Great picture, right? Some have declared that this is evidence of Apple’s social consciousness, that they honor Rosa Parks on the front page of their website. But is that what’s going on here?
Notice the picture choice; it shows Ms. Parks sitting in a bus, harkening back to the event that made her famous - her refusal to yield her seat to a white man, refusing to yield to dehumanizing laws. The picture is black and white, and neither of the figures in the picture looks at the camera. That the sole characters in the picture are a white man and rosa parks in an otherwise empty but also suggests that this might have been staged. The picture has been edited, though. Added to the left side of the picture, at the bottom is the name of Rosa Parks and her years of birth and death. Added to the upper-left hand corner of the photo are Apple Computer’s Logo, a silhouette of an apple with a bite taken out, by now an almost universally recognized brand. Below this is the tag: “Think Different;” some will remember that years ago apple ran a very successful add campaign that played on that tag, and which featured the likes of Einstein, Bob Dylan, and Martin Luther King, Jr. among others. This instance of the “Think Different” tag uses the same font as that original ad campaign, and one can only assume that the similarity is intentional.
The addition of the Apple logo and the tag dramatically change the companies implied relation to Rosa Parks. Rather than change the format of their website; perhaps to give homage to this great woman by describing what she did; Apple, by applying their logo to the Photo of Ms. Parks insinuates that there is a similarity between the Ms. Parks’ actions on that Montgomery bus and Apple Computer. Just what relationship is implied? Implied, because the message is not spelled out, but left to the viewer to piece together. But the tag “Think Differently” gives the reader a direction toward which to bend their thoughts: “Rosa Parks did not follow the mainstream of culture, neither does Apple Computer, if you want to be like her, buy a computer from us.”
This isn’t a very profound reading of this ad (that is what it is, you see; not a tribute). In fact, the ad really is pretty straight forward. I am bothered by it though, because Ms. Park’s action were not merely that of a person who bucks that social norm, but an act of peaceful resistance to social injustice. Rosa Parks, and the Civil rights movement in general, was not about being counter-cultural, but about transforming an unjust social system into a just one, and that without violence. Does buying an Apple computer an act of justice? No, with respect to justice, buying an Apple Computer is just like buying any other computer: they are all made in factories overseas under similar conditions. Buying an Apple Computer may place one in the minority (Apple, reportedly having about 5% of the market share), it may make one cool; but Rosa Parks is not great because she was cool, or simply in the minority, but because she struggled for justice.
I think that this picture, as presented on Apple’s website, far from offering tribute to a great woman, in fact diminishes what she represents, and veils just what she stood for. Apple is not offering tribute at all, but attempting to co-opt this great woman for their own economic gain. Shame on them
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