Pollution: It's a Crying Shame
Artist
Designer Unknown
Datec. 1971
Dimensions22 x 19 3/4 in. (55.9 x 50.2 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LinePoster House Permanent Collection
Object numberPH.7677
DescriptionThis poster is based on a still image taken from a 1971 advertising campaign for Keep America Beautiful. Based on the style of a public-service announcement, it won many prizes and is still considered one of the most memorable commercials of all time. It was so popular that, in an era of physical film, television stations asked for replacement copies because the originals had worn out. The campaign is one of the first and most egregious examples of corporate environmental deception, what we might now call “greenwashing.” Keep America Beautiful, founded by a group of American corporations in 1953, is a lobbying organization that actively fights environmental regulatory legislation. It tries to shift the narrative away from the critical role of industry in pollution toward individual responsibility for such actions as public littering. In its early years, it also described environmental activists as “Communists.” It is also an overt example of how American advertisers have used imagery of Indigenous peoples as shorthand for environmental respect and wisdom, while profiting from a history of stripping Native Americans of their land and criminalizing many of their environmental and religious practices. The “crying Indian,” better known as Iron Eyes Cody, was actually Espera Oscar de Corti, an Italian actor who commonly played Native Americans in film. In 2023, Keep America Beautiful announced that it was transferring the rights to the commercial to the National Congress of American Indians; the congress is now retiring it, stating that it has always been “inappropriate.”On View
Not on view
