Super Bowl commercials 2013: Volkswagen in hot water over Jamaican accents
It’s not even Super Bowl Sunday yet; and nevertheless, Volkswagen has managed to still finding a way to stir up plenty of controversy with an ad that has been thus far labeled as “offensive” for its use of Jamaican accents by people who are not of a Jamaican background.
The set-up behind the spot (which you can see in the below “Today Show” video) is pretty simple: it revolves around a man who suddenly becomes “happy” after getting a new car, and it causes him to walk around and talk like he is a cast member in “Cool Runnings.” The ad was obviously intended to just place a correlation between owning a Volkswagen and happiness, but the presence of a black culture that has nothing to do with a German automaker is what is really causing there to be a great deal of furor over the ad.
At the moment, it is not clear whether or not the company will air the ad during Super Bowl XLVII over fears that it will receive further criticism. The biggest surprise to us is just that after consulting a hundred different Jamaicans to perfect the accent, no one ever bothered to bring up the possibility that anyone would be offended by this.
Over the years Volkswagen has become notorious for airing popular Super Bowl commercials, with a youngster dressed up as Darth Vader being one that drew millions of pageviews on YouTube in the days after the big game.
It has become routine in recent years for details about commercials to go public before the game. This happened when Justin Bieber did a spot with Ozzy Osbourne, and earlier this month when Danica Patrick announced that she will be working on a GoDaddy ad with Bar Rafaeli.
What do you think about the Volkswagen ad? We want to hear from you below!
Photo: CBS
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FatJan
February 3, 2013 @ 11:47 pm
Labelling the Jamaican culture as a black culture is a loaded statement. Ask any real Jamaican, no matter who they are or what they look like, they will all agree that their culture is not of one but of many as etched on the Jamaica Coat of Arms, ‘Out of Many One People’.
As a Jamaican, I won’t bother to list but it drives me crazy whenever well seasoned Hollywood actors playing Jamaican characters fail at getting the Jamaican accent right. I must say, the guy in the VW ad did a superb job of it. I liked this ad. It was cute, refreshing, light-hearted and in no shape or form it came off to me as being racist. If this ad doesn’t increase VW sales, one thing for sure, it has achieved in putting a smile upon many faces. And for that, we should say thank you.