Politically charged popcorn

The United States government constantly finds new ways to astound me.

The level of our elected leaders’ incompetence, selfishness and outlandish aversion to change has reached new heights this week.

Now, I’m no Capitol Hill correspondent, but I’m pretty sure of this story’s Sparknotes version: Republican representatives refused to pass the latest budget bill that included funding for Obamacare, so Congress couldn’t pass a budget at all.

So funding for all non-essential bureaucracy has been temporarily stopped.

But come on. If you really expected any better than this fiasco from the Tea Party clowns in Congress, then you’re just as stupid as they are.

What this column is about, though, isn’t necessarily the shutdown. This column is about how AMC Theatres responded to it.

Earlier this week, AMC began a new promotion: free small popcorn to anybody who presents a valid government or military ID.

Free popcorn to all of the hundreds of thousands of casualties of this shutdown, who are currently sitting at home and sitting on their hands, waiting for the situation to blow over.

The advertisement reads, “Offer Valid: Until common sense returns, or we run out of popcorn, whichever happens first.”

The fine print tells us that the promotion actually ends Oct. 10, but it’s still a wonderfully sassy reply to the government’s idiocy.

It’s great as a head-turning and humorous retort from a major company, but it’s even better as an advertisement.

Lately, many companies used similar PR and advertisements that are socially and politically conscious.

When the Supreme Court was hearing cases about gay marriage this past spring, hoards of people were taking to social media, changing their profile pictures to a pink equal sign on a red background and posting statuses and tweets about their support for gay marriage.

Big business was in on the action, too.

Companies of all sizes — even those as large as Apple, Google and Starbucks — released statements in support of gay marriage and made advertisements that blatantly showed gay marriage in a positive light after the Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of it.  

And though in the back of my mind I knew these statements and ads were really just a wonderful business tactic and not just the companies being morally outstanding, they still worked for me. They made me want to buy their goods and services.

So, although AMC is just doing this promotion because they know it’ll bring in
moviegoers, its charm and effectiveness was not lost on me.

As long as these companies are clear about their agenda, the opinions they release publicly are progressive and based in common logic. And they’re not offensive and brash with their stylizing, like AT&T was with their Sept. 11 advertisement of a smartphone capturing a picture of the Twin Tower light beams earlier this year. I’m more than just OK with it.

I love anything that pushes for positive social and political change.

And so this week, I have a reason to love AMC other than the fact that they’re currently screening “Don Jon.”

­— ikehajinaz@indiana.edu
Follow columnist Ike Hajinazarian on Twitter @_IkeHaji.