Until a few days ago, I'd never heard of the apparel brand, American Eagle. But you can probably see the furore about the ad for their jeans starring actress Sydney Sweeney from space.
Not only had I not heard of American Eagle, but I hadn't heard of Sydney Sweeney either. She has just about achieved that level of fame, which means that I recognise her face, but I could not name her. The fault, of course, is mine, but I have to admit that even now she is only my third favourite actor called Sydney, some way behind both Sydney Greenstreet and Sidney Poitier. And it's fair to say that the gene pool from which Ms Sweeney has been pulled is rather different than that which gave us Messrs Greenstreet and Poitier. But her acting career will need to go into orbit before she can compete with their performances in The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca, or The Heat of the Night.
Fair play to both the actress and the advertiser, they have managed to garner some considerable name recognition through the use of some not very cunning punning and an ambition to court as much controversy as possible. Here on the Lewis Silkin Adlaw blog, we defer to nobody in our love of puns, and frankly, we are not very discriminating when it comes to word play, but even we might have drawn a line at punning jeans and genes. Well, OK, probably not. We have no shame.
The visuals in the ad are pretty unremarkable: unremarkable B-list celebrity lies on her back and buttons up a pair of unremarkable jeans. But then comes her voice over, "Genes are passed down from parents to offspring, often determining traits like hair colour, personality, even eye colour....My jeans are blue." Then comes the tagline, "Sydney Sweeney has great jeans". Speaking as someone whose eyes were blue before they became bloodshot and whose hair was blond before it thinned out, I can only agree with the implications of Sydney's analysis. However, this rather lame joke about genetic superiority has sparked off the latest battle in the culture wars between those that are outraged and those whose desire to 'provoke the woke' can never be satiated.
In the blue corner of US politics, (which in the UK would be the red corner), we have an influencer called Jess Britvich, of whom I have also never heard, despite her most excellent name. In her video, she shares her insight that "In a cultural moment shaped by rising fascism, American Eagle's new Sydney Sweeney campaign has less to do with denim and more to do with genes, lineage and reproductive value. Let's talk about eugenics, white femininity and why we can't afford to say, it's not that deep."
And in the red corner, (which would be the blue corner on this side of the pond), you have all those people who like baiting those in the opposite corner. Vice President JD Vance has managed to politicise the debate. "My political advice to the Democrats is continue to tell everybody who thinks Sydney Sweeney is attractive is a Nazi," he said. "That appears to be their actual strategy. I mean, it actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems though, which is that you have a normal all-American beautiful girl doing like a normal jeans ad. They're trying to sell jeans to kids in America and they have managed to so unhinge themselves over this thing. And it's like, you guys, did you learn nothing from the November 2024 election?" In fact, it seems that no leading Democrats have said any such thing, but that probably doesn't matter, if that is what people - or voters -believe.
Meanwhile, American Eagle are laughing all the way to the bank. It is reported that the jeans have sold out and their stock price has certainly gone through the roof. Isn't that exactly the point of an ad campaign? At a time when advertising seems to be increasingly steering away from controversy or risk-taking, there is something admirable about a brand being deliberately provocative. Even President Trump was drawn into praising the campaign when he learned that Sydney is a registered Republican. And when was the last time the President of the United States commented on an ad campaign?
Did American Eagle know what they were doing in provoking this controversy? Did Sydney Sweeney? Of course. This was one small step in the culture war, but one giant leap for their name recognition.
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