The New Swagger Wagon – Minivan Rap Song

Suburban chic no longer means just a white picket fence – many hipster parents are bringing “cool” back to parenthood, complete with a minivan rap song. The Minivan rap song tries the equivalent of getting an online cash advance for the minivans’ image – proving they are “awesome” by doing what all the cool kids are doing. Could this rap song be considered offensive, if effective?

Minivan rap song combines irony, parody, and trendy?

The Toyota Sienna minivan rap song seems designed to be very ironic. A couple with two kids rap about loving their life as parents and having a “swagger wagon.” This admittedly very amusing commercial seems very self-consciously parody. The humor, though, stems from the stereotypical premise that white people from the suburbs “shouldn’t” be rapping. This is doubly ironic, though, since over 70 percent of the billion-dollar hip-hop music industry sales are made to white people. Pop music charts are also being taken over by hip-hop music.

Minivan rap song isn’t the first

The minivan rap song advertising the Toyota Sienna is far from the first ad to use the idea of getting very uptight people to rap for humor. Everyone from Taco Bell to Smirnoff have done similar commercials, to varying levels of success. Comedians such as Barats and Bereta, as well as hundreds of SNL skits, have also made careers on the concept.

Offended by the minivan rap song?

From online commentary, most just find the minivan rap song amusing. The “Head of Cultural Trends” at a minority-marketing agency gave her opinion about this type of advertisement a year or so ago. She poses a question that is worth discussion:

What is supposed to be funny about this video? White people posturing in (stereotypically) non-white scenarios? When is race role-play and cultural appropriation okay? When is it acceptable, and when is it derogatory?

What is your opinion?

 


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This entry was posted on Friday, May 21st, 2010 at 5:07 am and is filed under Costumes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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