So there was this Pepsi (or was it Coke?) commercial a while back that featured two trucks, one from each competing sugarwater purveyor, driving alongside each other down the road. At a stoplight one driver flips a switch, shows the other what kind of system he has thumpin' in the rear of his freight-haulin' ride. A moment passes, then the other driver flips his switch. His truck's side panels open to reveal not a truck full of soda products as one would expect, but many stacks of concert-gauge speakers running heavy on the bass end. The sound from the latter truck dwarfs that of the first, and then the whole second rig starts bouncing on hydraulics. Slogans run in the foreground thereafter, proclaiming the latter pop company's vanilla cola to be less "vanilla" than their competitor's--a strange tactic, given that they're selling, after all, vanilla cola.Now, I'm fully aware that I might be a year or three late with this somewhat reductive analysis of the Vanilla phenomenon. I even had a professor last semester who asked his class if we weren't responding to Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw" because it was too, well, "vanilla." If that's not sure enough a sign that a pop-culture reference has jumped the shark (as the very term "jumping the shark" did about two weeks after the website reared its cyberhead), I'm not sure what is. But hear me out, people, because there have been Interesting New Developments in Vanilla.
Such a proclamation may seem a contradiction-in-terms, but let's look at the evidence. After that initial product introduction (wasn't it a Super Bowl commercial?) there have been a slew of newer variations on the Vanilla theme. There are now cherry-vanilla carbonated beverages, and diet-cherry-vanilla, and raspberry-vanilla-crème (not cream, mind you, but crème--how fancy and urbane!). No less a pitchman than Emeril Fucking Lagasse has shown up shouting "BAM!" from the mountaintops as he sings the praises of Crest Vanilla Mint Whitening Expressions Toothpaste. And where would Vanilla be without her kinda skanky, semi-retired, tarted-up whore of a second cousin, French Vanilla?
(On that note, what is French Vanilla, anyway? Why is it more beige than white--is it egg or something? What makes it "French?" Are there little French kids in an ice-cream sweatshop (?) somewhere doing something more interesting than Breyer's original, plain ol', see-those-vanilla-bean-shavings-that-means-it's-real-vanilla vanilla ice cream? Ahem. I digress.)
The thinking behind the new usage of "Vanilla" is quite obviously racial in overtone, with undercurrents of class instability and a lingering palate of white guilt on the finish. The marketers would have you believe Vanilla is whitebread, WASP, Middle-America, Plain Jane. Vanilla is all "Ahoy, polloi," sporting topsiders and linen pants at the yacht club's cocktail hour. Vanilla has lawn jockeys in the front yard ever since the subdivision council outlawed pink plastic flamingoes, and it doesn't see anything wrong with that. Its darker counterpart in the Neapolitan scheme-of-things (disregarding Strawberry, which is Switzerland in this debate), Chocolate, is the new new thing, the yin to vanilla's yang, the hot new hip-hop shit for the 2K6, even though it's been the same old-school Chocolate for ages untold. Vanilla, it seems, is too old to even be old-school. It's the sockhopper at the Wu-Tang show, it's the moustachioed cops who crash the house party and actually inventory the confiscated weed. Vanilla is the bowtied guys in the Beastie Boys' video who offer soda and pie to all the partygoers who never fought for their right.
To paaaar-tay.
So why, then, does Vanilla seem to be making a comeback in spite of all the aspersions cast her way? Granted: she gets all dressed up in the newest rags, and she's had some surgery to correct both the overbite and the saggy neck, but isn't New Vanilla in the miniskirt and CFMP's just the same old hag with an Extreme Makeover? Why is she worth the bother of Vanilla Mint, Vanilla Crème, Vanilla Raspberry Cherry Swirl Delite? Is there something about Vanilla worth saving?Apparently the answer is a resounding "YES," at least if you're listening to the marketers who bring the old girl around even while they talk nasty about her to their friends. Sure, New Vanilla's an easy lay, but it hasn't always been that way. She's suddenly willing to try different things, and you might even get her in a three-way with your buddies Minty and Razz (you might even take her Cherry!). It appears that Granny Van is actually hipper than you would think, and the advertising dollars are there to make sure you know it. Maybe Vanilla is the new Chocolate, which--for all its hipness-by-omission, at least in terms of the Vanilla discussion--hasn't seen much in the way of experimentation since the Andes Mint and Cookie Dough ice cream. Not that it's needed any work, mind you.
(But speaking of, doesn't "Chocolate Chip" sound like the nickname you gave your douchebag cousin who played Young M.C. while trying to gouge you for shitty weed when you snuck away from the aforementioned yacht club soiree? Wasn't he just one dirty little chip of wackness in a huge fucking tub of Vanilla?)
It bears noting here that most of New Vanilla's work is hardly worth writing home about, and that's not only because of all the kinky shit she's getting into. Like any good relationship, she's easy to fuck up when you're too busy focusing on other things. So much attention is paid to the dressing-up that somebody seems to have forgotten what Vanilla tasted like in the first place. Strawberry and Chocolate seem to have survived just fine, even when you consider the execrable examples to which they lend their names. It's strange, really, how the simplest experiences are those most easily fouled-up and watered-down. But back to Vanilla. Emeril's much-BAMmed-about toothpaste, for instance, tastes like somebody spat a full swig of Scope mouthwash on a lousy off-brand sundae. Vanilla Coke and Vanilla Pepsi taste about the same (regardless of the creative advertising and dueling cola-hoopties), which is to say that they're nowhere near as good as a fountain soda of either brand with a shot or two of real vanilla syrup. And as for whatever Dr. Pepper thinks he's doing with Vanilla and every berry and cherry hanging from the tree, my prayers are with his patients during this time of misguided distraction.
In the end, I guess there's only one thing we all need to remember: no matter what the corporations who sell us our Things try to throw our way, the best New Shit is almost always the Old Shit. New Vanilla will get busted eventually for working the wrong corner, either by the cops or by some newer, flashier flavor with a razorblade under her tongue and some turf to claim. Old Vanilla will always be right there for us, waiting beneath the cap of an ice-cold IBC Cream Soda. She was born in 1919 and she's had her fair share of bumps in the road, but she's still one of the finest Vanillas this impartial observer has ever enjoyed. Wrinkles and all.
