In case you have not yet seen the new Amazon Prime commercial, you’re late in the game and you must go do it now. The brief rundown is as follows: An elderly Catholic priest meets his elderly imam friend for a cup of tea and much laughter. They both have bad knees and, seeing great minds think alike, they get each other knee braces through Amazon Prime. The end of the commercial shows both religious figures engaging in prayer in their respective places of worship, while wearing knee braces they received from the other.
The commercial was released during a strategic time in history. In the post election craze filled with fear and hateful tension, Amazon Prime thought to market itself as a proponent of peace and it worked. Over Thanksgiving break, my Facebook news feed blew up with this commercial. My conservative friends love it, my liberal friends love it, even my friends who like to pretend they don’t actually live in this country love it. It is clear, then, that there is something beyond Amazon Prime’s great marketing squad that is touching many hearts. Something about this commercial managed to get most people on the same page for two minutes, which seems to be unusual these days.
So far, the most popular societal responses to chaos and diversity have been to either hate on whoever is not on the “right” side, or to agree to disagree and find some sort of watered down common ground. Both positions are unsatisfying.
After having watched the commercial at least ten times, I think it became so popular because its message proposes a little-discussed option: It proposes the possibility of engaging in loving relationships without losing one’s values and identity. The priest and the imam do not alienate each other because of their beliefs, but they still stick to them. After the lovely tea conversation, they don’t engage in some non-denominational rite to prove that all is peachy and nothing matters except for their love for each other. The priest heads to church and the imam to the mosque, but that is not an obstacle to their friendship because they are free to be themselves in their relationship. This message is powerful because it suggests that I can love and respect someone different from me while still being completely myself. It suggests that there is a way to live a friendship while being open about one’s beliefs.
Right now, I believe society runs the risk to either suffer a violent split between groups of people who do not care to dialogue or be forced into a faux state of peace in which no one is truly free to think or speak for oneself. Both are scary but plausible options. I do not have Amazon Prime and I don’t think I’ll sign up anytime soon, but I do applaud them for suggesting that true love and true freedom are only possible when two parties willing to engage in dialogue are allowed to be completely themselves.
Letizia Mariani can be reached at mari8259@stthomas.edu.