At this point, anyone who considers him or herself a sports fan has seen the commercial for the new Beats by Dr. Dre wireless noise canceling headphones featuring Brooklyn Nets’ big man Kevin Garnett.Whether seeing the shortened, more “family-friendly” version on TV, or the extended cut online, people have been inundated with idea that Garnett faces the same type of heckling and animosity in modern day New York that Jackie Robinson faced 65 years ago.
The spot with Garnett somehow received overwhelming positive reviews on the internet, as people seemed to be so caught up in the sleekness of the ad that they completely disregarded how unrealistic and truly misleading it is — painting athletes to be martyrs who have to go through unspeakable physical and mental degrading in order to carry on their careers.
Here's that commercial below:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=3yUj0Ta44DI&w=620
Well, Beats has done it again.
Yesterday, they released another ad for the same headphones, this time featuring San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, as the athlete under “attack”, as they show him as he enters the parking lot of the division rival Seattle Seahawks at CenturyLink Field.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=4Ttsx5squWg&w=620
So, is this one even more preposterous than the first?
In many ways, it is. While the angry hordes of New York Knicks fans never were actually able to break through the fence barrier that held them back from Garnett and the Brooklyn Nets’ team bus as they entered Madison Square Garden, in the new commercial, it’s different.
This time, the fences and security staff are not enough to contain the mob of blood-thirsty Seattleites, who will stop at nothing in their quest to bring vigilante justice upon San Francisco’s young quarterback. No, seriously, they don’t just want to heckle him, they want to murder him.
“You’re gonna die here!” one fan can be heard yelling.
This scene from a recent episode of "The Walking Dead" isn’t much different. It’s just hard to tell whether the zombies or the Seahawks fans are more brain-dead.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=6068ywl_nA4&w=620
In the commercial, item after item of garbage and debris is hurled against the bus as the fanatics try to push it over. One man starts urinating on the wheels, and a girl who couldn’t be older than 10 years old yells, “You suck!” with her middle finger pointed at Kaepernick, as her proud father holds her on her shoulders.
There are also several signs reading, “Stay In The Bay,” which seem to advocate that Kaepernick should just stay at home in San Francisco and not play for his team since it’s an away game. Makes a lot of sense.
A place this commercial doesn’t go as far as the last one, thankfully, is the race baiting. While Garnett’s commercial featured people white and black yelling things at him like, “You big gorilla mother******, “Get that n***** out of my town,” and, “Take your black ass back to Boston,” Kaepernick’s ad didn’t try to make it seem like it’s at all acceptable in 2013 in a big American city (especially a northern, diverse and progressive one) to yell things like that out in public.
It’s tough to say which Beats commercial is a bigger distortion of reality.
Either way, Beats is sure to get endless praise from the internet community once again from people who either choose to ignore the gross exaggerating of the premise of the ad, or the ones who have been brainwashed into believing this kind of horrible treatment of athletes actually happens (read some of the YouTube comments to see people in this camp).
Please be smarter than them.
