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Listen up, GenXers - the kids today are talking about a commercial featuring some girl named Sydney Sweeney (who is she? I dunno. She's some rich blonde MAGA influencer.)

But she's in a jeans commercial and the cultural discourse it has triggered is about Whiteness and, of course, the far Right.

If you watch it, see the subtext immediately, but are talking to a YoungUn who doesn't see it, try and get them to bone up on cultural literacy with Jack Solomon's very short and very accessible book: The Signs of Our Times: semiotics, the hidden messages of environments, objects, and cultural images (1988).

Yeah, it's an old book but it's a really good one. I read it in undergrad and it did MOAR to strengthen my media literacy than all the toks on the interwebs.