Pop Culture
(Page 2 of 3)
November/December 1996
By Steven Garibaldi, Probable Cause
A bottle of Coca-Cola provides the promise of infinity. No surprise that Andy Warhol chose Coca-Cola bottles as the most potent examples of repetition. He only had to paint one, however; a single bottle is an endless recursion in itself, a metabottle, calling to mind all other bottles in creation. The transformation of Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" video, with its rows of identical-looking sex kitten models into a Coca-Cola advertisement was a perfect mating of process and product. Robert Palmer did not sell Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola sold Robert Palmer. Coca-Cola speaks for itself. You're buying the power of a prick with the promise of the breast, the constancy of the female form with the explosive force of the male's. The power of machinery with the soft, fertile yield of the plains. Potent men and corn-fed girls. America, abundant and overflowing.
RELATED CONTENT
Gulf War 2 (a.k.a. World War 2.5) February 12, 2003 Issue By Erin Ferdinand, Utne.com Gulf War 2 (...
The movement to legalize pot may take off with red wings...
National militaries aren’t the only ones responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of people s...
Officials in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil's second-largest soya-growing state, have stamped out all 79...
This is Gulf War II March 26, 2003 Russ Kick The Memoryhole In the week since America?s new...
With Coca-Cola you want to believe. You want things to go better, you want to add life, you want the pause that refreshes. The silken white curve beckons. You approach the machine once again.
The machine is huge, bigger than you are. You scan its face for the button that says "Coca-Cola." It's always the biggest one. You feed your coins into the slot, one after the other, and press that big red button. There is a moment of hesitation--will the little orange light come on?--then the machine gives a satisfying ka-chunk, and out drops your drink, red, silver, and white. The can is cool and wet. Condensation runs down that ribbon on the label like sweat on a woman's thigh. For one moment everything is possible. It's so close you can taste it.
Until you open the can.
The drink--"Classic Coke"---is fizzless, oversweet, all syrup and no sting. The sugar has been replaced by corn syrup, the silicone tit of sweeteners. The pause does not refresh. Classic Coke's promise is as empty as the pages in a porno rag. Those hips never move. Those lips never kiss back.
This country's energy is spent. We have lost our drive. But there is hope. While we pour our flat petroleum goo from moon-shaped two-liter jugs into glasses full of ice and sip this tired syrup, the rest of the world is rising. While our factories and liberties rust, the rest of the world still dreams.