Paula Marantz Cohen labels the Coca-Cola franchise “a religion of Americana”:
Not an American religion, but a religion devoted to the idea of America — which is to say, to those Norman Rockwell scenes of homecoming, fly fishing, and presents under the tree.
Disney might be compared with Coke in having something of the same religious aspirations, but Disney has a more complicated apparatus — movies and theme parks (a visit to one of which is liable to bankrupt a family of four), not to mention the dubious figure of its founder, Walt Disney, a misanthropic anti-Semite (OK, Coke’s Colonel Pemberton was a drug-addicted Confederate soldier, but never mind). To worship at the altar of Coke, you just have to like the drink and put out the paltry sum required to buy it — which, even if it may produce rotten teeth, diabetes, and obesity, isn’t creating centuries of civil war and ethnic cleansing. It tastes good and it’s refreshing, especially after you’ve spent the afternoon trying to assemble an IKEA cabinet or five hours in heavy traffic to eat overcooked turkey at your Aunt Leona’s. …
Part of what makes Coke’s triumphal history go down so easily is that no one around today was alive before the beverage existed. Coke is “real,” as the promotional slogans remind us, because, artificial sweeteners, colorings, and preservatives aside, it has endured in more or less the same form for as long as anyone can remember. It is moving to see those old, round-cornered Coca Cola machines and those small, green-tinted glass bottles. The red on white Coca Cola script is a kind of Madeleine experience for childhood. Even if you never experienced anything like the America of Norman Rockwell (who did many of the Saturday Evening Post advertisements for Coca Cola during the 1940s and 50s) there’s something about that Coca Cola script that makes you think you did. I suspect individuals around the world feel this, even if they hate everything else that America stands for.
The Dish 