Five Black Men And A Goat Walk Into A Lineup… Don’t ‘Do It,’ Mountain Dew

Image via Flickr/ Light Evolved

“LBoy,” “Lil Musty,” “LaMoahn,” “Tiny,” “Beyonte,” and “Felicia.”

Viewers of Mountain Dew’s latest commercial creation are presented with six mug shots: five black men and a suited-up goat. Behind the viewing room glass, a battered and bleeding white woman on crutches panics as she’s encouraged to identify her assailant—er, “nail this little sucker.”

“Ya better not snitch on a playa,” the goat threatens, leering at the camera. “Snitches get stitches, fool.”

But Felicia the goat may have bleated her last.

Syracuse University professor and lecturer Boyce Watkins branded the ad, “arguably the most racist ad in history,” and criticized Pepsi-Co’s use of blatant racial stereotyping in its advertising as “beyond disgusting.”

“Not just regular black people, but the kinds of ratchety negroes you might find in the middle of any hip-hop minstrel show:  Gold teeth, ‘mean mugging,’ sun glasses wearing, white-t sportin, hard core n*ggaz ready to ‘get into some ol gangsta sh*t,’” Watkins writes. “Apparently, this is the kind of ad you put out if you want to appeal to the black male demographic.”

The ad continuously riffs on the soft drink’s “Dew it” tagline, but no one’s getting the joke or its intent. It’s unclear which part was supposed to entice young men to purchase: the shaking woman saying, “I don’t think I can do this,” the “Do-rag” reference, the “When I get out of here, I’m gonna do you up” threat,the detective muttering, “she’s just gotta do it” as he swigs soda, or the woman shrieking, “I can’t do it! I can’t do it!” as she flees the scene.

Mountain Dew advertising regularly targets younger men with its neon colors and caffeine content, but open racism and misogyny are two relatively new marketing tactics for the brand.

Three days after Watkins posted his scathing review online at Your Black World, Pepsi-Co pulled the offending commercial from all its online channels.  A spokeswoman for the company issued a formal apology, saying the spot was never meant to air on TV and that Pepsi-Co “understood how the ad could be offensive.”

Yeah, you think?

The ad was a third act in the ongoing commercial series by the rapper Tyler, the Creator, who voiced Felicia the goat in the series. The other two, also starring Felicia, can be viewed on YouTube (and the “pulled” ad can be seen above).