Free to Be?

I turned on the TV the other night (I’m sure I was watching something really high-brow, don’t worry, and definitely NOT “Dancing with the Stars”). And after commercials whizzed by for beer and Bernie & Phyl’s (come on, Massachusetts folks, you know what I’m talking about), a particular car ad stood out to me.

You might know the one: a new ad campaign from Fiat Chrstyler. A split screen featured drivers of different political persuasions driving, respectively the “off-road Trailhawk” and “luxury Summit” models. The commercial ended with each driver sticking a bumper sticker on the back of their vehicle. I’ll let you guess who was the Democrat and who was the Republican…but really, there’s not much guesswork to be done. “What unites us is what stronger than what divides us,” reads the screen as Cat Stevens’ “If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out” fades out.

The Free to Be campaign, according to Chief Marketing Officer Olivier Francois, was not accidentally timed: “What better platform to premiere this message of unity than during a moment of such cultural significance?” he said on Monday evening, as presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton continued to throw barbs at one another. It’s easy to decry Jeep for exploiting this moment of particular politican tension, and for sugarcoating and commodifying the genuine pain we are feeling in this country.

Of course what unites us certainly isn’t a car. It’s not being able to afford a car, especially through a loan or a particular credit rating. The fact that corporations are taking advantage of our desperation for any source of unity is unfortunate. But the trend is not unexpected. What really frustrated me about this ad wasn’t the fact that it was exploitative. What I found disheartening was how the campaign framed the idea of choice. I can be free to be me, to label myself with the single red or blue bumper sticker on the back of my car. Hey, so can you, whether we drive gas guzzling trucks or fancy hybrid sedans! That’s what being free is all about right? Being free to pick up a car and a political identity all in one!

We are so much more than that. We’re free to be angry, ambivalent, hopeful, above all different – independent of our political party or the car we drive. That’s what unifies us, not the box we check on a form or the candidate on the other side of it. I choose something else, even if it’s uncertain. Who I am is woven into a collective fabric of experience and history that can’t be split screen into a Trailblazer or a Summit. Who we’re free to be is something we’ll have to live into and “sing out” after the election. And there’s no off-roading once we’re there.