Cool is coming back to the suburbs, if the new minivan rap song is to be believed. This minivan rap song is the equivalent of an no faxing payday loan – an additional hit of "cool" where it's needed. Could this rap song be considered offensive, if effective?
Trendy, Parody, or both – The Minivan Rap Song?
Intended for irony and humor, the Toyota Sienna minivan rap song plays on how un-cool it could be. A couple with two children rap about loving their life as parents and having a “swagger wagon.” By mixing irony and parody, the video is very funny. The humor of the video is based on the idea that white suburb-dwellers "shouldn't" be rapping, though. The real irony, though, is while most hip-hop music is performed by minority musicians, in the billion-dollar hip-hop industry a lot more than 70 percent of music sales are made to white individuals. Additionally, the Top-40 pop music charts are filled, more often than not, with hip-hop music.
Minivan rap song isn’t really the first
Far from the first, the minivan rap song is one of a long list of advertisements that have "ironic rap". Everybody from Taco Bell to Smirnoff have done similar commercials, to varying levels of success. Comedians, including Saturday Night Live, have long used this schtick to get laughs.
Is the Minivan rap offensive?
From online commentary, most just discover the minivan rap song amusing. The head of Cultural Trends at an ad agency that specializes in “campaigns that target minorities” has written extensively about advertisements like this. The question she poses about this are legitimate:
What is designed to be humorous about this video? White people posturing in (stereotypically) non-white scenarios? When is race role-play and cultural appropriation okay? When is it acceptable, and when is it derogatory?
What is your opinion?
No comments:
Post a Comment