Members of a Los Angeles-based hip hop collective star in what appears to be an advertisement for a major soft drink that is being denounced as racist and misogynistic.
The 59-second ad depicts a detective drinking a Mountain Dew, prodding a bruised and beaten white woman to pick out her attacker from a lineup of four black men – members of the group Odd Future – and a goat.
From the woman’s demeanor and the goat’s dialogue, it’s clear the animal is responsible for her wounds.
The same woman appears as a waitress giving the goat a Mountain Dew in an earlier video by the same group. Thirsty for more soda, the goat smacks the woman in the face with its hooves and chases her.
“Ya better not snitch on a playa,” the goat says in a scruffy voice from behind the one-way glass.
Shaking and scared, the woman repeatedly tells the officer she cannot choose before hastily hobbling away on crutches.
“He’s the one wearing a do-rag,” the officer tells the woman. He then says, “Come on, it’s the one with the four legs.”
Author and social commentator Dr. Boyce Watkins called the video “arguably the most racist commercial in history,” saying the video compares black men to animals and plays on stereotypes.
Messages to PepsiCo, which owns Mountain Dew, and calls to group members seeking comment were not returned by the time of publication.
This is apparently the third of a series of videos featuring the goat -- named Felicia, and born from a lyric by Odd Future's Tyler the Creator -- as a Mountain Dew fanatic, and scofflaw.
In a separate video, the goat is pulled over by a police officer while driving. After acting suspicious and pleading with the officer not to look in the car’s trunk, the officer opens the trunk to find a trove of empty Mountain Dew bottles.
“Looks like we have a case of ‘Dew'-U-I,” the officer says as the goat runs away.
At the end of each video, a still image of the goat appears with a link to loitersquad.com – the website for a sketch comedy show on Adult Swim. Now in its second season, the show stars members of Odd Future.
The line-up video has been removed from the group's YouTube channel.
Photo Credit: YouTube