Rebecca Furland

Rebecca Furland received her MA in Deaf Cultural Studies from Gallaudet University in 2011. The title of her thesis is, “American Sign Language and the Desire to Buy: A Study of ASL in TV Advertisements”. Currently, she teaches Deaf Studies at the University of Iowa.

Contested Representation: PepsiCo Advertising and the Deaf Community

People today are media-driven. We are exposed to advertising in a great many contexts, consuming it and its inherent messages without serious consideration. Deaf people and sign language, for instance, appear in advertisements quite frequently. This begs the question, what do these representations mean for members of the Deaf community? Currently, there is a dearth of information surrounding the intersection of Deaf people and media. While other fields have extensively examined the role of media representation, Deaf Studies has yet to fully engage this topic.
This presentation builds on a larger work that examined the relationship between Deaf people and TV advertising. Here we will focus on the controversy surrounding one such representation. PepsiCo’s commercial, “Bob’s House,” is an advertisement that garnered national attention within the deaf community. In 2008, this silent ad had its debut on primetime TV. The NAD was in full support of the commercial, while the Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing vehemently opposed it. This controversy illuminates the difficulties of representing a minority group appropriately as there may be polarized views within or surrounding a minority community. Unpacking survey data and interviews, this presentation will investigate the controversy, examine the difference in interpretation of media representation by hearing and Deaf audiences, and discuss the importance of media representation.