Arthur Asa Berger Coca-Cola 4

Arthur Asa Berger Coca-Cola 1

998 words

Coca Cola

Coca-Cola is a beverage with enormous global cultural resonance. It was invented by an Atlanta pharmacist, John S. Pemberton, in 1888 and first bottled in 1894. Originally Coke was sold as a patent medicine. It has changed from being sold as a medicine to its current status as the world’s most popular non-alcoholic beverage, available in more than two hundred countries. The Coca-Cola corporation was formed in 1902. In 1915, the company adopted the iconic Coke contour bottle.

We can describe Coca Cola as a diluted narcotic (the Coca suggesting its relationship to cocaine) and an inexpensive way that people can reward themselves with a well known drink, associated in the popular mind with pleasure and modernity. In a book on pop icons, material culture scholar, Craig

Gilborn, wrote an essay “Pop Iconology: Looking at the Coke Bottle” pointing out that Coca Cola is

(1970:24) “the most widely recognized commercial product in the world.” A survey in 1949 revealed that only one person out of four hundred could not identify what product was in a Coke bottle. Coca-Cola is now number one on the list of globally available products and has been for many years. .

Perspectives on Coca-Cola

Raphael Patai, a folklorist, deals with the role of advertising and the pleasure provided by Coca-

Cola in his book Myth and Modern Man. He writes (1972:238-239):

It has been observed by critics of the American mass media that the method used in television commercials

is “never [to] present an ordered, sequential, rational argument but simply [to] present the product

associated with desirable things, or attitudes. Thus Coca-Cola is shown held by a beautiful blonde, who

sits in a Cadillac, surrounded by bronze, muscular admirers, with the sun shining overhead. By repetition,

these elements become associated in our minds, into a pattern of sufficient cohesion, so that one element

can magically evoke the others. If we think of ads as designed solely to sell the products, we miss their Arthur Asa Berger Coca-Cola 2

main effect: to increase the pleasure in the consumption of the product. Coca-Cola is far more than a

cooling drink; the consumer participates, vicariously, in a much larger experience. In Africa, in Melanesia,

to drink a Coke is to participate in the American way of life.

Patai suggests that Coca-Cola may be linked in people’s imagination to mythological stories about heroes who perform Herculean labors, so when we drink a Coke we are unconsciously associating ourselves with the “Coke-drinking, laughing divinities” and sports heroes found in many Coca-Cola advertisements and commercials.

A French Marxist, Henri Lefebvre, has suggested that advertising plays a major role in consumer cultures, providing valuation to the products that people purchase. From a Marxist perspective, Coca-

Cola and all soft drinks are good examples of the way capitalist societies create false needs in people, so they can then be exploited. For Marxists, Coca-Cola becomes a signifier of alienation and self- estrangement. It may provide momentary gratification and pleasure but it also distracts us from recognizing the degree to which we are exploited by the ruling classes.

In his book, The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man Boston: Beacon Press) McLuhan deconstructed the significance of Coca Cola in American culture. He wrties (1951/1967:118, 120):

In God Is My Copilot, the G.I.’s agreed that what they were fighting for was, after all, the American girl.

To us, they said, she meant cokes, hamburgers, and clean places to sleep. Now, the American girl as

portrayed by the coke ads has always been an archetype. No matter how much thigh she may be demurely

sporting, she is sweet, nonsexual, and immaturely innocent…

Coca-Cola is connected, McLuhan explains, to notions Americans had about the wholesomeness of

American life.

For psychologist and anthropologist Clotaire Rapaille, Coca-Cola is a reflection of America as an adolescent culture. He explains, in The Culture Code (2006:31):

Our cultural adolescence informs our behavior in a wide variety of ways…Looking at our culture through

this set of glasses explains why we are so successful around the world selling the trappings of adolescence:

Coca-Cola, Nike shoes, fast food, blue jeans, and loud, violent movies. Arthur Asa Berger Coca-Cola 3

Coca-Cola is, for Rapaille, a signifier of America as an essentially adolescent culture and can be seen, then, as a means for individuals, who may no longer be young, of identifying with youthfulness, wholesomeness and vitality.

The popularity of Coca Cola and its rival Pepsi Cola has diminished in recent years, as many consumers have switched to bottled water and other more natural beverages. Coca-Cola is, after all, if you reduce it to its basic contents, carbonated water with sugar (or a sugar substitute in Diet Coke) and

“secret” flavors. When you drink Coca Cola, what you get is the “aura” of the drink generated by the enormous amount advertising for Coca-Cola by advertising agencies in many countries. Culture critic

Walter Benjamin’s theory about auras being attached to original works of art may explain the significance of one of Coke’s most celebrated campaigns that suggested Coke is “the real thing.”

Some blind taste tests indicate that most people cannot tell the difference between Coca Cola and it main rival, Pepsi Cola. In a number of blind tests, people choose Pepsi as tasting better then Coke, except when they find out that one glass has Pepsi and another has Coke. This preference for Coke is probably due to the ubiquitous nature and the cleverness of its advertising. The cola wars continue to be fought globally and now China, with more than a billion people, is the site of an epic battle between

Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola. Arthur Asa Berger Coca-Cola 4

Bibliography

Berger, Arthur Asa. Reading Matter: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Material Culture. New

Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1992.

Fishwick, Marshall and Ray B. Browne, eds. Icons of Popular Culture Bowling Green, OH. Bowling

Green University Popular Press, 1970.

McLuhan, Marshall. The Mechanical Bride: The Folklore of Industrial Man.

Beacon Press, 1967.

Patai,Raphael. Myth and Modern Man. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:, 1972.

Rapaille, Clotaire. The Culture Code. New York: Broadway Books, 2006.