kind of thing probably makes a company a little more money than if they simply ignored it, and went on with their lives.
I think all of this is just about Brie anyway. These guys have got a serious mad on for her, and will probably act like this, no matter where in the public sphere she appears, or what she does. I mean, she is a pretty, white, woman who just ain’t acting right, so we can expect this type of silliness whenever she appears in public.
@Lakitha K Tolbert
Interestingly, one of the other times I remember them getting mad at her was also motor vehicle related, when she stole a motorcycle in a movie and they demanded her arrest. For acting. In a movie.
I want to say that these men probably feel pathetic being men but I think there’s something else in play behind their actions like this. Some I think simply believe that nature or God are destined to “put women in their place”.
OT: Weinstein has been sentenced to 23 years!
Oh wow; Weinstein got 23 years!
We’ll be using the mitigation as an example of ‘how not to…’
ETA: Ninja’d by Moggie!
You guys should check the definition of Hatedumb on TvTropes, particularly the category of the “Un-PC Crusader” which fits their rants.
A couple things I think are worth underscoring:
— It’s always telling that these right-wing reactionary videos, while undoubtedly lucrative, rely on the same handful of scarce examples to provide content. Whether it’s Brie Larson, Lady Ghostbusters or “Big Red,” there’s so little excess with respect to women’s representation (or that of other marginalized groups) that they have to really dig deep for things to get outraged about.
— The nugget of truth that rests at the core of their content (upon which they smuggle in their reactionary agenda) is the absurd pandering that these ads represent. People know when they’re being manipulated by a profit-seeking conglomerate and if I saw this ad at a movie theatre, I’d roll my eyes hard enough for them fall out of my skull. I really wish these damned companies would stop adopting the language and veneer of empowerment and social justice in service of their own bottom-line. It would at least deny reactionaries this kind of low-hanging fruit.
OT, but I’ve been enjoying this funky New Wave tune from the Manhunter sountrack:
Just as follow-up to the Silence of the Lambs conversation from a couple threads back, I’ve gotta admit to being torn between Michael Mann’s 1986 effort and 2002’s Red Dragon. The latter rises and falls almost entirely on Ralph Fiennes’s performance as Dolarhyde. Not that Tom Noonan was bad in the role, but Fiennes I think captures the intensity of Dolarhyde’s Red Dragon persona a bit better. You almost wish you could mix and match, but they are two very different films, especially in terms of tone. I think Mann played it right with his choice of style: the novel Red Dragon is not Silence and shouldn’t be aping its aesthetics. The 2002 film comes off as a poor imitation of the award-winning thriller, but with an obviously phoning-it-in Hopkins, while Manhunter has visuals, great music and a superior cast headed by a young William Petersen.
If you haven’t seen Manhunter, it’s worth seeing just for that.
Weinstein’s hefty sentence is from the NY trial, and no doubt he’ll appeal, if he doesn’t go the way of Epstein first. But he still faces charges in LA.
Interesting how Captain Marvel is in four of those covers, while Thor isn’t apparently in the Thor one.
And nothing is cuter than a cat using Groot as a scratching post before pouncing on Rocket’s twitching tail. There needs to be a cat in Guardians Vol. 3. 🙂
off-topic ranting…
I’ve lost 11% of my retirement since last Friday. I’ve always been “Ford, Coca-Cola, and Democrats”… Ford is on life support, the Democratic party is dead….
at least Coca-Cola is still good….
Fuck this life-cycle….
@ Katamount:
But they got BIG shovels….
Yeah. It’s pretty common for variant covers to correlate even less with the actual content of the title/issue than the regular ones. I’ve seen things like for example a reused 90’s Jim Lee pin-up featuring Emma Frost on an issue of Gwenpool.
It’s generally the result of ordering/making the cover first and thinking what book to put it on later.
@ malitia
I’ll have to check them out. I like that ‘superflat’ style.
I’m not sure you’ll find much, as their only works published in the west were very much these variant covers and a two page back-up strip in the first issue of Black Cat.
I think Nissan really cares what these guys think or more accurately do. They want the outrage are counting on it. hbomberguy pegged this spot on
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=06yy88tLWlg
@mothkiller
There is something I like very much about how these guys are helping sell more products with their outrage. This happened with Gillette when they bought razors just to throw them away. I wonder if they will buy Nissan cars just to wreck them.
Not sure if it fits under the Streisand Effect, but that’s the closest phenomenon I can think of to what’s going on.
@mothkiller:
As a fan, I just want to say: F͏͈̼̘̲̩ͅR̲̲̭̫̹Ḛ̕E̩̥ ̤Y̲̳̙̥O͙̭͔̪̘̖͔U̪͍͚̗͇͔̭͟R̜̥̖̬ ҉̱S̷̞KI̪̺̤̮̗̝̪͡N͈͔̫̜̦̺
@ mothkiller (that’s not nice! moths are our friends!) and, I think Moggie made the same point….
I stand corrected, and thanx for that vid link, it was great!!
@ Naglfar:
I think it’s the “right-wing-douchebags-think-people-care-about-their-crybaby-issues” effect
@Weird
Mothkiller is in honor of my cat. She used to hunt bugs all the time. Then one day she killed a moth in mid-flight. Looked super pleased with herself and just flat out stopped hunting bugs. She decided to retire on top I guess! After I put my cat to sleep about 5 years ago I started using the handle when possible. (And yes my avatar is her when she was enjoying so lap sitting pets)
OT: Harvey Weinstein got 23 years!
@Naglfar
You beat me to it. This is precisely the way conservatives “boycott” things: they buy a bunch of them and destroy them, for symbolic effect. They did it to their Gillettes, their keurig machines, Kaepernic jerseys, and now (probably) their cars.
Makes you wonder what they really meant all those years when they kept telling liberals and progressives to “boycott” people and companies they did not agree with.
@Diego Duarte
Of course, when progressives do stop buying a product or supporting a person/group (aka a boycott), the right wingers declare that we are “canceling” people or companies and throw fits about “cancel culture.”
Good, hopefully he dies in there.
@Lainy
He probably will, seeing as he’s 67 it’s unlikely he’d make it to 90 in prison.