Culture Shift: Woke Barely Present in Sunday’s Super Bowl Commercials

The commercials during this year’s Super Bowl Sunday broadcast all seemed to have a strange theme in common: woke sermonizing was barely present.

With well over five advertisements for electric vehicles, one of which featured actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, only one – just one – leaned into the woke messaging about environmentalism and climate change: the General Motors Austin Powers ad in which notorious villain Dr. Evil plans to use electric vehicles to save the planet. As Breitbart News previously reported:

The ad opens with Dr. Evil and crew taking over GM’s headquarters in Detroit as one more step in Evil’s plan to take over the world.

The henchmen, though, correct Dr. Evil’s assertion that he is the number one threat to the world and tell him climate change is worse. Climate change, Scott Evil says, is “arguably the No. 1 threat to the world now.”

The ad ultimately moves on to showcase GM’s line of electric cars as the Evil crew makes ready to drive off in EVs to rule the world.

Though slightly less on the nose, the Salesforce commercial featuring actor Matthew McConaughey took subtle jabs at Tesla founder Elon Musk for his space exploration push and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse while calling upon people to “plant more trees” and cultivate planet earth.

Despite the actor’s heavy climate change advocacy, the Arnold Schwarzenegger BMW electric vehicle ad in which he played the Greek god Zeus opposite Salma Hayek as Hera jettisoned politics entirely for what some Twitter users said was the best ad of the night:

Though the famed Barbie doll has long been co-opted by feminists and hardcore gender theorists, the Rocket Homes commercial in which she made an appearance alongside He-Man offered plenty of laughs with a side-helping of nostalgia:

Even commercials targeting minorities or people of color, such as the Google Pixel 6 ad, were less about lecturing on white privilege and more about empathy:

On the decidedly non-woke side, the Chevy Silverado commercial featuring Jamie Lynn Sigler paid tribute to The Sopranos – one of the most politically incorrect television shows of the past two decades – with yet another electric vehicle ad that made no mention of carbon footprints or impending planetary doom:

Between The Weeknd’s Super Bowl 2021 halftime performance and this year’s commercial lineup, the tide my finally be turning in the culture war on corporate wokeism.

Only time will tell how long it lasts.