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Speaker 2: Already, and this is the Daily Art.
Speaker 3: This is the Daily ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Wednesday,
Speaker 3: the sixth of August. I'm Emma Gillespie.
Speaker 2: I'm Billy fit Simon's, a.
Speaker 3: New denim ad featuring actress Sidney Sweeney, has sparked major
Speaker 3: controversy over recent weeks over what critics say are references
Speaker 3: to white supremacist messaging. The ad has divided opinion online
Speaker 3: and drawn responses from major political figures, including Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: The controversy centers around the language used in the campaign
Speaker 3: and questions about beauty standards in advertising. Today, we are
Speaker 3: breaking down everything you need to know about this viral ad,
Speaker 3: from what happened to why people are upset, the political response,
Speaker 3: and the ongoing fallout. Billy I think to start off with,
Speaker 3: most of our audience do know who Sidney Sweeney is,
Speaker 3: But just in case for anyone listening who doesn't, what
Speaker 3: do we need to know about her? So?
Speaker 1: Sidney Sweeney is an American actress. She is best known
Speaker 1: for her roles in Euphoria and also in The White
Speaker 1: Lotus season one. Yes, well I didn't watch that season,
Speaker 1: so I'm actually not that familiar Sidney Sweeney. But what
Speaker 1: I do know her from is the film Anyone But You,
Speaker 1: which was filmed in Australia, And so I feel like
Speaker 1: a lot of Australians know her, if not from those
Speaker 1: TV she's.
Speaker 3: Not from those massive successes. They might know her from
Speaker 3: many month for You, but she spent many months here.
Speaker 3: She filmed in Sydney for a long time. That is correct.
Speaker 3: Maybe what is lesser known for an Australian audience though,
Speaker 3: is American Eagle. What's American Eagle?
Speaker 2: Yes, so they are a fashion brand.
Speaker 1: They produce jeans and denim, and I think for the
Speaker 1: purposes of this, that's basically what.
Speaker 2: You need to know about them. They are a jeens brand.
Speaker 3: Okay, now let's start with the ad itself. What can
Speaker 3: you see in this ad. What is it showing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there are multiple different ads. They all show
Speaker 1: Sydney Sweeney. Sometimes she's lying down, she's walking around, she's
Speaker 1: wearing the jeans and all of the ads. Here is
Speaker 1: some audio from just one of those ads. Gans are
Speaker 1: passed down from parents to aspring, often determining traits like
Speaker 1: her color, personality and eve an eye color.
Speaker 2: My gens are blue, Sydney's Tweeney hasburg Keynes.
Speaker 1: And you'll hear there the word play with jeans as
Speaker 1: in j E A n s ye and jeans as
Speaker 1: in g E N E S. I don't know how
Speaker 1: that sounds for an audio platform, but genetics, Yes, I
Speaker 1: think you get where I'm going.
Speaker 2: And so it's a play on words there.
Speaker 1: Now, again, for anyone who's not familiar with Sidney Sweeney,
Speaker 1: she is a white woman. She has blonde hair, and
Speaker 1: she has blue eyes, which they reference in the audio
Speaker 1: that you just heard. And I think you can pretty
Speaker 1: safely assume that the inference in this ad is that
Speaker 1: she is a conventionally attractive woman, and they're really playing
Speaker 1: into that here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would go as far to say as Sydney
Speaker 3: Sweeney is a famously conventionally beautiful woman exactly. So there's
Speaker 3: that play on words there, genes as in denim jens
Speaker 3: and genes as in genetics.
Speaker 1: That's a better way of explaining it than the spelling.
Speaker 2: That I did, Billy.
Speaker 3: Why are people upset about the ad?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So critics on social media say that the great genes
Speaker 1: for as in the genetics phrasing, combined with Sweeney's appearance,
Speaker 1: really echoes white supremacist language that promotes eugenics. Now, eugenics
Speaker 1: is a debunked theory that claims selective breeding can create.
Speaker 2: A superior race. You likely would have heard it when
Speaker 2: it comes to Nazis.
Speaker 1: It's really an idea that fueled Nazi ideology and it
Speaker 1: remains popular among alt rite groups today. To give you
Speaker 1: an idea of kind of the commentary that is happening
Speaker 1: online around this ad, one person said the American Eagles
Speaker 1: ad wasn't just a commercial, It was a love letter
Speaker 1: to white nationalism and eugenic fantasies, and Sydney Sweeney knew it.
Speaker 1: Another one that I saw on TikTok this has been everywhere.
Speaker 1: On TikTok, I saw a comment that said, when those
Speaker 1: traits are consistently uplifted as genetic excellence. We know where
Speaker 1: this leads. This just echoes pseudoscientific language of racial super periority,
Speaker 1: and so the controversy is essentially about accusations that the
Speaker 1: ad is making a subtle reference or even an explicit
Speaker 1: reference to these harmful theories of eugenics and white supremacy.
Speaker 1: There was also criticism for the sexualization of Sidney Sweeney
Speaker 1: in the ad, but I think that was kind of
Speaker 1: a side part, and the main thing here really is
Speaker 1: the racial undertones or the accusations of racism at play here.
Speaker 3: Okay. I think it's also probably worth noting that American
Speaker 3: Eagle as a brand, I mean, it's literally in the
Speaker 3: name that there's this kind of American nationalism, this very
Speaker 3: like US sort of tone, the red, white, and blue,
Speaker 3: the eagle that is an iconic bird associated with US imagery,
Speaker 3: and I mean the relationship between America and neo Nazism.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: It's really painting her as this ideal American woman, and
Speaker 1: there is of course a very problematic history that comes
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 3: So what has the response been like from the brand?
Speaker 3: Have we heard from American Eagle?
Speaker 1: We have, so they actually didn't respond for a little while.
Speaker 1: So these ads first were published on the twenty third
Speaker 1: of July, and they didn't say anything for more than
Speaker 1: a week. We only heard from them over the most
Speaker 1: recent weekends.
Speaker 3: And as we sometimes see with these stories, that silence
Speaker 3: kind of fed into this theory online or this kind
Speaker 3: of conspiracy that has blown up because of that silence.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think people didn't know what they were
Speaker 1: going to say. You never know, you know, are they
Speaker 1: going to issue an apology or are they going to
Speaker 1: double down on the messaging and kind of say that
Speaker 1: they have nothing to apologize for. I would say out
Speaker 1: of those two, they did the latter. So in the
Speaker 1: statement that they posted over the weekend, they said, Sidney
Speaker 1: Sweeney has great genes, is and always was about the genes,
Speaker 1: her genes, her story, her genes with a J, jeans
Speaker 1: with a J. They also added, great genes look good
Speaker 1: on everybody. So they're really maintaining that this was or
Speaker 1: they're claiming that this was purely about the clothing and
Speaker 1: there was no deeper messaging here. I will say that,
Speaker 1: like you said, m in that statement, they spelled genes
Speaker 1: with a J, and they didn't acknowledge the ads that
Speaker 1: do spell genes with a G. So in at least
Speaker 1: one of the ads, they do explicitly spell genes with
Speaker 1: a G. How it's spelt for genetics and then they
Speaker 1: cross it out and replace it with.
Speaker 2: The other genes.
Speaker 3: Okay, so it seems like they're trying to brush that
Speaker 3: off as like a harmless wordplay marketing line. What about
Speaker 3: Sydney Sweeney, She's a popular global star. She's especially popular
Speaker 3: as an actress with younger audiences because of shows like Euphoria,
Speaker 3: which is really a show for young people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she said, she hasn't said anything, so she's remained
Speaker 1: silent on the controversy. That doesn't mean that she hasn't
Speaker 1: been out in public, so she has still been posting
Speaker 1: to her Instagram. She's also been at at least one
Speaker 1: public event so earlier this week she went to a
Speaker 1: red carpet for one of her films. So she has
Speaker 1: been out and about, but she has not addressed this controversy.
Speaker 3: That is kind of surprising in this day and age.
Speaker 3: I guess when celebrities feel so accessible, when we all
Speaker 3: have social media and we all follow celebrities on social media,
Speaker 3: it feels almost like it would be harder to not
Speaker 3: address it. So I think that that probably says a lot. Billy.
Speaker 3: As you mentioned, this has been around for a few weeks,
Speaker 3: this story has been bubbling, but I have seen that
Speaker 3: it's now entered the political sphere. How did that happen?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this isn't the first time that Sweeney has
Speaker 1: faced controversy or backlash from her fan Now you might
Speaker 1: remember I don't remember this, but you might remember that
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty two, she shared pictures of her mum's
Speaker 1: sixtieth birthday and you could see in those snaps that
Speaker 1: she uploaded to her Instagram that some of the members
Speaker 1: of her family were wearing make America Great Again style hats. Okay,
Speaker 1: and they read make sixty great again. So just another
Speaker 1: play on words in a very different style that a.
Speaker 3: Play on a very loaded Republican Trumpian mantra.
Speaker 2: Yes exactly.
Speaker 1: And Sweeney did acknowledge the backlash at that time, and
Speaker 1: she criticized it. She said that people had turned quote
Speaker 1: an innocent celebration into an absurd political statement. Now you
Speaker 1: might be wondering, what does this have to do with
Speaker 1: the current controversy. So, after all this went down with
Speaker 1: American Eagle. Some people online did some digging around and
Speaker 1: they found more of a connection between Sydney Sweeney and
Speaker 1: the Republican Party. So they actually found that Sidney Sweeney
Speaker 1: registered as a Republican voter in the months prior to
Speaker 1: Donald Trump being elected for the second time.
Speaker 3: So that was just last year exactly, So following that
Speaker 3: kind of controversy that she spoke out against about her
Speaker 3: mum's birthday. Then sometime passes and it's the lead up
Speaker 3: to the US election last year, and Sidney Sweeney registers
Speaker 3: formally as a Republican voter. But I do think it's
Speaker 3: worth pointing out that this is one part of a
Speaker 3: developing controversy. That doesn't mean that we're saying anything about
Speaker 3: her political preferences, and that doesn't mean that her political
Speaker 3: preferences make her a Nazi.
Speaker 1: No, And again we're not saying that, but I guess
Speaker 1: that her fans or people on the internet are criticizing
Speaker 1: her for her political decisions, and that's made a big
Speaker 1: part of why this has continued to be a big
Speaker 1: story in the days and weeks after this ad was
Speaker 1: first published.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense, it makes absolute sense.
Speaker 3: It's also interesting and I think speaks to the current
Speaker 3: US political landscape where maybe ten or twenty years ago,
Speaker 3: if we found out that an artist or an entertainer
Speaker 3: was a quote unquote Republican, I don't think it damaged
Speaker 3: their brand or reputation as much as we've seen it
Speaker 3: damage the reputation of modern and contemporary performers and artists.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean case in point, Donald Trump struggling to find
Speaker 3: names for people to perform at his inauguration, and the
Speaker 3: Wikipedia page with a growing list of artists who have
Speaker 3: protested him playing their songs at his events. So there
Speaker 3: is definitely a political and a social conversation about the
Speaker 3: impact of identifying as a Republican. In twenty twenty five.
Speaker 1: It's definitely a different political landscape that everyone's playing in.
Speaker 3: So tell me about Donald Trump weighing in on this.
Speaker 3: How did he find out? What has he said?
Speaker 1: So he was asked about that by a reporter just
Speaker 1: as he was about to get on to Air Force one.
Speaker 2: Here is what he said. Oh now I love her ad?
Speaker 2: Is that right? As Sidney sweet Eh, you'd be surprised
Speaker 2: at how many people are Republicans.
Speaker 1: If Sydney Sweeney is a registered Republican.
Speaker 2: I think her ad is fantastic.
Speaker 1: So clearly they're praising Sydney Sweeney and the ad as well.
Speaker 1: And after that happened, he then doubled down on his
Speaker 1: social media platform Truth Social.
Speaker 2: He said the American Eagle.
Speaker 1: Ad was the hottest ad out there, and he also
Speaker 1: added that the genes are flying off the shells. Go
Speaker 1: get them, Sydney. So I think you get the picture
Speaker 1: that he is very much in support of Sidney Sweeney.
Speaker 1: Now Trump isn't the only politician who has weighed in
Speaker 1: on this. He is Vice President jd. Vance also weighed in.
Speaker 1: He said, the response to this is an example of
Speaker 1: the difference between Democrats and Republicans.
Speaker 4: It actually reveals something pretty interesting about the Dems, though,
Speaker 4: which is that you have like a normal, all American,
Speaker 4: beautiful girl during doing like a normal Genes ad. Right,
Speaker 4: they're trying to sell, you know, sell jeans to kids
Speaker 4: in America, and they have managed to so unhinge themselves
Speaker 4: over this thing. And it's like, you, guys, did you
Speaker 4: learn nothing from the November twenty twenty four election. Like
Speaker 4: I actually thought that one of the lessons they might
Speaker 4: take is we're going to be less crazy. The lesson
Speaker 4: they have apparently taken is we're going to attack people
Speaker 4: as Nazis for thinking City Sweeney is beautiful.
Speaker 3: So we're seeing the political conversation or I guess the
Speaker 3: conversation from the right in the US, leaning on that
Speaker 3: trope of its woke culture. It's PC gone mad. Exactly
Speaker 3: Has anything else happened in recent days? Because this story
Speaker 3: isn't coming away?
Speaker 1: No. I mean we had a conversation about whether or
Speaker 1: not it was too late for us to explain the controversy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but it really has just kept.
Speaker 1: Going and going and isn't dying down. I think the
Speaker 1: only other thing to mention that has been significant is
Speaker 1: you might think that this level of controversy has been
Speaker 1: bad for American Eagles reputation, but actually in terms of
Speaker 1: its financials, it's kind of done the opposite, or it
Speaker 1: has done the complete opposite.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: So on Monday, after Trump's post, American Eagle Outfitters, which
Speaker 1: is their umbrella brand, their shares actually jumped twenty four percent,
Speaker 1: and it was their best day in about twenty five years,
Speaker 1: according to Wall Street Journal on the stock market.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: So they have added hundreds of millions of dollars to
Speaker 1: their valuation.
Speaker 3: Okay, I think that's really significant or an important turning
Speaker 3: point in this story because what some people might have
Speaker 3: dismissed as maybe a frivolous, viral social media conversation has
Speaker 3: actually had real world economic impacts of significant value.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that is largely to do with
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's comments, the US President's comments supporting it.
Speaker 3: Yep. Well, Billy, I think we're all now going to
Speaker 3: be waiting to hear from Sydney Sweeney, whether she likes
Speaker 3: it or not. She has kind of become almost a
Speaker 3: poster child for the MAGA movement this month or in
Speaker 3: the last few weeks. You would think if that was
Speaker 3: deeply against her politics, that she would want to explain that,
Speaker 3: but maybe it's not against her politics either way. I
Speaker 3: have a feeling we're probably going to be talking about
Speaker 3: this again at some point in the future.
Speaker 1: It will be fascinating to see what she does, because
Speaker 1: if she comments on it in a week, or if
Speaker 1: she comments on it in five years in you know,
Speaker 1: a celebrity profile that she does looking back on her life,
Speaker 1: at some point, I imagine she will have to comment
Speaker 1: on this.
Speaker 3: Oh one. Yeah, Billy, thank you so much for taking
Speaker 3: us through that today. We really appreciate you breaking down
Speaker 3: a pretty complicated one for us. Thank you and thank
Speaker 3: you for listening to you today's episode. We will be
Speaker 3: back a little later on this afternoon with your evening
Speaker 3: news headlines, but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 2: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda
Speaker 2: Bungelung Calkatin woman from Gadighl Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Speaker 2: Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Speaker 2: s right island and nations. We pay our respects to
Speaker 2: the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.