GEICO Cavemen

GEICO, the insurance company, didn't have to talk about racial discrimination at all, yet its ad agency uses oblique references to racism in order to sell a product. I'm talking about the famous "Cavemen" commercials.



Everyone knows about these ads, which is obviously one reason GEICO runs them. In case you have been in a cave for the last few years, though, the conceit here is that a group of modern-day cavemen are offended by GEICO's new slogan, "So easy a caveman can do it."

The ads are clearly based on discourses of racism: the "cavemen" in the ads-within-the-ads stereotype the "actual" cavemen in the commercials roughly in the same way that advertisements like those featured at the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia used to stereotype African Americans. Why GEICO continues to run the ads is easy: they're popular, and therefore effective at getting the company's name out there. (After all, tens of thousands of viewers are looking up GEICO ads on youtube.)

The really interesting question is why they are so effective. Why would references to racial discrimination move products?

Some, like a blogger describing herself as The Angry Black Woman, regard the ads' cavemen as "thinly veiled pastiches of black people," and sees them as potentially racist (although she says she "honestly can't tell" in the end if they are racist or a satire of racism). On the other hand, this discussion forum associated with the Sean Hannity show discusses whether the GEICO commericals are implicitly advocating gay rights. Although the posters disagree on that point, they generally seem to agree that being pro-gay-rights would not be a good thing.

What is up here?

First, as my brother astutely pointed out, a modern-era advertiser has finally found a way to use racism to sell things. Racism remains a force in our society, and any force--from an advertiser's point of view--is potentially a force that can be used to sell things. The only question is how to do it.

Solution: be all things to all people. The GEICO cavemen ads, as The Angry Black Woman persuasively points out, can be read as simply racist, satirizing black people who complain about racism as a bunch of whiners who can't face the truth about their own behavior. (I haven't seen it, but apparently the short-lived "Cavemen" TV show based on the commercials is pretty direct in satirizing anti-discrimination voices: see the account here, especially the description of the character "Nick.")

On the other hand, as the Hannity forum posters discussed, the GEICO ads can also seem anti-racist, a satire of racism, because the cavemen's complaints seem just, and the stereotypers (the GEICO spokesman on the talk show, the therapist, etc.) are the real objects of the satire.

Either way, these advertisements are part of a long list of recent media that (arguably) get away with pretty overt racist humor while somehow managing to persuade viewers that they (the image-makers and the viewers) aren't really racist: South Park, Family Guy, Borat, Sarah Silverman's “The Great Schlep” video*, etc., etc. Those who protest are liable to be accused of being dense, missing the joke. I have to admit, the above list contains some of the funniest stuff around these days, and to dismiss it in simple terms as racist (while possibly true) unfortunately causes us to avert our eyes from some of the most interesting stuff the culture is currently producing.

The question, then, is this: Can we enjoy and rigorously scrutinize the humor? Or do we have to make that choice?


* (in which takes place this moment, dense with cultural information: the black actor finally gets a little too uncomfortable with Silverman's dubious commentary, says "No, no" and walks off the set--clearly, this was part of the script, but it's meant to look impromptu--and Silverman whispers that her comments are nonetheless "true in general")