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Nike’s Colin Kaepernick ad is probably the brand’s most controversial ad yet.

In 2016, Nike featured Colin Kaepernick in their 30th anniversary “Just Do It” campaign, calling Kaepernick “one of the most inspirational athletes of this generation.” The ad features Kaepernick’s face overlaid with the tagline: “Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.” The tagline referred to Kaepernick’s peaceful protest. 

So who is Colin Kaepernick?

Kaepernick, a former NFL quarterback, became a controversial figure when he started a social justice movement to protest police brutality against African-Americans by kneeling on the field during the national anthem in 2016. President Donald Trump called Kaepernick “son of bitches” and criticized his action as disrespectful to the country

How did people respond? 

The ad generated a huge buzz on social media; it had become a popular meme format for all ages as people produce their own unique versions of the campaign to display their views on the issue. Critics of the Nike campaign used the ad’s format and replaced it with other figures like Pat Tillman, a former NFL star who quit the NFL to join the army after 9/11 and died in combat, to protest Kaepernick’s presence in the ads. This meme was even retweeted by president Trump to shame protesting NFL players.

Other memes that adopted ads’ format have been replaced with familiar faces of celebrities in the worlds of politics, music, film, and sports to make a political statement and poke fun of those figures

Indeed, Donald Trump Jr used his father’s face to replace Kaepernick’s face and posted his own version of the meme on Instagram with the caption “There, fixed it for you,” expressing his support for his father’s view on the issue that to kneel during the national anthem is unpatriotic.

#BoycottNike 

The Kaepernick Nike ad started a literal fire. Protesters took it to social media to burn their Nike gears and cut Nike logo from their socks to boycott the brand. The trending hastag included #JustBurnIt and #BoycottNike. 

President Trump even tweeted: “Just like the NFL, whose ratings have gone WAY DOWN, Nike is getting absolutely killed with anger and boycotts.”

Woke or not? 

Memes that parody the ad have also been used against Nike to protest against the company’s internal ethical struggle. Critics pointed out that Nike is abusing its workers and sweatshop labors behind the progressive veil of fighting for social justice. 

Quick drop

In response to the boycott, Nike’s share price fell by nearly 4%.

Nevertheless, not all responses were bad

Supporters who applauded Nike’s embracement of an openly political figure couldn’t wait to support Nike. By using Kaepernick as the face of its campaign, Nike became a socially conscious brand and a visible advocate for equality and civil rights. Nike gained the support of millennials, whose views resonate with the ad’s appreciation for diversity and social justice. The ad caused millennials to double-down on their love for the brand through purchasing more of its products. 

Even famous people supported Nike publicly

Many celebrities and superstar players such as Kevin Bauchum, who plays for the New York Jets, and Nick Cannon used a raised fist emoji on their social media accounts to show support for Colin Kaepernick.

So who won? 

Nike. No publicity is bad. The ad was a smart move.

 Nike won in the long run because the boycott and trend to burn and throw away Nike gears is free advertising for Nike. The Kaepernick ad could become the company's most-liked Instagram post, drawing a lot of comments, even though many of those were critical of the company. As a result, Nike stock soared and was at an all-time high. According to data on the company’s online sales from Thomson Reuters Propriety Research, they sold out 61% more merchandise since the ad. Nike gained around 170,000 followers on Instagram in the wake of the campaign. 

Image Sources: 

https://astrologymemes.com/i/nike-uses-a-child-slave-labor-force-to-make-shoes-73780416c14241458d33dca51d75ada9

http://gph.is/2elltnJ

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6131717/Kaepernick-critics-use-image-deceased-NFL-star-Army-hero-Pat-Tillman-social-media.html

Instagram.com/donaldtrumpjr

instagram.com/nickcannon

https://www.forcbodiesonly.com/mopar-forum/threads/f-nike.42511/

https://gph.is/1hjG2YE

https://gph.is/1izsKgy

Twitter.com/Panthers 

https://me.me/i/nike-uses-a-child-slave-labor-force-to-make-shoes-ab3cddfb758b4da2aaf909caa56bba2c

Twitter.com/RealJamesWoods

https://imgflip.com/i/2h7kxh

Leslie A. Hahner & Scott J. Varda’s “Yarn bombing and the Aesthetics of Exceptionalism” discusses the gender, class, and racial implications of yarn bombing. Yarn bombing or the practice of knitting objects and installing them without permission in public seeks to pursue political aims by beautifying the urban scene and spreading feelings of joy and warm fuzziness. To question or hate yarn bombing is like hating puppies and cuteness. Unlike graffiti that is aggressive, damaging and permanent, yarn bombing practice is considered an exceptional form of art as it is easily removable, inoffensive and not permanently attached to the structure or in ways that damage it.  However, Varda reminds us Yarn bombing is a sign of sexism and racists and classist supremacy. Yarn bombing demeans graffiti as a criminal transgression that is usually performed by poor,non-white bodies. The tagging of yarn bombing also appropriates symbols of black culture without its burden. Further, yarn bombing is gender and class-specific; it is a craft by and for white, middle-class women as knitting and crocheting require cultural and capital to afford pricey materials and extensive time for practice. Yarn bombing entrenches the association between women and domesticity, for it demonstrates how women’s labor is only applauded when they can show their domestic prowess.

Similarly, Samantha Close’s “Knitting Activism, Knitting Gender, Knitting Race” talks about how graffiti knitting is strictly practiced within white feminism and offers a critique on how it can become a more intersectional practice. By using Knitta Please as an example, Close demonstrates how graffiti knitting enables White activists to talk about gender and labor-based oppression while ignoring ethnicity and race-based oppression. Close suggests that knitters must not ignore problems of classism and racism and privileged white women must construct their identities differently so they can be out of order and out of place. White graffiti knitters who recognize the racial homogeneity as a problem should reach out to crafters of color and at the very least start a dialogue.

The first image is a yarn bombing piece in Bushwick. It demonstrates classism and sexism that is involved with knit graffiti. The color choice of the yarn such as pink and pastels are often associated with feminity. The intricate knitting displays superior knowledge and free time of middle-upper class women required to create such art. It is obvious that the art was created by a person of privilege as large amounts of yarn was used to create the puddle that drips from the fire hydrant. The juxtaposition of the piece allows it to directly critique the graffiti behind it. The placement of the piece also speaks to how upper-class women use poorer, run-down neighborhoods as a space for their portfolio and participates in gentrification, pushing less privileged, minorities out of the area.  

Anti logos

Harold’s “Anti Logos” discusses culture jamming and examines the opportunities and limitations of rhetorical strategies of ad parodies. Culture jamming is a movement that seeks to attack consumerism and disrupt corporations overconsumption through showing the “true logic” of ads that entice consumers to buy things. Two ways of culture jamming include parody and pranking. Parody poke fun at advertising and marketing campaigns while pranksters jams with the culture rather than against it. Despite the appeal of each method of culture jamming and its power to tell consumers that things are not as they should be, Harold critiques that their success is limited to challenge capitalism as they fail to offer alternatives beyond endless critique.  She proposes that the direct phrases and images used by Adbusters are just as fierce and direct as the original ad. Adbusters oversimplify the dynamic relationship consumers have with media images. Consumers don’t like to be told what to do or buy; we like to come to our own conclusion and make decisions for ourselves. One example that Harold mentions is Breast Cancer Fund’s attempt to raise awareness about breast cancer. The Breast Cancer Fund parodied Victoria’s Secret, Calvin Klein, and covers of Cosmopolitan magazine. They made them shocking and disturbing through featuring women who have lost a breast to bring public attention to the treatment of women, their breasts, and breast cancer. Though the parody sparked dialogues, it triggered the opposite of what they were trying to achieve; women were more terrified to get a diagnosis of breast cancer and were not going to the lab.

This image shows an example of a successful culture jamming method that diverged from the direct approach of Adbusters discussed in the reading. In 1993, the Barbie Liberation Organization sought to challenge traditional gender norms by switching the voice chips of a Barbie with a GI-Joe doll. Their tactic was effective because it was a less direct approach that allowed consumers to realize the problem with gender stereotypes on their own and make their own decisions.

Sarah Banet Weiser “We Are All Workers” argues that advertising is more than just economic tools that brands use to sell their products. Rather than merely persuading consumers to buy products, brands produce ads that sell emotions to build culture. Ads are about building memories, emotions, personal narratives, and expectations. To demonstrate how ads establish this relationship between consumers and corporations, she examines Levi’s Go-Forth 2010-11 ad and branding campaign. Levi’s establish an emotional relationship with consumers and allow them to feel safe, secure, relevant, and genuine through portraying the Great Recession of the twenty-first century as a personal rather than systematic problem that can be fixed by investing in consumer capitalism. They released a series of ads that display a rusty industrial town that was hard hit by the economic recession that is ready to be revitalized. The ads posited men as saviors who can save broken nation through selling qualities as competitiveness, individualism, willpower, and stoicism that characterize hegemonic masculinity. This strategy allowed Levi’s to have a long-standing place in the public American imagination.

The image taken from Colin Kaepernick’s tweet as a part of Nike’s Just Do It campaign exemplifies how brands use ads to sell more than just their product. Kaepernick is a Former San Francisco 49ers quarterback who protested racial injustice and police brutality in August 2016 by sitting during the national anthem.  Through using Kaepernick as a face of their campaign, Nike is associating its brand with social justice and inspire their consumers to take risks and beliefs in their own ability.

Advertising

In Image-Based Culture, Sut Jhally defines contemporary culture as consumer culture, one where the purchase of goods or services defines our happiness and our attitudes, values, and rituals become tied to objects. Ads promote the idea of what the audience thinks of as “the good life” and mirrors how people are dreaming to provoke an emotional response. Relying on visual modes of representation and rapidity of images to grab our attention and communicate instantly, advertising or the commodity image-system has far-reaching effects beyond satisfaction. Ads distort our perception of gender, making it become more synonymous with sexuality. In the realm of electoral politics, ads can shift our opinion about a political candidate by making them feel good or bad about them. Ads can define children’s imagination and the experience of children’s play through marketing a fantasy world based on gender, polarizing boys and girls at play. Further, ads changed how music commodities are marketed, allowing music videos to become part of the marketing experience.

On the other hand, Paul Messaris’ “Showing the Unspoken” in Visual Persuasion explores the relationship between advertising images and text. Messaris states that visual syntax is powerful in conveying messages that would have sounded exaggerated or presumptuous if put into words, particularly for ads involving social status and sex and romance. Art has been used indirectly in luxury product ads to signify status, implying the viewer possesses superior sophistication and taste to appreciate such representation. Visuals are also helpful in establishing the metaphorical connection between sex and a product, especially food, cars, liquors, and cigarettes. For example, visuals implying sex as a metaphor are used in food ads to emphasize the food’s sensual delights, a connection that cannot be expressed explicitly through words.

The first image from a Burger King ad released in Singapore demonstrates how ads use visuals to suggest a sexual metaphor. Along with the caption that reads, “it’ll blow your mind away,” the ad features a picture of a phallic seven-inch sandwich entering the open mouth of a woman who looks surprised. No doubt this visual is attention-grabbing as viewers can make the connection right away that it is a blowjob imagery.

Food porn and digital culture

Erin McDonnell’s Food porn defines food porn as the aesthetic techniques and practices engaging sexual metaphor that are used to photograph food. Photographic techniques allow the photographer to shape the audience’s experience of food and bring about its pleasurable dimensions to invoke feelings of desire or envy. The zoom and depth of field give food a pornographic aesthetic through uncomfortable intimacy. Orientation and the presentation of food such as stilettos, crops, and props can also exoticize it, casting the familiar food in an unseen, seductive light. Framing situates food in a system of etiquette and social graces. Sometimes the material form of the food can be interpreted as sexual. There is endless food that are phallic symbols and sexual organs of women (i.e banana and tangerine).

Deborah Lupton’s Cooking, Eating, Uploading: Digital Food Cultures discusses how digital media platforms offer spaces for food cultures to grow. There is now more information about food and eating practices than ever before as social media such as Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat allows users to document their habits and their bodies. The proliferation of these posts build up communities around health, fitness, body size, ethical and sustainable food consumption. Lupton also explores how information consumers freely generated on social media are being used by companies for competitive analysis, branding and marketing strategies.

In the first image, the orientation and presentation of the steak cast the steak in a seductive light. The sliced piece allows viewers to sense the juiciness of the interior, causing them to salivate. The frame mimics the view of a person sitting at a table looking at this piece of steak. The zoom highlights the texture of the meat and the salt flakes that are sprinkled on it. The dark lighting is intentional to bring out the shine on the texture.  

Eugene Lee’s article discusses her playthrough Papers, Please, a game which casts the player as an immigrant inspector. She describes how the game requires the player to make choices that blur the boundaries between morality and rationality. Lee points out that no matter who the player doesn’t take with them will end up on the other side of the immigration checkpoint and can successfully escape to Obstiran only through illegitimate means. Moreover, she notes that the cinematics, characterization, plot development, and emotional sequence are scripted no differently than a film. 

On the other hand, Galloway’s Social Realism in Gaming suggests that there is a relationship between the game and the gamer. Galloway describes the relationship as realism. He argues that there is realism in the narrative, images, and in action. He believes that there is realism in action, for games, are an active medium that requires action and from the gamer to press buttons and control and so on. He also thinks that there is a social realism in the game, as the struggle depicted in the game corresponds to a real-life struggle and that games have political and social agendas.

Finally, Stephen Totilo’s It’s All Fun and Games, Even When It’s Menial Work talks about how games are presenting actual work and chores as fun. One example of those games is Diner Dash where players are asked to deliver food to many tables as possible within the time limit and as time goes on more and more customers arrive, making it harder to balance the workload. Totilo claims that through these games he could be every member of the workforce and “make [himself] a better suit of armor because of it.”

The first image is from the game ARMA 3. As one can see from the screenshot of the game, it is almost photographic. It is currently the most realistic military simulation game in the world. The gameplay mechanics also mimics reality in that players can get fatigue after running for long and freely look around without changing their aim position. This realism can have an adverse effect if the controller looks and movement feel like real life as violent motions can feel more natural.

With its roots in science, biometric technologies are seen as infallible and objective; they are believed to have mathematical precision without error or bias. This notion of surveillance is further shaped by popular culture. However, Simone Browne’s “Branding Blackness: Biometric Technology and the Surveillance of Blackness” shows us how biometric technologies are racialized. She examines the historical antecedents and social relations of biometrics and how it closely aligns with the commodification of blackness. She brings up an important point that though verification machines and biometric technologies are automated, the machines are designed and operated by real people. Thus, racial thinking shapes the research and development of biometric technology. As a result, structural violence exists within these technologies. Whiteness is privileged and made the normative in biometric systems, as white bodies are prototypical. In other words, biometric technologies they are designed to suit white bodies and lightness. For example, tagging applications and facial recognition systems tend to classify Africans as males and Mongoloid as females and black women as males and Asian men as female.

The first  image I chose is an example of white privilege in artificial intelligence softwares that are designed to recognize places, people, and objects in photos. The face identification program on Google auto-tagged a black couple as “gorillas.” This mistake demonstrates that these biometric softwares were not designed to recognize dark skinned faces. There is clearly a lot of work to be done to prevent these types of mistakes.

The Scientific Gaze

In Chapter 9, Sturken and Cartwright discuss how scientific looking is not isolated but rather dependent on social, political, and cultural meanings. The emergence of photography in the 19th century was an important development that allowed imagery from the scientific world to be seen even more truthful and objective. However, the authors note that scientific imagery comes with the influence of the authority behind it and may be used to a affirm a certain ideology and construct stereotypes about race and gender. For example, images were used in prison and hospital as visual markers of what is considered normal and abnormal, inviting the viewer to see the physical differences of how these people fit within the normal cultural standards and norms. The Visible Human project also demonstrated how images display traditional gender stereotypes as males were displayed in active states while women were presented in pregnant states.   

The first image I chose is a part of the Nazi propaganda used by the German Health Ministry in 1938. The chart shows what will happen if there is an increase in the reproduction of the “inferior” and a decrease in the reproduction of the “superior.” This image is not without its political and cultural meanings as it serves as an extension of Hitler’s aesthetic ideal and political agenda to justify the forced sterilization of the “inferiors.”

Sturken and Cartwright also talk about the theater of science and how surgery, bodies, and death had always been a site of fascination. The Leiden Anatomy Theater was a place where people could view dissections. This fascination to look on and into the human still exists today as we have television shows of people undergoing medical procedures. The authors bring up the question of whether the art, science, and pop culture can remain in separate realms and whether entertaining the audience has become equally important as informing the audience.

The second image is from a Korean television show called “Let me in.” This show, like many other plastic surgery makeover shows, features contestants’ before and after, happy endings with clapping and oohs and aahs as depicted in the picture, and rarely shows the negative aspects of plastic surgery. For entertainment purposes, contestants are given nicknames such as “Small Face,” “Scar Face,” “Wannabe,” and “Top class.” Blurring the line between science and entertainment even further, the show fantasizes the results of cosmetic surgery through making the reveal at the end dramatic, as contestants are revealed in ball gowns with a huge curtain backdrop.

Citation: 

Laura Mulvey’s Visual Pleasure and Narrative cinema explores the relationship between the screen and the spectator. She discusses the ‘Male gaze’ whereby the viewer adopts the perspective of the protagonist of the film who is usually a heterosexual man while female characters are sexualized and the objects of the gaze or seen as the object of desire. According to Mulvey, to gaze means more than to look as it implies a relationship of power; the gazer is superior to the object that is being looked at.

On the other hand, Hooks critiques the portrayal of black women in mainstream cinema and introduces the idea of the oppositional gaze. She notes that representation of blackness in film was either absent or misrepresented in film as they were stereotypically degrading and dehumanizing and that bodies of black women only exist in film to enhance and maintain white womanhood. Black women had to forget about racism and sexism to enjoy cinema: “I could always get pleasure from movies as long as I did not look too deep.” To challenge this hegemony, black women developed the oppositional gaze or ‘resisting spectatorship.’  The oppositional gaze allows black female spectators to look at film vigilantly, critique them, and find pleasure in deconstructing distorted images of them.

I chose this first picture because I think it exemplifies the male gaze. The woman is standing behind a glass showroom with a SOLD sign in front of her, signifying that she is a commodity. The other female mannequins standing in the glass next to the woman are also nude while the man looks in from outside with his hands on the glass. This juxtaposition demonstrates that female bodies are sexualized and are displayed for men to look at. While the woman is standing up on the platform and the man is on his knees, the fact that she symbolizes an object does not give her much power.