By Gary D. Rhodes.
Once upon a time, Coke actually had cocaine in its formula. New ingredient: lumps of coal.”
Coca-Cola’s controversial new series of Christmas commercials are literally inhuman, the results of A.I.
Human intelligence created artificial flavoring; artificial intelligence created these ads’ “humans” and iconic “polar bears,” as well as a holiday far more synthetic than the cheapest dime store decoration.
Does it matter? Yes. Incredibly so. Once upon a time, Coke actually had cocaine in its formula. New ingredient: lumps of coal.
Let’s get straight to art, including film art, which has helped us as a country through many deep divisions, from Casablanca to Forrest Gump and beyond. As Bob Dylan has proclaimed, if we really want to make America great again, we need great movies. He’s right.

And the heart and soul of cinema are film artists, human beings. Not all movies are good, of course, nor are all commercials. Sometimes they hound us outside of the home, including in taxi cabs and at gas pumps. Sometimes we hit “skip ad,” and rightly so. Local car dealership ads can be wonderfully and awfully cheesy. (The Season 2 finale of Tulsa King understandably parodied them.)
But then there are the great, great commercials, the stuff dreams are made of, including at the Superbowl each year. From Martin Scorsese and David Lynch to Errol Morris and Nicolas Winding Refn, the great auteurs have produced great commercials.
In our book Consuming Images: Film Art and the American Television Commercial (Edinbugh UP, 2019), Robert Singer and I investigated the amazing achievements of the short film that sells dreams. Stanley Kubrick once heralded their narrative skill. So do we.
Film art is of course the convergence of human creativity and human ingenuity, including technology. TV commercials have long led the way, from fast-paced edits in the late fifties and the Steadicam in the late seventies (even before Kubrick’s arrestng usage of it in The Shining in 1980) to “bullet time” effects (even before The Matrix in 1999).
This includes the important work of people like Robert Abel, who introduced computer-generated imagery (CGI) into commercials as early as the seventies. And lest there be any doubt, CGI and A.I. have nothing in common: one is created by human artists, the other by inhuman software.
Most of all, let’s remember the joy and beauty of Coca-Cola’s immortal 1971 commercial Hilltop, which featured “young people from all over the world” bringing us the message of love and peace and “snow-white turtle doves,” of wanting to buy the world a Coke. So emotional, even if was about making money, which most films of all types attempt to do. It served wonderfully as the culmination of AMC’s series Mad Men, which was about men and women and humanity, about commercial art, not artificiality.
This season, Coca-Cola has definitely put the cramp in Krampus. Time to terminate their A.I. commercials….”
In 1984, Ridley Scott directed one of TV’s most tremendous commercials for Apple Macintosh. A worker challenging the status quo hurls a sledgehammer at an Orwellian screen, crushing its dominant message. This year, alas, Apple released a television commercial called Crush!, in which a machine destroys many props and signs of human art. What Orwell fought against seemed to be coming true, all thanks to the same company that once promised to rage against the machine.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), HAL-9000 killed astronauts, but at least he didn’t pretend to be heartwarming. For Hilltop, inspirational young people sang, proclaiming Coke to be the “real thing.” Now it is truly the most fake. No turtle doves are in sight, whether gifted from true loves or true haters, let alone artists, let alone human beings. Never has Christmas been more commercial than now. Not spiritual dreams, but carbonated nightmares.

Coca-Cola has had enough controversies over the years that it should be wise, or at least pretend to be so, but the Three Wise Men seem not to be on its payroll. In one of the most divisive years in American history, Coke has gone beyond ignorance to infamy.
The Grinch stole Christmas, sure, but even he had the common decency to give it back, and with a smile on his face, no less. Coca-Cola has thus far offered no such contrition. “Coke is it,” so they used to tell us, but exactly what is “it,” after this debacle? Not Christmas-worthy, that’s for sure. And I certainly don’t want to see them in charge of the troubles that currently face the world’s polar bear population.
To be absolutely clear, Hilltop brought together people from around the world. Whether we are atheists, agnostics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and all others, we are together on one hilltop of humankind. A.I. is not, and will never be, standing with us in “perfect harmony,” as Coca-Cola promised us.
Go “Uncola.” “Be a Pepper.” Or assume the “Look of a New Generation,” just as long as it’s created by human beings. Or drink anything other than bleach, including Coke, if you want. Absolutely. Pop its top, over and over again. Diet or cherry or whatever. Just don’t endorse their new commercial.
Consumers have power. At present, we prevail over all other life and “life” forms. Now it’s time to unbottle our displeasure. Condemnation should befall Coca-Cola from Americans and global citizens. (I’m sure we could get a chatbot to declare same the judgment, if we wanted to lose our souls as well.)
This season, Coca-Cola has definitely put the cramp in Krampus. Time to terminate their A.I. commercials, and all others that opt for the same inhumane type of inhumanity.
Beyond “us versus them” meaning progressives versus conservatives, it can and should be us versus Artificial Intelligence.
Gary D. Rhodes, Ph.D., filmmaker, poet and Full Professor of Media Production at Oklahoma Baptist University, is the author of Weirdumentary: Ancient Aliens, Fallacious Prophecies, and Mysterious Monsters from 1970s Documentaries (Boswell Books, forthcoming), Vampires in Silent Cinema (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), Becoming Dracula – Vols. 1 and 2 (with William M. [Bill] Kaffenberger, BearManor Media), Consuming Images: Film Art and the American Television Commercial (co-authored with Robert Singer, Edinburgh University Press, 2020), Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (IAP, 2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (Bloomsbury, 2012) and The Birth of the American Horror Film (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), as well as the editor of such anthologies as Becoming Nosferatu: Stories Inspired by Silent German Horror (BearManor Media, forthcoming), Film by Design: The Art of the Movie Poster (University of Mississippi Press, 2024), The Films of Wallace Fox (Edinburgh University Press, 2024), The Films of Joseph H. Lewis (Wayne State University Press, 2012) and The Films of Budd Boetticher (Edinburgh University Press, 2017). Rhodes is also the writer-director of such documentary films as Lugosi: Hollywood’s Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004).
Read also: