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Resist the narrative: thoughts on John Scalzi’s "Red Shirts"

It’s all about story.

That short sentence sums up what’s believed to make for good communications today.

This maxim is applied to everything from popular entertainment, business and academia, to the (high) arts. According to scholar Christian Salmon, the cultural obsession with storytelling started back in the 90s and became an unquestioned “best practice” with the explosion of the web. Today, as he notes, terms like “narrative branding” and “storytelling management” have become part of job descriptions.

The rationale behind the trend, of course, is that storytelling touches on something deep in human nature. The cave people did it, we’re told. Stories go deeper than the so-called “rational mind” (that we’ve been trained to despise as phony), sinking beneath it, touching something more “real.”

I’ve wondered about storytelling a lot myself. In my work as a freelance copywriter (or “content provider”, as this job is now called today), I have, in fact, marketed my own skills as a professional “storyteller” quite aggressively.

What strikes me about this trend is that while a lot has been written about its upside, there’s not much out there about the potential dangers of getting swept up in a narrative, especially one that is not your own. John Scalzi’s Hugo award winning science fiction novel, Redshirts, can be read as a witty critique of our "storied" culture.

The book takes the viewpoint of the rank and file crew members on a space exploration voyage. After participating in a number of dangerous missions, they notice that the elite officers who lead these expeditions (a group of five or so prominent characters) always make it back alive, while they, the enlisted orders, tend to get knocked off. 

This unequal distribution of risk is not just the result of the prototypical class war between officers and crew. A character named Jenkins discovers that somehow, “a fictional television show intrudes on our reality and warps it.” The reason the top five officers don’t get killed is because they are this TV show’s main characters. The crew, meanwhile, is expendable — just like movie extras, or “redshirts”, as they are called by fans of the old Star Trek Series.

Characters who accept what’s called “The Narrative” without question end up getting killed. This is because “The Narrative” not only puts them in ridiculously dangerous situations — it even impairs their thinking capabilities. When “The Narrative” takes over, things quit making sense”, Scalzi writes, and…

“People stop thinking logically and start thinking dramatically. ‘The Narrative’—Jenkins’ term for when the television show crept into their lives, swept away rationality and physical laws and made people know, do and say things they wouldn’t otherwise. You’ve had it happen to you already, Jenkins had said. A fact you didn’t know before just pops into your head. You make a decision or take an action you wouldn’t otherwise make. It’s like an irresistible impulse because it is an irresistible impulse—your will isn’t your own, you’re just a pawn for a writer to move around.”

The danger of buying into popular narratives, as Redshirts illustrates, is that the interests of the people telling the tales sometimes don’t coincide with those of the players in the drama.

Popular wisdom recognizes this fact. In the business world, when some new motivational narrative comes down from management, it’s common for the rank and file to talk about the dangers of “drinking the Koolaid.” Or think of those war movies in which the soldiers who are most gung-ho often end up getting themselves and their crew killed.

But what fascinates me most about Redshirts is how it shows that once narratives get inside you, so to speak, they can change both your thinking and perception of physical reality.

The story that changed taste buds

Marketing guru Seth Godin illustrates how this process happens on a more mundane level. He shows how a story changed the way wine tasted, even for the most discerning drinkers. In his classic All Marketers Are Liars Tell Stories, he describes the success of a manufacturer of wine glasses, George Riedel.

Riedel, Godin tells us, is a “tenth-generation glass blower”, “an artisan pursuing an age-old craft”, who believes that the shape of a glass dramatically affects the taste of the wine. There is a poetry to the way Riedel’s brand tells this story. Godin remarks:

“According to Riedel’s Web site: ‘The delivery of a wine’s ‘message,’ its bouquet and taste, depends on the form of the glass. It is the responsibility of a glass to convey the wine’s messages in the best manner to the human senses.’”

Riedel’s story convinced connoisseurs. Robert Parker, “the king of wine reviewers” was sold on the taste-shaping power of the product, remarking: “The effect of these glasses on fine wine is profound. I cannot emphasize enough what a difference they make.”

What happens when such glasses are tested scientifically? Godin comments:

“And yet when the proper tests are done scientifically — double-blind tests that eliminate any chance that the subject would know the shape of the glass — there is absolutely zero detectable difference between glasses. A $1 glass and a $20 glass deliver precisely the same impact on wine: none.”

Rewriting the narrative

Our current political climate is thick with narratives, many of which, if believed, can result in great danger. Think of the stories told about how gun regulation and background checks threaten the American tradition of freedom and individualism. Or the tall tale about how climate change is an exaggeration by nutty, doomsday, leftist scientists.

One way to fight such narratives is the way Scalzi’s characters do.  They find a way to seize control of the story themselves — and revise it, so they don’t get whacked.

Play Now (or Never!): Toyota Tacoma Commercial Goes Mad to the Max

Recently, a TV spot for Toyota's Tacoma (a pickup truck) caught my eye. Its combination of music, sound effects and imagery prompted all sorts of warlike and post-apocalyptic associations in my mind. Check it out:

 

You probably recognize the score that these truckers sing along with -- Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries." The same tune was used in an iconic movie scene: the helicopter assault in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. Film blogger B. Ruby Rich once wrote about the film that, in it, Coppola was "playing at war with all the passion of a schoolboy, relishing its spectacle." With all the explosions and spewing smoke, not to mention the daredevil bikes and racing trucks, you might say the same of this spot.

But what really gives the commercial its post-apocalyptic flair is its similarity to Mad Max films and their imagery. Check out this clip from the latest in the franchise: Mad Max: Fury Road:

 

Comparing the two clips, it's pretty obvious why the Creative Team at Saatchi and Saatchi decided on the commercial's scenario: it's exciting. Both the commercial and the movie are based around the classic film convention of the chase.

Add to this the fact that, as creative director John Payne tells us (in an interview with Mark Gardiner from the Motorcycle USA blog) "motorcycles are kinda universally loved and accepted by people who are into trucks..." -- and you get an idea of the creative genesis of the spot. Also, this whole scenario lends itself to the brand's positioning: the Tacoma is sold more as a recreational than utility vehicle.

But this still begs the question of "what's so exciting about the apocalypse in the first place?" For that, we have to turn to cultural criticism.

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Climate Change

Whenever I see scenes of (post) apocalypse, I reach for my Susan Sontag -- specifically her classic essay, "The Imagination of Disaster." In this renowned piece, Sontag wrote that her own era (mid-50s to mid-60s) was marked by both "inconceivable terror" and "unremitting banality." The apocalyptic film, she argued, offered relief from the latter:

"The lure of the generalized disaster as fantasy is that it releases one from normal obligations. The trump card of the end-of-the-world movies...is that great scene with New York or London or Tokyo discovered empty, its entire population annihilated. Or, as in The World, the Flesh, and the Devil (1959), the whole movie can be devoted to the fantasy of occupying the deserted city and starting all over again -- Robinson Crusoe on a world-wide scale."

Of course, contemporary disaster flicks don't offer quite the sort of depopulated annihilation seen in the films Sontag writes about. That's because the nuclear bomb scare of previous decades has been replaced by what worries our times more: ecological catastrophe. The "deserted city" Sontag mentions becomes instead a landscape of desertification.

Playing in the desert in the Tacoma spot is clearly fun. It's a "release", as Sontag would put it, from the "normal obligations" of the city and its work-ruled existence (usually in some bland office building). But doesn't the same sort of wild fun appear in Mad Max too? Despite its "deeper" social messages, isn't the chaotic, heavy-metal drive, along with its crew of sexy characters, first and foremost, just a blast?

Such scenarios bring to mind a term coined by cultural critic Mark Fisher to describe this sort of post-apocalyptic genre: Capitalist Realism. Fisher theorizes that since the mainstream imagination seems incapable of envisioning a way of applying the brakes to the mad drive for maximum, short-term profits, fossil fuels and speed, it's beginning to seem more realistic to simply accept the inevitable side-effects. If you can't beat it, why not join in?

This is why, as Fisher puts it, "climate change and the threat of resource-depletion are not being repressed so much as incorporated into advertising and marketing."

And judging from the popularity of this genre, you could go a step further and hypothesize that our culture is actually starting to love the idea of this sort of catastrophe, much like Doctor Strangelove was enamored of the bomb. At least it's not boring. Beats 9-5, right?

All of which suggests that the Toyota Tacoma tagline that flashes on the screen at the end of the spot is entirely appropriate. In what looks like hastily rendered, white paintbrush letters, we read "PLAY NOW."

Exactly. Tomorrow's looking kind of grim.

A New Brand of Poetry: Apple's iPad Air Commercial

Can you market unmarketability?  A commercial that's been running everywhere lately caught my interest by doing just that.  It's the new iPad Air spot, that sells its product by associating it with a genre that's normally equated with box office poison: poetry.  Check it out:

 

The voice-over you hear is Robin Williams.  As Rob Walter on the Yahoo.tech blog points out, this entire sermon about the glories of poetry is lifted right out of the movie The Dead Poets Society. He also notes that this isn't the first time Whitman has been used to sell product; Levi's did it in 2009 (covered by this blog here).

But to a poetry fan like myself, such precedent doesn't make this choice any less odd.  Poetry is generally the most hated of all art forms.  It seems almost once a month that some generally uniformed expert holds forth about its irrelevancy.  When it's not accused of being unreadable, it's written off as merely corny.

So why invoke this outre form of communication to sell one of the world's hippest new reading (among other things) devices?  The rationale for such a strategy can be deduced by comparison with a competitive spot: the one for Kindle Fire's HDX that takes an aggressive swipe at the iPad Air:

 

Two ways to sell.  The Kindle Fire is portrayed as a rational choice.  It's lighter, claims it has a sharper picture, and most of all, it's at least $100 cheaper than its competitor.  But the iPad Air promises you something more, if less tangible.  Instead of  just a tool, it offers you the prospect of a more creative life -- one in which you can make a difference.

All of which brings to mind a comment the critic Slavoj Zizek made recently about the current state of consumer culture: "today we buy commodities neither for their utility nor as status symbols.  We buy them to get the experience they provide; we consume them to make our lives meaningful."

You could argue, of course, that the visual lyricism of the iPad commercial really is about specific, rational benefits: it tells you, in so many direct and indirect images, that the Air can be used as much for creating content as it is for consuming it.

But, despite their generally superior operating systems,  Apple products  have always been about more than mere functionality.  

Since its famous 1984 spot, when Apple promised that its computers could help you escape the thought control of conformity, the brand has offered magical experiences rather than merely cool things.  What this translates to here is the idea that there are some things the money you save on a Kindle Fire just can't buy.

That's why the reference to poetry fits. Whatever value one sees in it simply doesn't translate into cash.  Do even the most famous poets get rich on what they write?

Poetry, in fact, is so against the common sense economic mind that when it is taken at all seriously in popular culture, it often leads to dire consequences.  Think about what happens in The Dead Poets Society film.  Robin Williams' ("Keating" in the movie) poetry recitations are meant to waken "the boys" from their utilitarian slumbers, i.e., to show them there's more to learning (and life) than becoming a lawyer, doctor or executive.

Those who take this message to heart, though, meet with bad ends.  One boy, hopped up on Romantic poetry, chases the girl of his dreams into jock turf.  Of course, he promptly gets his ass kicked.  Another, inspired by poems to disobey his dad's wishes (to become a doctor) ends up shooting himself.  Williams' himself, as a result of such rantings, is fired from his teaching gig.

But with the iPad Air's mini movie, of course, such qualms need never arise.  Because the commercial takes such anti-economic tendencies and marries them to a brand people love to buy -- one they believe in almost like a religion.  The spot offers you a safe way to spend your money on a commodity that promises to take you above and beyond the boring world of money.

As such, you could say it's in love with the idea of poetry, rather than poetry itself.  Perhaps, then, the commercial invents a new brand of poetry -- or, to be more exact: the idea of poetry as a brand in and of itself.

The Unreal Thing: Thoughts on the Perfect Polly Infomercial (with Help from Alexander Pope, David Trinidad and John Dewey)

In the insomniac wasteland of late night TV, the infomercials are often the most entertaining programs. Recently, I caught one with a mix of humor and science fiction worthy of a Philip K. Dick. It's for a pet named "Perfect Polly":
 

What's amusing about this little film is, of course, the cheesy, low-tech feel you get with so many infomercials.  And then there's the choice of soundtrack: the William Tell Overture (the same theme that began the classic Lone Ranger TV show).

But what I enjoyed most was the sci-fi quality I mentioned.  Doesn't Perfect Polly bring to mind all those Twilight Zone episodes where people get emotionally attached to some type of robot surrogate? 

And despite its comical quality, doesn't this gadget fascinate by the way it subverts the natural with the artificial?  After all, what's perfect about Polly is the fact that this plastic bird is an improvement over a real parakeet.  No feeding, cleaning or bird shit to deal with!

Perhaps Aristotle was right when he insisted that it's part of our nature to be drawn to acts of imitation.  Maybe that's why Perfect Polly got me thinking about "high culture" takes on the relation of the artificial to the real.

Recently I've been reading Windsor Forest, a beautiful long poem by Alexander Pope.  As he muses about the "green retreats" of this idyllic place, the poem's forest seems anything but natural.  Along with its flora and fauna, it houses allegories of British history, moral lessons and a variety of mythological stories.

One of my favorite moments in the poem is a passage where Pope acknowledges that the forest he so loves has been created, not only by nature, but by the descriptions of poets:

I hear soft music die along the grove;
Led by the sound, I roam from shade to shade,
By god-like Poets venerable made:
Here his first lays majestic Denham sung;
There the last numbers flow'd from Cowley's tongue.

Despite the fact that Pope's appreciation of these woods has been aided by his favorite poets, this in no way detracts from the richness of his experience.  In fact, it's probably a mistake to draw a line between nature and culture in this poem.  The poets he speaks of, as natural beings, are merely doing their job in giving voice to the forest.  This is why he wonders, with their passing, whether the beauty of the woods will still be appreciated:

Since fate relentless stop'd their heav'nly voice,
No more the forests ring, or groves rejoice;
Who now shall charm the shades, where Cowley strung
His living harp, and lofty Denham sung?

To return to our own, media-saturated, time, it's safe to say that our culture today so informs our thoughts about natural beauty, that it's doubtful you can have one without the other.  That's one takeaway I get from the following conceptual lyric poem, constructed entirely out of movie titles, by David Trinidad:

Nature Poem

Till the Clouds Roll By
A Patch of Blue

How Green Was My Valley
Splendor in the Grass

The Petrified Forest
The River of No Return

Lilies of the Field
The Bad Seed

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
Autumn Leaves

Lost Horizon
Gone with the Wind 

Early in the 20th century, the pragmatist philosopher John Dewey already acknowledged the constructed quality of our experience, remarking that "the sense we now have for essential characteristics of persons and objects is very largely the result of art" [in its widest sense].

With Dewey, as with Pope, this feature of or lives can enrich our perceptions. However, often, he argued, the opposite occurred.  Rather than add to our experience, this fact of contemporary life detracted from it -- because what we perceived was not richness, but the iron cliches of tradition. This was one way Dewey accounted for the stale, boring quality produced by so many scenes of modern life.

In fact, he felt one task of his philosophy was the act of "intellectual disrobing" -- to help people recogize how much of their experience was framed by cliches.  And though he admitted that we could never totally free ourselves of "the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place", he hoped to make possible a sort of "cultivated naivete."

I wonder if the knowing irony with which we process much of contemporary life might not function as a kind of "intellectual disrobing", in that it's a way for us to acknowledge how prefabricated much of what we experience is.  Might irony itself help us see things in a fresh way?

Not sure.  But I have to admit that once I brush aside all the cheesy qualities of Perfect Polly, there's something about the bird that's seems kind of cool. 

Slogans that Do Double-Duty: Obama's "Forward" and a Few Choice Words from Trojan

Of the many postmortems of the recent Presidential campaign, one of the most fascinating I've come across is by advertising guru, Al Reis.

Reis, who writes for Ad Age, is the co-author of one of the great books about the business, Positioning: the Battle for Your Mind.  His column analyzes why Obama's slogan "Forward" won that battle, hands-down, over Romney's "Believe in America."

Reis argues that a good slogan is "two-sided."  "It says something positive about your brand and something negative about the competition."

The Obama campaign's "Forward" did this masterfully.  On the positive side, it said that the country was going in the right direction, that if we stayed on the present course the arduous task of recovery would be completed.

But it also implied a powerful criticism of the opposition.  It said that Republicans wanted to go backwards, toward old policies and old-fashioned social beliefs.

Romney's "Believe in America" only stated something nice about his agenda.  According to Reis, it wasn't "two-sided" because suggesting Obama didn't "believe in America" just wasn't credible.  As Reis puts it:

"A country that educated him at Harvard.  A country that elected him to the Senate and the Presidency.  A country that made him wealthy and world famous.

"Barack Obama doesn't believe in America?  Highly unlikely."

Forward...March!

As I thought more about the Obama slogan, I saw another advantage to it, also having to do with the fact that "Forward" can be interpreted a number of ways.

This second advantage came to me by way of an odd association.  I remembered that the newspaper Benito Mussolini wrote for, before he became a Fascist, was an Italian socialist paper named Avanti! (Forward!)

I googled this fact and found that conservative publications like the Washington Times had made a big deal out of a similar coiincidence.  The Obama slogan had deep roots in the European Marxist past, one columnist argued, because "Forward", it turns out, was once the name of many socialist newspapers.

Right wingers were correct in sensing a connection here, but wrong in suggesting that this has anything to do with a "radical agenda."  Though the Democrats did (miraculously) get health reform passed, for the most part they haven't been able to push through even classic liberal policies (such as a truly Keynesian stimulus plan or a modicum of gun control).  Besides, a booming stock market seems to go more with capitalist, rather than socialist, policies, doesn't it?

So the connection I see is more semantic than political.  That is, "Forward" has a double-meaning in another sense.  It's not only a description that suggests things are going in the right direction, it's a command that says: "let's mobilize."

But where radical papers of the past were mobilizing for militant actions (strikes, protests, etc.), the Obama campaign uses the word to motivate an action that's positively all-American: voting.

To see what I mean, take a look at the "Forward" campaign video.  After the first half minute or so, people start taking to the streets -- waving "four" fingers to underscore how the slogan also refers to "four more years."  As the video goes on, it skillfully incorporates the whole Occupy Wall Street energy -- and offers images of each of the key demos the party needed to show up on election day:

 

Watching this made me think about another weakness of "Believe in America."  Belief is usually thought of  as something internal.  "Forward" is both an inner attitude and an outer action -- a way to move your feet.

You Can't Wait to Get it On

Of course, it takes a lot more than a good slogan to win an election; it's a necessary but not sufficient condition for victory.

Nevertheless, it's a mistake to underestimate a slogan's power.  In the ad world, the way a few choice words can position a product sometimes makes all the difference.  Ries tells us that Avis lost money 13 years in a row, until they (with the help of Doyle, Dane and Bernbach) launced the statement that turned the whole business around:

"Avis is only No. 2 in rent-a-cars, so why go with us?  We try harder."

In our own time, I can think of another line that helped transform the perception of a product: Trojan Condoms' award-winning "You can't wait to get it on."  And again, the slogan has a double-meaning: the literal act of wearing it and the slang expression for what you do once it's on.

With the addition of a few stimulating product features, this award-winning line changed something that  seemed an anti-pleasure necessity to an orgasmic treat -- for both partners.  I'll end this post with one of their recent spots:

  

 

 

A Night at the Opera with Kia Soul's Latest Hamster Commercial ("In My Mind")

One of the today's more memorable commercials is also one of the most puzzling.

The new Kia Soul TV spot has been coming up in casual conversation with my friends, both in and outside of the ad business.  The sheer weirdness of the commercial catches people's attention, but no one can figure out what it means (or what it has to do with selling cars).

It features the brand's iconic hamsters and, as usual, it's driven by a funky sound track ("In My Mind"). But this time, the rodents and their favorite car appear on the stage of an 18th century opera house.

 

As brand personalities, the hamsters have been incredibly successful.  In fact, in July of this year, 
Kia's  Executive VP of Marketing and Communications revealed to Ad Age that sales were "up 78% since 2008, thanks in part to the success of the campaign."

But the dancing animals aren't really what's strange about the spot; we're used to them by now from other commercials (covered in a previous post).  It's the opera house and the trip back in time (as if the car itself were a way-back machine) that's got people asking what it all means -- and prompts the desire to decipher.

Now it could be that this juxtaposition of time-frames and styles is meant to be suggestive, but vague. I remember reading a review of The Hunger Games (I think in The Nation) that argued that the film was just ambiguous enough so that people could read anything into it.

Nevertheless there's a specific meme being replicated here that pop-culture students will recognize. And that's the motif of  (often cartoonish and always plebian) pop culture entertainers invading the highfalutin world of the opera house.  Here's an earlier example of this scenario, in which Bugs Bunny torments an opera singer with his mad conducting:
 

Both the Kia  spot and the Bugs Bunny clip are playing a little with high and low.  Both base their humor around a scenario where popular entertainers (stand-ins for the common folks) assume aesthetic control over the snobs.  As the Kia brand copy about this commercial on YouTube puts it:

"They're back.  And this time they've gone way back in their time-traveling Kia Soul.  That's right, the hamsters are bringing down the house, only it's an 18th century opera house.  And they're showing a traditional upper-crust crowd how to party their britches off with Axwell's remix of 'In My Mind'"...

This all fits with the brand.  The positioning of the Kia Soul, as I understand it, certainly depends more on the appeal of cool than it does luxury, status or elegance.  And it's a car sold to the younger crowd, so privileging contemporary pop over old school opera, of course, makes sense.  It offers a classic generational appeal as old as "Roll Over Beethoven."

And the nudge of the high by the low also rhymes with the contemporary mood, in that it suggests a wee bit of class (as well as generational)  animosity.  After all, we're living in a time when there's more popular awareness of the class dimension of social and economic problems -- as in the 99% 's relationship to the 1%.  So even though the commercial's creators at David and Goliath probably didn't have this in mind when the put their concepts together, the spot may have picked up on this feature of the zeitgeist by osmosis.

This might also explain the time travel.  By displacing any implicit class irritation into the past, the commecial can play low vs. high without risking offense.  Maybe that's why it reminds me of a dream or allegory, whose bizarre quality is the result of the fact that it cannot express its critical thoughts outright.

In any case, the younger crowd ("Millennials", "Gen Y") for whom the spot is created  have plenty of class-related issues confronting them -- from the scarcity of good jobs, to exorbitant debt from student loans.  As the Daily Beast noted, many folks of this generation feel screwed by the system and doubt they will be able to achieve the middle-class standard-of-living their parents enjoyed.

Thinking of all this colored how I interpreted the time/locale of the opera house in the spot.  Adweek saw it as the world of Mozart, but for me it brought  to mind the world of Louis the XVI, before the French revolution.   Though in this version of history, of course, the conflict between high and low is resolved joyously, through pop culture --  its music, moves, products and brands.

But maybe this bit of over-reading is all just, as the track in the spot puts it, "in my mind."  Thoughts?





 

Are You Fit to Run? Thoughts on Paul Ryan, Lance Armstrong and Evolutionary Theory

An interesting sidelight to the media coverage of the 2012 presidential campaign has been the flurry of stories about VP candidate Paul Ryan's physical fitness.  Or rather, his claims about it.

Ryan portrays himself as someone  committed to staying in shape.  When he was 16, his father died from a heart attack.  Ryan has said this tragedy taught him the need for self-reliance and physical self-discipline.

But apparently, he has not always been able to control his speech.  A few weeks back, he had to correct a slip in wich he fibbed about his marathon running time.  And recently his claims about mountain climbing have come under scrutiny.

Often media coverage of Ryan seems as concerned about  his physique as he is. A story in The Daily Beast, for example, offered interpretations as to why he wears suits that are too big for him.

Some pundits took this as evidence that he was trying to exaggerate his manliness.  Others wondered if his goofy look was strategic.  From the article:

'"Put the man in a GQ-approved slim-cut, and he intimidates," writes The New Republic's Noreen Malone.  "...He is no longer the Midwestern boy next door suddenly thrust into this crazy political world.  He is a fierce, lean man out to slice your Medicare benefits to skinny-tie proportions."'

Of course, whatever a candidate mutters during election season goes under the microscope.  Nevertheless, the fact that there's almost as much out there about Ryan's physical as there is about his intellectual fitness made me wonder whether if perhaps something more primal is at stake.

Recently I've been reading the late Denis Dutton's The Art Instinct -- a fascinating look at the connection between creativity, performance, aesthetics and evolutionary theory.  Dutton argues that one of the reasons we're fascinated by athletic feats is that, for our ancestors, displaying physical prowess was a way to signal reproductive fitness.

Such prehistoric swagger not only helped one in the mating department; it also gained you acceptance into groups (as a strong individual would presumably make a tribe more formidable).

Dutton sees our obsession with knowing the "truth" about someone's body as a facet of our genetic memory, re-ignited by the fact that today it's hard to tell what is and is not authentic.  "That is what the cosmetic, body-building...industries are largely about: accentuating, highlighting, or faking desirable signals."

Add to this the fact that people look at themselves more and more as primarily physical beings.  As David Hawkes put it in another context:

"For Aristotle, the natural purpose of a human being was the the cultivation of the soul...Today, most educated Westerners find an intuitive truth in science's proposition that they are objects, identical with their bodies."

So, when you take all this into account, it's easy to see why a public figure caught stretching the truth about his  body will be seen as a pretty shifty character.

Lance Armstrong: Culture Trumps Genes

But as the latest chapter in the Lance Armstrong saga suggests, you can't take this evolutionary logic too far.  Sometimes, it seems, cultural longings can make people ignore evidence of "faking it" altogether.

As as been reported incessantly, Armstrong recently decided not to defend himself against accusations of steroid use by the USADA (United States Anti-Doping Agency).

For this he will pay something like seven million dollars in fines and be required to give back his trophies.  He is also finding himself blocked not only from professional bike racing, but even marathon running (he was just banned from a Chicago race).

Dutton sees our addiction to steroid controversies as a "completely predictable result of the evolved basis for sport as a public skill display..."

But this doesn't explain why, when Armstrong turned his back on the regulators, he lost very little public support.  As Business Week pointed out, nearly all his sponsors stayed with him -- and contributions to his charity actually increased.  And, for what it's worth, the Internet polls I've checked on whether Armstrong did or didn't use mostly side with him.

Blogger Christian Piatt suggests why people may find it easier to give Armstrong the benefit of the doubt when it comes to this case:

"...Armstrong has represented the United States on the world stage for many years, and has carried the flag of national excellence and pride in a way that few others have ever achieved...In watching him fall, we, too, lose a bit of our own pride in our superiority in the sphere of competitive sports, which is a bitter pill to swallow."

In short, it's almost unpatriotic to question, like the (NGO) "bureaucrats" at the USADA do, the physical prowess of Armstrong.

So I guess the moral of this story is that sometimes the magnetism of a cultural symbol can be a lot stronger than any nagging instinct for the truth about him.  Thoughts? 

Thanks for Sharing: Verizon's "Share Everything" Commercial, the Cookie Monster and Social Media

The other day I saw a TV spot that really captured, for me, something important about the mood of our moment.  It's for a new mobile plan offered by Verizon:
 

Though the imagery is surreal, there's something oddly comforting about this commercial.  The shape that descends from the heavens -- a UFO or  halo -- seems to gather the family in a warm, protective embrace.

Jungians would compare the circular shape to an archetype, in this case, a mandala.  Jung felt such symbols suggested "wholeness."  He theorized that images like this appear in people's visions during times of stress and confusion, offering them a sense of safety within such magic circles, and the chance to re-center.

On the most banal level, the data plan Verizon offers here does promise to rid you of a bit of confusion -- that caused by trying to keep track of all the individual mobile plans members of your family (or small business) use.

But you might extend its soothing promise more generally: here is at least one small way to deal with the chaos fast changing technology causes when it comes to everything from our jobs, to our travel, to our medical bills and personal finances.

And then there's the plan's  name: Share Everything.  Despite its obvious meaning in the commercial, it's hard not to imagine a phrase like this used in another context.

What would Share Everything mean, for example, if you saw it on a sign at a protest rally?  Doesn't it sound utopian?  Anti-capitalist, even?  It's as if, in the midst of this innocent commercial, the political unconscious is whispering subversive truths via double-meanings. 

And maybe that's because the whole phenomenon of social media does have a double meaning.  On the one hand, it offers more of the same: products, promotions and cultural cliches.  On the other, it has inspired innovative ways to organize politically, and even creative new forms of radicalism.

Share It (Maybe) with the Cookie Monster

In any case, once my mind ingested this "share" meme, I began to see it everywhere.  A few days later, for example, I came  across it  in yet another riff off Carly Rae Jepson's "Call Me, Maybe."  In this take off, we see the Cookie Monster begging folks in an office to "Share It, Maybe" (meaning, of course, a cookie):
 

What impresses me about this funny video (which asks you to share it) is how ecstatic the office staff looks, literally dancing in the aisles.  It's as if just the act of sharing cookies with each other (and then the Cookie Monster) transforms the stressful world of the "cognitariat" into one of communal joy.  Peace has momentarily been declared in the war of all-against-all.

Share Everything -- or Else!

There's also, though, something potentially disturbing about a phrase like Share Everything.  Grammatically speaking, it's an imperative statement that can be read as a command. 

And the fact of the matter is that since the advent of social media, we are increasingly compelled to share parts of ourselves online.  For some careers, it's expected that candidates have already established a digital footprint before applying.  And then there's the whole ethos of intense self-revelation that's been developing since the birth of confessional poetry in the 60s -- and that's flowered in our time into Reality TV, repentant politicians, and excrutiating tell-all memoirs.

That's why the phrase also bought to mind something I remember reading by that supreme critic of social surveillance, philosopher Michel Foucault:

"I would say that we are forced to produce the truth of power that our society demands, of which it has need, in order to function: we must speak the truth; we are constrained or condemned to confess or discover the truth.  Power never ceases its interrogration, its inquisition, its registration of truth; it institutionalizes, professionalizes and rewards its pursuit.  In the last analysis, we must produce truth as we must produce wealth."

In short, in another context, you might see phrases like Share Eveything as socially manipulative. And in this somewhat paranoid light, I thought of that scene in John Carpenter's masterpiece, They Live, where the subliminal messages that keep everyone in order are revealed to Roddy Piper, with the help of special sunglasses (it's about 1 1/2 minutes into this clip):

 

Of course, our society's propaganda isn't subliminal; it's hidden in plain sight -- so obvious that we deny its effects.

Nevertheless, I find something valuable about TV spots like this one.  And that's the fact that free associating with its words and images helps me think about the deeply contradictory meanings tied up in the new forms of consciousness social media is helping to create.  Thoughts?

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?

 

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: