espresso bongo

Two Takes on Tech: Dodge Journey's "Search Engine" and Jaguar's Machines

Commenting on a recent post on this blog, media critic Joseph Frango made the observation that our culture is becoming increasingly disembodied, as more and more facets of everyday life and commerce take up full-time residence on the web.  Judging from conversations I've overheard at social events lately, a lot of people seem to be thinking the same thing.

It's as if once, to paraphrase Wordsworth, the world was too much with us, now both the world and ourselves have evacuated the premises for cyberspace.  And we miss our bodily selves and the earth they once walked upon.

In this light, I found it amusing how quickly  the field of commodity aesthetics -- i.e., advertising -- was able to pick up on this tremor in the social nervous system.   And, as always, the solution to the vauge angst such qualms produce is found in the products advertised.

Here are two recent car commercials that take on the theme of disembodiment in different ways.  The first is for Dodge (though the version I actually saw didn't have the contest it mentions in it). The second is a new Jaguar XJ spot:
 
 

The Dodge ad, despite all its references to web culture, is really quite traditional.  How many car spots have you seen over the years that promise you that the machine being promoted offers the perfect escape from the civilization that created it?  Or that the car is designed to help you get back in touch with nature?

But what's new about the message here are the metaphors.  This Dodge doesn't contain any ordinary motor, but a search engine, to help you escape the other search engines that enslave you (or, at least, keep you chained to you desk).

Nevertheless, the spot seems haunted by the technical reality it would flee.  If a car is now a search engine, what does that make the terrain it would explore?  Jacque Derrida's deconstructive philosophy once insisted that "there's nothing outside the text"; here, the language of the spot suggests to me that "there's nothing outside the web".  

The beauty of this scenario is that it plays to the desire to have your cake and eat it too.  You still get the comforts of a midsized SUV.  But rather than worry about what price the environment might pay for your pleasure, you are encouraged to think of your Dodge Journey as a way to re-discover that environment's wonder.

Maybe that's why the spot made me think of these lines from a poem by Campbell McGrath:

"Everything yields to the woodsman's axe
but still we are not satisfied.
Now we yearn for the vanished trees!"

Cyborg's Have More Fun

The Jaguar spot also replays elements of classic commercials.  Isn't the personal power it promises a familiar theme in car ads?  But as with Dodge, something new is added when this message is translated into the tech-obsessed language of today.  In fact, you could say the commercial invokes, through its beautiful science fiction film work, a sort of technological sublime, with allusions to everything from Fritz Lang's Metropolis to Apple's iconic 1984 TV commercial.

It does all this to make a point  about how smart the Jag's driving technology has become.  And then it ups the ante to insist that of all the forms of artificial intelligence you meet every day, there's only one brainy enough to meld with not just your mind, but your entire being.

So the point the spot makes is ironic.  For it implies that becoming one with this technology, rather than civilize you even more, will enable you to unleash your inner animal.   This means that the best way to retrieve your authenticity is to become a cyborg.

That's why I find the tag line so evocative.  "How alive are you?" it asks, suggesting, of course, that without this very expensive prosthetic device, you're a mere member of the walking dead.  Or worse, a machine.

You could say that both commercials, then, employ a hair of the dog that bit you logic.  If it's our increasingly technologic civilization that's getting you down, the best cure is more of that civilization in the form of another (and in Jaguar's case, even stronger) dose of its technology.

It's a contradictory logic, to be sure.  But it's one that underpins many of the communications Consumer Culture sends our way.  So much so, that the problem with such a message, rather than its oddness, may be that it's not weird enough to make a real impact.  Thoughts?

 

Elaine Equi and Jerome Sala Read at DIA, 5/24 at 6:30 PM

I'm excited to be reading with my better half, the fantastic poet Elaine Equi, this coming week at DIA. Here's the info:

Poetry Reading

Elaine Equi
Jerome Sala

Thursday, May 24th
6:30 PM

DIA: Chelsea
535 W. 22nd St.
5th Floor 

$6 general admission; $3 DIA members, students and seniors.

For full description, click here. 

As a preview, here's one of Elaine's poems -- followed by one of mine:

THE POLITE ONES

have stolen my identity.

Robbed me of my naturally
murderous vitality
with their cagey emptiness.

Oh! I will smother them
with this turquoise cushion.

Mash it against
their perfectly outlined
crimson lips.

But later I will apologize.

                                        -- Elaine Equi
                                            from her book, Click and Clone

IT'S NOT TV

Khalisi, the queen of the barbarians,
joins her husband on the funeral pyre.
Before walking in she says to her devotees:
"I am the daughter of the dragon.
If anyone harms you, they will die screaming."
The witch who betrayed her is tied to the pyre too.
She says: "I won't scream."  Khalisi: "Yes you will.
But I don't want your screams, just your life."
When the branches have been burned
and all the agonizing screams have been screamed
Khalisi is still kneeling there, unharmed, naked
except for some ashes where her clothes have burned off.
The dragon eggs thrown into the fire with her
have hatched.  A baby dragon sits on each shoulder.
In the book, one is nursing at her breast.

                                                                        -- Jerome Sala

If you're around NYC and free, hope to see you there.  For more info on the reading and DIA, click here.  

 

Reading to Close Tamara Gonzales' Show at Norte Maar, April 29 at 4PM

I'm reading to close Tamara Gonzales' incredible show at: Norte Maar, 4PM Sunday, April 29th. She's included 4 of my poems in her project. Thanks Tamara!

Norte Maar
83 Wyckoff Avenue 
#1B,
Brooklyn, NY 11237 
646-361-8512.

For more info, click here 

Art as Experience and Vice Versa: Thoughts on Jerry Lewis and John Dewey

Ever since I watched a documentary on Encore  about the career of Jerry Lewis -- Method to the Madness -- I haven't been able to get one of the comedian's iconic bits out of my mind.

Lewis pretends to be typing (on an invisible typewriter) to the sounds of classical music.  He performs a sort of hand ballet, looking a bit like a conductor at times.  As the bit goes on, he gets  goofier as he becomes  exhausted by his efforts:

 

One of the things that fascinates me about this  gag is how it mixes the codes of high art with everyday life to such a delightful effect; it's part an elegant display of nimble dexterity -- and part slapstick.

In fact, this little concerto brought to mind a comment the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey made in his classic book on aesthetics, Art as Experience.  Dewey cautions against drawing too fine a line between the creative arts and everyday life.  As he puts it:

"The intelligent mechanic, engaged in his job, interested in doing well and finding satisfaction in his handiwork, caring for his tools and materials with genuine affection, is artistically engaged."

Is not part of the humor of Lewis' skit found in the degree of "genuine affection" his typist exhibits for what we conventionally think of as a mundane task?

If Life Can Become Art, So Art Can Become Life

Another reason the Lewis routine grabbed hold of my thoughts is that it exhibits an impulse that I've seen mirrored in interesting ways by the world of high art.  If Lewis suggests that there's something about everyday life that's artistic, the history of the avant-garde is replete with examples of poets and visual artists who have sought to make artistic culture part of everyday life.

Lautreamont, the prose poet and predecessor of Surrealism, insisted, for example, that "Poetry must be made by all..."  Among the ways this idea found expression in the art movements of the 20th century was in the recipes for cooking up poems that Dadaist and Surrealist poets offered to make it theoretically possible for "anyone to be a poet."

Tristan Tzara's famous instruction for making a Dada poem, for example, was to cut out words from a newspaper, shake them up in a paper bag, splash them onto a table, and record the results.

Surrealist seer Andre Breton's "psychic automatism" offered a a formula to get your unconscious to write the poem for you:

"Put yourself in as passive, or receptive, a state of mind as you can.  Forget about your genius, your talents, and the talents of everyone else...Write quickly, without any preconceived subject, fast enough so that you will not remember what you're writing and be tempted to re-read what you've written."

Following this method religiously, Breton states later, should enable you to write entire books on subjects you know nothing about.

Perhaps you could even say that some aspects of the Slam Poetry movement pursued dissolving art into everyday life -- and vice versa.  For in that format, as I remember, not only anyone can get up, "be a poet", and compete -- but all can be judges/critics who canonize the list of winners for the night.

In any case, it's no surprise that I associate Lewis' bit with certain modes of avant-garde art.  Both offer examples of how conventional thinking and experience can be transformed in pleasurable and even liberating ways.

Of course, once such techniques have been around in the culture awhile, the more traditional aspects of the social order usually move in to mess with them.  In our so-called free market society, such experiments are not so much repressed as standardized for money-making purposes.

Tzara's Dada poem is marketed as "Magnetic Poetry."  Surrealism becomes a preferred method for drawing charisma to rock videos and ads, and its techniques featured in self-help books to aid in overcoming  "writer's block" (and "unleash the voice within").  Slam morphs into movies,  TV and Broadway shows and rap records.  And "Jerry Lewis" is now a studio, a brand, a corporation -- an entire industry.

But before this process takes place, when low can still be high and vice versa, the joy  that comes with the sense of new possiblities can still be felt.

Perhaps part of the appeal of this strain of culture is that it supports the belief that things can still transform in exciting ways.  Maybe even that they can change.  Thoughts?

Related Interest:
More on art dissolving into life in my review of Nick Piombino and Toni Simon's Contradicta, now up at Evergreen Review Online. 

 

The "Forever" Brand: Thoughts on Chevy's 2012 Apocalypse Commercial

There's been so much on the web and TV about the big car ad of the Super Bowl ("Halftime in America"), I thought I'd weigh in about a different one -- a spot that relies more on the bizarre than the authentic to make its point.

I'm thinking about the Chevy spot that invokes both the Mayan and Biblical (it's raining frogs!) apocalypse -- and our dreaded year of 2012.  If you haven't seen it yet, check it out:

 

Of course, this satiric way of claiming that a Chevy lasts longer than a Ford has been accused of exaggeration.  As reported by brandchannel, a representative for Ford  Trucks lodged this protest:

"They  [Chevy] cite R.L. Polk data on longevity -- not durability.  If you look at R.L. Polk's data on durability ... there are more Ford trucks on the road with more than 250,000 miles.  We've made our point and we'll always defend our products."

You might expect religious folks, at least those who believe in prophecies of the end times, to get upset with this scenario too.  For the spot takes an episode of sacred history and uses it cavalierly, for ironic purposes (and, of course, to make a buck).

Though I suppose even fundamentalists -- at least in the West -- are numb to this by now (and probably find it funny themselves), because hey, that's what modernity (not to mention advertising) is all about. 

Nevertheless, there is more than a grain of truth in this spot.  Chevy, after all, did survive a crash of nearly apocalyptic proportions.  What saved the company, though, was not simply the durability of their trucks, but the same thing that saved Chrysler: a little Keynesian economics (in the form of government funds).  (Ford refused the bailout offer.)

Also, there's something about the way the main character shrugs off  the loss of "Dave" that mirrors the dopey "whatever" attitude of the survivor in all of us -- happy to be one of the lucky ones who made it (as the theme song suggests), but powerless to do much about the daily catastrophe.
 

What Comes After the End?

But what I think the spot is most accurate in portraying is a contemporary mindset.  Astute observers of the apocalyptic imagery running through our pop culture, such as Fredric Jameson and Slavoj Zizek, have remarked about how easy it seems to imagine the end of the world.

What's difficult, perhaps impossible to envision, they argue, is the end of capitalism -- a system responsible, in their eyes, for this continuing sense of dread in the first place.

The spot's closing line captures this idea perfectly: "Chevy Silverado" the (Tim Allen) voice-over intones, "from the beginning of your work day, till the end of the world.  Chevy runs deep."

And the images act out this sentiment in a literal fashion: the world around these characters is crumbling, but their trucks keep going and going - like Engergizer bunnies.  What survives the end of the world?  Products, in this case trucks and twinkies.  (Perhaps their preservatives have made them invulnerable?)

But despite the spot's hyper-bullishness about its brand, it nevertheless seems bruised by the times. It's as if the humor is there to help relieve a lurking anxiety.

Because even if a few brands survive the next meltdown, what's the point -- if the rest of the economy is (as in the spot) annihilated?  Of course, the commercial's humor assures us this could never happen.  But then, you've got to ask yourself, how did the apocalypse end up in a spot to sell a truck in the first place?

Back in 2008 it seemed, at times, the conomic end was near.  At the very least a spot like this proves the trauma of the deepest moments of "The Great Recession" hasn't left us just yet.

And that trauma continues to color thoughts about the future.  In fact, the jokey quality of the commercial seems flavored by a bit of gallows humor.  It even made me think of Robert Creeley's classic poem "I Know a Man":

I Know a Man

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, -- John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ's sake, look
out where yr going

The authors of this commercial would, of course, make an addition to this poem.  In their version, there would be an extra line; the poem would end by saying:

"and make sure you're driving a Chevy."

Also of Interest:

Click here to see my review of poet Nick Piombino and artist Toni Simon's collaborative book, Contradicta, at Evergreen Review Online: