Google’s “Reunion” commercial – conspicuous consumption

Here is an analytically perspective on a video that went viral last week

Google’s “Reunion” commercial invites us to shed these doubts and bask in the joy of Google’s benevolent interfaith sway. The video concludes with the two men, worn with age, embracing with the timeless recognition that they thought would never come. A miracle.

-T]he notion that corporate expansion can create the conditions of transcendent multicultural and pluralist unity is one of the hallmarks of neoliberalism. We can think about neoliberalism as an unevenly applied set of economic and political policies premised on the idea that free markets secure freedom and flourishing. Within this framework, nation-states ideally serve as subordinate enablers of capitalism as it forges a renewed multicultural village.

This is the subtext for advertising campaigns that advance a not-so-subtle message that conspicuous consumption initiates subjects into an avant-garde multicultural global public.

The quotes are from Lucia Hultsether’s essay at Religion Dispatches titled “Google’s Benevolent Interfaith Big Tent“