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Thursday, March 28
The Indiana Daily Student

COLUMN: Budweiser’s Super Bowl commercial: a timely reminder of who we are

I’m not much of a football fan; I haven’t even been to an IU football game yet. I have a hard time even getting excited about the halftime show.

I do, however, harbor a soft spot in my heart for Super Bowl commercials. They’re so American: a celebration of our capitalistic, materialistic culture, viewed through the backdrop of sports and the lens of clever humor, heart wrenching poignancy and 
high-production value sets.

To be quite honest, I still get teary-eyed thinking about that Budweiser Super Bowl commercial from a few years back. You know, the one where the Labrador Retriever puppy somehow manages to get lost from his farm then, through a whirlwind of events, is saved from some nasty wolves by the Budweiser Clydesdales from his farm and returns home with them. That commercial is a true cinematic masterpiece.

I really liked this year’s Budweiser commercial, too, but for different reasons. Entitled “Born the Hard Way,” it tells the story of Adolphus Busch, the German immigrant who later became the co-founder of Anheuser-Busch.

Granted, the commercial paints a highly fictionalized version of Busch’s story. It shows him as a poor immigrant, fighting his way first through customs, then across the country to St. Louis, which was to become the home of Anheuser-Busch breweries.

In reality, Busch had money before crossing the Atlantic. But that’s a minute detail, less important than the 
overarching picture.

America is nothing if not a country of immigrants, and this commercial celebrates the struggle and the thousands-mile-long journey most of our ancestors endured to make a life for themselves here.

At one point in the ad, a man on the street yells at Busch, “You’re not wanted here!” Sadly, anti-immigrant sentiment is nearly as American as immigration is; in the 1850s when Busch immigrated here, anti-German and anti-Irish xenophobia ran rampant through our country.

Which brings me to my next point: the #BoycottBudweiser hashtag circulating Twitter calling for protest of this ad. Some people, it seems, are upset that Budweiser is making such an pro-immigrant statement in the wake of controversy over President Trump’s immigration ban.

However, this commercial has in fact been in production for more than eight months now, so all of the uproar about it being “liberal propaganda” over Trump’s recent order is hardly warranted.

I find the true story behind the ad more compelling than the narrative taking over social media.

Why? Well, it means the writers of the ad brainstormed tons of ideas, and what resulted was something they felt — if we infer from the ad — was at the heart of their company: immigration, a drive to succeed and the exceptionalism that results from those two things.

In other words, America.

More than 100 million people were reminded of this as they watched the Super Bowl on Sunday night.

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