The Spectacular Consumption of “True” African American Culture: “Whassup” with the Budweiser Guys?

—Spectacular consumption is a process through which the relations among cultural forms, the culture industry, and the lived experiences of persons are shaped by public consumption. This essay examines how the spectacular consumption of “Whassup?!” Budweiser advertising is constitutive of white American ambivalence toward “authentic” blackness. The essay argues that Budweiser’s hottest ad campaign benefits from a tension between the depiction of “universal” values and the simultaneous representation of distinctive culture. The illustration of blackness as sameness and blackness as otherness arises out of conflicted attitudes toward black culture. Thus, Budweiser’s strategic attempts to regulate and administer “authentic” blackness as a market value also reproduce this ambivalence. Furthermore, as an object of spectacular consumption, the meaning of “authentic” black life and culture is partly generative of mediated and mass marketed images.