People Start Pollution, People Can Stop It.
Somewhere, an Indian is crying.
In 1971, the
Keep America Beautiful
organization aired a famous TV commercial of a Native American shedding a single tear at the sight of litter being dropped on the road.
It's known as the "Crying Indian" ad, although it is called "People Start Pollution, People Can Stop It". At the time this was quite a powerful ad. Not subtle, but of the
Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped variety.
But these days, with the overuse of the
Magical Native American trope, this ad has become a
Stock Parody (even before it turned out the actor in the ad was really Italian, and had been pretending to be Native American for years before that ad). Thus while some still believe in the message, it's hard to resist a good joke from it.
You can view the ad
here.
Examples:
- Directly parodied in a The Simpsons episode, where Homer makes a mockery of waste management.
- Another Native American then comes up to the one who cried at the single piece of litter and says "Do yourself a favour. Don't turn around". The camera pans out over the landfill where Springfield used to be, to the sound of screaming, followed by "I told you not to turn around".
- The Nostalgia Critic sheds a tear when he watches Tom And Jerry singing and dancing about how they are best friends in The Movie.
- The Critic: When Duke tries to make "Savvy Indian Chewing Tobacco" a sponsor, complete with an indian on the set, Jay rips up his contract and throws the pieces at the indian's feet, making him shed a tear.
- Subverted in Futurama. A native Martian sheds a tear at a can of Slurm which was carelessly discarded by Zap Branigan, then he sobs "Cynthia used to drink Slurm".
- In Metalocalypse's "Birthday Dethday", Murderface sheds a tear of joy (and blood) when he receives the greatest gift in his life; the chance to 'destroy United States history...LITERALLY!"
- In the 2008 Knight Rider movie, KITT shows this picture when Mike litters in him.
- In Wayne's World 2, Jim Morrison's Naked Indian Friend sheds tears on seeing the scattered trash left over from Waynestock. He cheers up, though, when he sees Wayne and Garth picking up the mess.
- In one Friends episode, the characters are stranded at a rest stop. Chandler throws his empty pack of cigarettes on the ground. When scolded, he replies, "I thought maybe if I littered, that crying Indian might come along and save us."
- From MST3K's infamous take on Mitchell, there is a scene where Mitchell dumps what seems to be two ashtrays worth of cigarette butts on the ground.
Servo: Somewhere, an Indian is crying.
- Bob And George. Megaman throws away a projectile, and Tomahawk Man sheds a single tear. Then Tomahawk Man goes to pick it up, and it turns out to be the one weapon he's weak against, so it kills him.
- Interestingly enough, Word Of God says the original plan was to have the camera cut back to Megaman after Tomahawk shed the tear, but not explicitly showing his defeat might've created plotholes later.
- Shows up in The Non Adventures Of Wonderella in "Diamonds are WHATEVER"
- The Zero Punctuation review of Fallout 3 has a visual sting of a deer crying when he talks about the landscape being littered with gravel.
- In Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People Episode 3: Baddest of the Bands, Strong Bad gets to shed a single tear at the sight of a pond full of dead fish. (Of course, this being Strong Bad, he's actually the perpetrator of the incident.)
- Ceviche from Chowder has done this multiple times. While these were most likely not a direct parody, it's still worth mentioning.
- Parodied in The Non-Adventures of Wonderella when she off handedly destroys a vast patch of land without a second thought.
- Also parodied by VH-1 during an ad for a 1970's tribute week several years ago, with the Indian played by Jimmie Walker.
- The ad was mocked on the recycling episode of Penn And Teller Bullshit. Penn pointed out that the ad was a terrible form of ethnic stereotyping and compared it to making a commercial encouraging people to save their money that showed a Jew shedding a single tear.
- Parodied in Moral Orel with the mascot of Diorama Elementary. The mascot is called "The Vanishing American" and is a stereotypical Indian chief with a teardrop painted on his cheek.
- In a flashback to the Arizona episode of Gargoyles, Elisa's grandfather sheds a single tear when his son (Elisa's father) leaves the tribe to go to New York.
- Parodied by the WCW fansite DDT Digest - rather then star ratings, bad matches were rated in crying Indians. The later years of the federation saw a lot of crying Indians in the recap.
- The opening lyrics to the Eels song Mr. E's Beautiful Blues;
"The smokestack spitting black soot into the sooty sky/ The load on the road brings a tear to the indian's eye"
- In World Of Warcraft, there's a taunka (imagine an anthropomorphic bison) in a village in the Borean Tundra named Iron Eyes. His quest text includes describing a "single tear" running down his face. The quest he gives? Cleaning up the debris gnomes have left scattered around the geyser fields.
- Somebody in the Harry Potter fandom compared the harmonians to the Trail of Tears, so someone on Fandom wank made an icon of the crying Indian looking at Ron/Hermione.
- King Of The Hill: In "The Arrow Head", Bill cries a single tear when comparing the government taking Hank's land to the government taking the Indians' land.
- Parodied in a Harvey Birdman Attorney At Law episode by Apache Chief.
