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From the spectacle to the Real: Thoughts on Elaine Equi's "The Intangibles"

Once upon a time, there was a poetry of consumerism.

I’m thinking here of how buying stuff was celebrated through the ironic creativity of mid 20^th century urbanites. Rather than grousing about the vulgarity of their city, these souls were inspired by its arty and tacky qualities. Informed by a nearly utopian cornucopia of consumer goods, they created witty fables of abundance.

Think of the pop artists and their love of such consumables as canned soup, comic books and hamburgers. Or of Frank O’Hara, writing poems about strolling through Manhattan, shopping for a carton of Gauloises, an edition of Verlaine, a malted, or musing on the pleasures of sharing a coke with intimate friends.

Of course, New York City is still one of the world’s great shopping meccas. The process of gentrification has, if anything, created the need for more high-end stores. But this is why the appearance of another phenomenon seems all the more striking: the increasing presence of empty storefronts, sometimes whole blocks of them.

Perhaps we live in a time that demands another sort of poetry. Poems, for example, like this one, from (my better half) Elaine Equi:

RETAIL SPACE FOR RENT

Every day emptiness erases

big franchises
as well as small boutiques:

the place that sold small gadgets,
the place that specialized in hats.

It’s a commercial version
of the Rapture — leaving behind

a jigsaw puzzle of blank pieces,
each one an unopened invitation

to anyone with an ounce of creative vision
and the millions needed to back it up.

If this were a movie, aliens would be arriving
to set up their ministry,

but today even the sky seems vacant.

We’re dissolving the past
faster than we can manufacture the future.

Lots of everything must go.
Not enough coming soon.

Equi’s poem comes from her new book, The Intangibles. The title is prescient; confronted by such a phenomenon like disappearing stores, one can’t help but think that some mysterious, invisible process is taking place. Again, a look back to the time of Warhol and O’Hara, offers an illuminating contrast. In one of that era’s signature essays, Susan Sontag also described the apocalyptic image of empty stores:

“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."

Equi’s poem of 2019 offers a perfect dialectical contrast with Sontag’s early 60s essay. In Sontag’s city, the people are gone, but the goods are left behind. In Equi’s, people still roam the streets, but it’s the consumer products that have disappeared.

Sontag’s offers a reflection on spectacle (film imagery); Equi’s poem is determined by an encounter with the Real — an emptiness stripped of signage altogether: “If this were a movie,” she writes, “aliens would be arriving, / to set up their ministry, / but today even the sky seems vacant.”

A Commercial Version of the Rapture

So, where exactly have all the goodies gone?

The short answer: they’ve gone to heaven.

Put another way, value once expressed itself in our world in the form of concrete, sensuous items, such as consumer goods. Today, thanks to the financialization of everyday life, it also has assumed an immaterial form; tangible value has become intangible — transformed into abstract equations.

Think about the history of money from the 60s till today. At one time, wealth was expressed through gold. This transformed into paper currency, which further evolved into credit card balances. The process of abstraction continued. In our day, there’s bitcoin — but on an even more abstract level, there are the trillions of dollars created by a few keystrokes at the Fed to prop up the economy during the last great crash.

Have you ever seen a physical penny of all that dough?

When it comes to the disappearing stores of Manhattan, a similar process is occurring. First off, in a “commercial version of the Rapture” as Equi puts it, these enterprises have been subsumed out of their earthly existence and now live their afterlives in the heaven of cyberspace.

But there’s an even more extreme process of abstraction taking place.

Though many merchants vacate their businesses because the rent is too high, the real estate companies that own them resist bringing down the cost. Why? I’ve read that unfilled stores equate to tax write-offs for their holding companies. Not only that, but exorbitant (or exaggerated) rents, when they appear on balance sheets, may puff up the value of such properties.

In other words, by incurring losses (empty stores), buildings may be increasing their worth. Which reminds me of what I’ve read about banks: that by acquiring liabilities (making loans which are backed by only a small fraction of the bank’s reserves), they increase their assets (their balance sheets record money owed them).

Dematerialization is a sign of the evolving sophistication (or desperation) of capitalism, as it discovers new ways to generate profit out of increasingly thinner air. In this light, empty storefronts might be read as a perverse index of economic progress.

And by the evidence of such signs, you can’t help but speculate that China has already reached a more advanced stage of capitalism than the U.S. For there, one encounters not mere empty stores or even neighborhoods, but whole ghost towns, built on the fantasy of a future which never arrived.

All which is to say, just because you can’t see, hear, smell, taste or even understand a phenomenon, doesn’t mean you can’t make a killing from it.  And that we poor mortals, left behind in the wake of our vanishing world, can take solace.

For despite appearances, the city that is disappearing still exists, in some inscrutable way, in the realm of the intangible.

Reason or Resentment? "Feud" (the miniseries) and the political mood

I was mad at Susan Sarandon because of some of her comments during the last election. Recently, though, I was so charmed by her portrayal of Bette Davis in the new miniseries “Feud” —alongside Jessica Lange’s equally charismatic Joan Crawford—that my annoyance evaporated. Thanks to their bravura performances, I found myself totally absorbed in this tale, which portrays the tumultuous backstory behind the making of “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?”

Just a powerful as the acting, though, was the ideological debate embedded into the script. This is captured in a provocative interchange that takes place in a scene early on in the series. Studio head Jack Warner (Stanley Tucci), after seeing the film’s early rushes, tells director Robert Aldrich (Alfred Molina) that he believes it will be a hit because of the explosive interaction between Davis and Crawford. Such an authentic portrayal of emotion is only possible, he argues, because the two actors really hate each other in actual life.  Aldrich is skeptical; he tells Warner that he’s reacting to artistry. They are brilliant actors, after all.

Warner won’t hear of this. Instead, he offers an unusual theory about why real hate will make the film a true cultural event. “Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?” will be powerful because it embodies the psychology that drives our economic system. “What you’re seeing,” Warner remarks (as I remember it), “is Capitalism.” The fighting in the film, he explains, exemplifies the competition that makes our system run. Each actor, motivated by a fierce envy of the other, will seek to outshine her rival. Following this logic, the more each “hates” (his word) the other, the greater their performances, for their mutual resentment will set off a kind of arms race of talent, ratcheting up the intensity to new heights.

In essence, Warner is saying that what makes for a powerful performance isn’t the actor’s rationality (i.e. the intelligent choices she makes for her role) so much as her resentment.

The Jack Warner Theory of Politics

I don’t know whether the real Jack Warner ever propounded this theory of acting. What I do know is that that it shares an eerie resemblance to a theory of political performance that’s popped up in the wake of the last election. That theory goes like this…

Once we believed candidates needed to appeal to voters on the basis of economic reason (“it’s the economy, stupid), to win their support. Nowadays, things don’t work that way. The most effective politicians are those who appeal to voters' resentments (their envies, hatreds, prejudices and the like), rather than their rational self-interest. Much of this buzz, of course, is the result of the election of a figure who’s believed to embody populist rage.

Pankaj Mishra, author of The Age of Anger (a hot new book on the politics of resentment) offered an overview of this theory in an essay for The Guardian. The idea that people were primarily moved by their economic interests, he tells us, was simple-minded, for…

“…it neglected many factors ever-present in human lives: the fear, for instance, of losing honour, dignity, status, the distrust of change, the appeal of stability and familiarity. There was no place in it for more complex drives...Obsessed with material progress, the hyperrationalists ignored the lure of resentment for the left-behind, and the tenacious pleasures of victimhood.”

A Robert Aldrich Theory of Politics?

The importance of what might be called culturally-based (rather than economic) antagonism is obvious. As many have pointed out, it’s not always easy to see economic hardship as driving the actions of terrorists, for example. Nevertheless, something bothers me about downplaying “rational” economic interests in favor of “irrational” ones such as envy and resentment. What this suggests is that voters are not only misinformed but totally unreasonable--and unreachable. As such, this attitude replicates the condescension said to give rise to resentment in the first place.

Also, you have to ask yourself if it’s true? A recent piece by Conor Lynch put it this way:

“…it is smug…to disparage people for ‘voting against their interests’ when in reality both parties have failed to adequately address the real problems facing poor and working-class communities…While there can be no doubt that Hillary Clinton would have been a better president for the working and middle-classes, it is also true that Trump was better on certain issues that are important to blue-collar workers, such as free trade and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. (Even though Clinton opposed TPP during her campaign, she didn’t have much credibility…)

Lynch goes on to praise Bernie Sanders who recently, through Town Hall meetings, warned of the Right’s betrayal of these voters, exemplified in the botched health care legislation. The unpopularity of the proposed bill, and plummeting presidential approval numbers that accompanied it, suggest “hyperrationalist” arguments like Sanders presented to his rust belt audiences still packed a punch.  All of which makes one wonder if all the noise about “populist resentment” has made us forget about the potential for popular reason.

Put another way, just because the “Jack Warners” of our political world currently own the studio and are running the show, it doesn’t mean that the Robert Aldrich forces may not win out in the end.

 

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.

Only a God(zilla) Can Save Us: the Symbolism of Summer Blockbusters

In an interview the philosopher Martin Heidegger gave later in life, he spoke about how our technology had uprooted us, not only from tradition, but the very earth itself.  He added that this alienation had reached such an advanced state that "only a god can save us."

I found it amusing, and a bit surprising, that in the recent summer blockbuster Godzilla, when this "god" finally arrives, he takes the the form of a giant, fire-breathing dragon.

If you've seen the film, you know that due to our experiments with dangerous technologies (in this case, nuclear energy), great beasts arise from the depths to torment humanity.  Our main persecutor comes in the form of a giant, moth-like creature.  Godzilla follows this "MUTO" ("Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organism") up from wherever such beings live, to hunt down and destroy it.  A battle ensues and God(zilla) is on our side all the way.

When I say Godzilla is a god, I mean that literally.  As Director Gareth Edwards put it in The Daily Beast, the MUTO represents "man's abuse of nature," and Godzilla "is a god, really.  He's at the top of the food chain and probably King of the World."  Godzilla is also called a god by characters in the film.

The mission of this godly being is to restore the balance of nature (that the MUTO throws out of whack), saving humanity in the process, as a sort of fortuitous side-effect.  At the end of the film, as Godzilla leaves the ravaged city where his battle with the evil MUTO took place, the crowd watching breaks out in a cheer.

This means, though, that even with its happy ending, the film has a pessimistic, somber mood -- not unlike Heidegger's later philosophy.  Humanity seems helpless.   Most of the action takes place between the behemoths.  All the military/scientific team that gathers in the crisis can do ultimately, is "let them fight," as one character mutters reverently.

This dark mood certainly reflects the zeitgeist concerning ecological issues.  Washington still debates the reality of global warming, while environmental scientists such as James Lovelock  (who invented the Gaia hypothesis), advise us to "enjoy life while [we] can," as "humans are too stupid to prevent climate change."

And yet, despite the reality of the issues the movie alludes to, I found it hard to take the messenger entirely seriously.  A popcorn movie, where a couple of monsters jam it out, after all, can't help but seem more fun and silly than profound.

As a result, I found myself reading into the movie in more mundane ways.  And I thought about Godzilla being a savior of something less grand than the earth itself.

Recently I've been reading a fascinating book about the entertainment industry by Anita Elberse titled Blockbusters.  In it, she shows that the main vehicle the movie business now favors is the big-budget, special-effects flick.   As a result, it follows a strategy in which it sinks most of its investment dollars into such blockbusters, in search of giant wins.  She also shows that the rest of the entertainment industry is pretty much following suit.

Elberse tells us that this industry increasingly relies on blockbusters, in part, to avoid the need to place its bets on smaller, riskier properties, aimed at niche markets -- an approach often associated with the fragmentation of audiences that came about because of the web and the digital age. Instead, the blockbuster makes old-school mass-marketing to a mass audience still possible.

You could say, then, that Godzilla saves not only the earth, but, on a more trivial level, the movie studio that produced the film he stars in, by offering the promise of the kind of big profits that will keep it afloat.

And blockbusters don't just save the movie industry from being at the mercy of niche tastes.  Elberse doesn't talk about this so directly in her book, but another aspect of entertainment in the digital age is that lots of it is free.  Blockbusters, designed for big, 3-D screens, are one of the entertainment products for which people are still willing to pay.

In this light, Godzilla isn't only saving the earth; he's also helping the paid entertainment economy fight off the increasingly powerful free one -- or what Jeremy Rifkin has recently termed the "collaborative commons."

And in this regard, perhaps this economic message is related to the ecological pessimism you see in the film.  For the same, clumsy, old school, big-time capitalism that survives by producing blockbusters, is, according to Rifkin, incapable of dealing with ecological crises.  What he predicts, instead (in The Zero Marginal Cost Society), is the coming of "Collaboratism," a new economic paradigm that transcends both capitalism and socialism.

Until then, I suppose, one might have to agree with Heidegger, that only a god -- or perhaps a Godzilla -- can save us.

Shadow Patrol: Thoughts on the NYC Sandy Blackout, Plus a Poem by Elaine Equi

Like millions of other people in the NYC area,  Elaine (my wife) and I spent most of last week in the cold dark, without light or heat.  We did have cold running water, and the toilets flushed, so we were luckier than many.

We live downtown, and by  Wednesday we learned that there were pockets of power up by 26th and 6th.  So to get out of the apartment, we'd trek up each evening about twenty blocks in the dark to find a restaurant.

The journey from our apartment to the land of light was other-worldly.  It brought to mind images I've encountered over the years about the afterlife.  You might think the pitch black streets would be empty, but they were loaded with other pilgrims scrounging around like us for food, warmth and whatever household supplies they were lucky enough to discover in the rare store that was open. 

Many of us carried flashlights in our hands to guide our way; some wore them on their foreheads like miners.  Others strolled without light at all, as if they had night vision.

Walking these streets made you feel like you were part of an army of shadows -- one of the shades of the classical underworld.  And the military reference is more than just an analogy.  As we strolled back and forth to our destination, we'd periodically notice the men and women of the National Guard walking along side us in camouflage attire, gently laughing and joking into the night.

But of all the shades we encountered, I found one group particularly striking.  At one corner I saw, moving through the small circumference of my flashlight, a family -- mother, father and two young children -- holding hands.  Briefly they appeared in my view and then the four of them dissolved back into the darkness together, like a string of cutout dolls that had momentarily come to life.

I'm not sure why I found this sight so touching.  All I know is that it brought to mind other images that have stayed with me over the years.  One is the last scene from Bergman's The Seventh Seal, where the Angel of Death leads his own "family" over the hill into the next world.

Another is found in Ray Bradbury's  "There Will Come Soft Rains."  Toward the end of this short story, after the bomb has annihilated its suburban landscape, all that's left of the middle-class family the tale is based around are their ashy shades on the sidewalk (while eerily, their robotic appliances go on performing their tasks, speaking to their nonexistent masters).

All of which is to say that I was able to appreciate the poetry of the blackout, which for me had something to do with the sublime, dark beauty of a brief trip through the underworld.

And I was able to look at our nightly stroll this way, of course, because, though the aftermath of the storm left us cold, uncomfortable and somewhat anxious, we didn't feel we were in immediate danger.  Others still enduring the effects of the hurricane are no doubt too threatened by its devastation to appreciate its aesthetics.

My wife, the poet Elaine Equi, also saw beauty in the darkness.  Her response was the following poem, in which she muses about how the blackout offered relief from the constant bombardment of sales messages:

Darkness Adds Beauty

To whatever
               face or object
                               comes forward.

The nineteenth century is full
                of haloed humble beings
                                 flashing the sign of their presence.

In the twentieth century, only mystics
                like Walter Benjamin would notice
                                and lament the loss of darkness

in a world overpopulated with things.
               I remember one winter long ago
                               I saw an entire nativity scene

on the roof of a department store:
                wise men, angels, sheep
                                lit up and peering down

into our small cold car,
                reminding us to rejoice, and to buy,
                                and to rejoice in our buying.

                                                                                  -- Elaine Equi

Anyone like to share their own thoughts on, or response to, Hurricane Sandy?

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? 

Of Games and Nightmares: the American Horror Story TV Show Meets the PlayStation 3 Commercial

The other week, while watching the last few episodes of the wonderfully creepy American Horror Story TV series, I had a suitably jarring experience.

If you haven't seen the show, it's about an American family that moves into a house that turns out to be haunted -- and ultimately destroys them all.

In the penultimate episode, Violet, a younger, likeable ghost, is attempting to rid the house of an extremely nasty member of the living dead.  She learns a spell for banishing bad spirits and tries it on him.

She flings the evil ghost's watch into the fireplace and untters a mystic word.  In response, he quivers ironically, and then bursts out laughing.  Violet gasps: "the spell didn't work!"  The bad ghost tells her that they never do.  People make up these rituals, he explains, to make them feel in control.  "But guess what," he mutters, "they're not."

This pessimistic vibe lingers throughout the episode.  A little later, Violet's mother, Vivian (who's still alive at this point), has the misfortune of going through childbirth in this freaky abode.  As you might expect, things don't go right -- and she starts to hemorrhage severly.

Her husband begs her to fight on.  But Vivian can also see Violet's spirit, who tells her, "mom, if you're in pain, you can let go."  Fading at this point, she replies: "I don't think I have a choice."

Unusual as it was to see a TV show where the stars don't ulitmately "pull themselves up by their bootstraps" and "take control", what was just as surprising, in this context, were some of the commercials that paid for it.

The most striking to me was one for PlayStation 3, which praises a young hero named "Michael":

 

At first viewing, it seems as if American Horror Story and PlayStation 3 come from completely different universes.  One ruled by defeat -- the other by conquest.

The Horror of the Real Estate Bubble

The "horror" in American Horror Story, in addition to the phantoms and spooks, is the seeming helplessness of the family stuck in this nasty home.

And you can see why this program became the new water cooler show: in an age of foreclosures, it captured an element of the zeitgeist.

The haunted house genre is after all, sometimes seen as an allegory about the anxieties caused by real estate -- and how sometimes, when a house goes bad, it can threaten a family's financial and emotional existence.  Here's literary critic Walter Benn Michaels on the Amityville Horror:

"Think of the plight of the Amityville couple as investors in real estate: having risked everything to get themselves into the spectacularly inflationary market of 1975, they find themselves owning the only house on Long Island whose value is declining -- the only one for a few years, anyway, until rising interest rates, as intangible as ghosts only more powerful, would begin to produce a spectacular effect on housing prices everywhere."

The Triumph of the Gamer's Will

But if American Horror Story is a fable about being overpowered by mysterious (perhaps ultimately economic) forces, is not the PlayStation 3 ad its mirror opposite?  In it, Michael, the gamer (whose portrait we see at the end) rather than get overpowered by phantoms, anxieties or crisis situations, is instead, their total master.  The "ghosts and goblins" in the spot worship the guy like a god!

All of which makes me wonder if there's not a sort of cause and effect relation between these two spectacular forms of entertainment.  It's as if the godlike pleasure of the video game has been invented as an antidote for the grim realities the TV show brings to mind.

You can see why young people -- especially males -- would love PlayStation 3.  In a world where mom and pop may be over stretched, perhaps stuck with responsibilities and investments (real estate or otherwise) that are going south fast, a game like this at least creates a fantasy where a little personal heroism is still thinkable.

And the tag line "Long Live Play" suggests something else.  Perhaps the reason the act of playing (like ritual) has been around as long as human culture itself is that our awareness of a potential disaster, always seemingly lurking around the corner, creates the need for mastery of some sort -- over some domain or reality.

Even if it's all only a game.  Thoughts? 

 

From Diesel (Jeans) Island to Zuccotti Park: Thoughts About OWS and Some Recent TV Ads and Videos

I've been away from this blog for a few weeks to get other writing projects done.  Now that I'm back, I thought it would be interesting to look at a few TV ads and videos that are  related -- directly or indirectly -- to Occupy Wall Street and/or our current political culture.

First, one from the Right (specifically focused on a Democratic candidate) that slams OWS and everyone associated with it.

Negative Political Attack Ad on Elizabeth Warren

 

This Karl Rove production associates Warren with the anachronistic sign of Communism ("radical redistribution of wealth"), with a little 60s era "hippie druggie" stuff thrown in for good measure.

But what interests me more here is one of the other reasons the ad offers as to why this rising Democratic star is "dangerous" -- she's an intellectual theorist.  This sort of "accusation" is partly a recycling of Cold War-era anti-intellectualism.  But it also points to another cliche about intellectuals: they're supposedly ineffectual, i.e., "all theory and no practice."

This can also be related to a common criticism of Occupy Wall Street.  Some commentators have complained that the movement is indefinite as to its demands.  At the heart of their irritation is the implication that OWS is all ideals, no "getting down to brass tacks" -- a variation on the theme of all talk/protest, no (effectual) action.

The next ad, produced for OWS (funded through an online crowdsourcing site), does a lot to answer both the criticisms of radicalism and impracticality.

Occupy Wall Street TV Ad

 

This ad seems designed to answer the question of "what do they want?" head on.  Every person who makes a cameo here begins their statement with "I want..." Some demands/desires are more general -- but others are quite specific.

Additionally, the mosaic of faces presented in the ad is from a wide enough swath of U.S. society (and the people look "normal" enough) to prove that OWS, rather than a radical "them" is a home grown "us".  You  might call the spot a representation of representativeness -- signifying not "dangerous foreign collectivism" but U.S. democracy with a capital D.

"Diesel Island Is Going Down!" (Video Ad)

In the context of the argument about the need for change that you see in the first two ads, the new video ad below for Diesel Jeans (though not directly about OWS) is  all the more fascinating.

A few months back, this blog covered a Diesel campaign in which the brand created a wacky kingdom called Diesel Island, "the least fucked up country of all".  It was an imaginary nation, made up of a kooky community of young idealists who all, of course, wore Diesel Jeans.

In this new video, we find out that this utopian experiment in (heavily-branded) democracy, alas, has succumbed to corruption and scandal:



Looking at this clip now, it's hard not to think, by coincidence at least,  of that other locale where utopian impulses are springing up: Zuccotti Park.  And though neither of the first two spots touches on it directly, the utopian element of OWS is what actually excites some commentators  Here is Matt Taibbi, reporting for Rolling Stone:

"...Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance.  It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything.  This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become.  If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it."

Is not the original message of Diesel Island (and other imagined brand communties such as the Republic of Corona) exactly the sort of thing that Taibbi sees OWS as rejecting? That is, the offering, say, of brand images and experiences as simulated stand-ins for more actual sorts of freedom.

Some scholars claim the ideological function of consumer culture is precisely to provide such  consolation prizes as substitutes for our own insurgent impulses.  William Davies put it this way, in a recent article in New Left Review:

"Advertising, like management theory, is fuelled by a critique of the dominant normative-economic regime within which it sits, facilitating safe acts of micro-rebellion against the macro-social order."

In this light, the dissolving of Diesel Island seems almost honorable.  It's as if consumer culture's unconscious is saying (in video dream-speak): "hey, when you've got real utopian experiment in the news, who needs a simulated one?"  (Though what Diesel's ad folks really intend is probably to  just to promote the brand as cool,  by way of joking around with the  political zeitgeist.)

In any case, this all makes you wonder: if experiments like OWS persist, what will it mean for consumer culture as we've known it?  Thoughts?

 

Ideals on Wheels: Buick's "What Matters" Commercial

I've been seeing a commercial for Buick a lot lately that tries to redefine the whole idea of "luxury."  In this spot, the word and the brand that represents it have more to do with finding meaning in your life than the love of glam.  Check it out:

 

Judging from its images, which show family-oriented, suburban middle-class types, you get the idea that the tag "your kind of luxury" is addressed to people who don't think of themselves as particularly rich.  They're unpretentious, "come as you are" folks.

This sort of appeal may be part of brand tradition.  Consumer Culture scholar James B. Twitchell has written "Buick has had a history of being a car for strivers who have not quite made it."

So the suggestion that this more everyday-folks sort of luxury "isn't luxury the way  you've always known it" but something new,  isn't completely true -- because we have seen a variation of it in other Buick ads. Here is Twitchell again, on a Buick campaign from the late 90s:

"Now Buick does have a luxury car, the Park Avenue.  But the Century is an underling now positioned as 'A luxury car for everyone.'  The TV ad reinforces this positioning.  In one commercial we see scenes of family bliss, as the voice-over by the actor Willem Defoe asks: 'Are rich people taller than the rest of us?  Are their loved ones more deserving of an air bag?  Was the sun created solely for their enjoyment?'"

What I do think is unusual, though, is what I mentioned earlier: the way the spot redefines "luxury" as a "life of meaning" -- and somehow connects this to its cars.

The credit here goes to copywriting -- because the script (intoned by "everyman" Kevin Bacon) makes the transition from the values sermon at the beginning to the brand copy at the end with a seamless grace.

And the ease with which it achieves this is all the more remarkable when you realize that this spot really contains two scripts.

The values speech at the beginning is actually adapted from a poem by Michael Josephson, the head of an organization whose goal it to encourage people to be more ethical -- and kinder -- in their everyday lives.  The "brand script" at the end of the spot is written to payoff the poem by connecting its values to Buick.

It does this well enough where you almost don't question the connection it draws.  Buick is a brand that expresses  these -- and your -- values.  It is a company that knows a meaningful life is "the greatest luxury of all."  Because of this high-mindedness, the logic goes, it makes cars of substance and quality.

In short, what's implied is that Buick offers you a more solid, dependable car than the trendy ones people who like to show off prefer (perhaps these are superficial nouveau-riche types?).  If in the old Marxian theory machines were "congealed labor", Buick, in this spot, becomes a set of ideals on wheels.

A Shift in Cultural Mood?

The playing off of ethical materialism against the more flashy kind isn't new.  In fact, if this spot is designed to appeal (as Twitchell's comments would suggest) to social sectors still on the rise, you could categorize it as classic.  Classes striving to get ahead commonly characterize themselves as more moral than the "decadent" folks above them.

Nevertheless, the spot's redefinition of luxury seems a real shift.  It wasn't so long ago that populist heroes were celebrated for their shameless flaunting of the signs of wealth in their gaudiest forms.   Here is Twitchell again, writing about Donald Trump in the late 90s:

"Perhaps the only person who really qualifies as the Ur-yuppie is a superannuated one, Donald Trump.  The Donald has become an eidolon of opuluxe on steroids.  Not only has he moved through serial marriages complete with fathering a daughter named after a store (Tiffany), not only has he demonstrated his unflagging interest in pimping objects brandishing his name, but he has remained unrepentantly materialistic.  It's me, me, me.  If old-style luxury was about subtly advertising that you had money, Trump has removed all the subtlety."

Despite Trump's momentary surge as a Tea Party candidate, you have to wonder if in troubled economic times like ours his type of glitzy "winning is the only thing" sort of ambition plays as well as it once did.

And in this light, maybe this spot can be read as a longing for a sort of "capitalism with a human face" -- i.e., a mode of everyday life that's a bit less dog-eat-dog, where people play and work a little more nicely.  Thoughts? 

Who Can You Depend On? Thoughts About the Movie Cedar Rapids

The other night on Pay Per View, I enjoyed Cedar Rapids, a truly funny flick about small-time Insurance Agents who gather at a convention.

And what doubled my pleasure was that, in between the laughs, I couldn't help but read the movie as reflective of our culture's current qualms about the dependability of its own economic institutions, and the businesses that promote them.

After all, how many times have you seen an insurance company touted as "rock solid"?  And don't brand images like this entail promises of impeccable integrity and care?  Yet, who looked shakier during the recent crash than AIG?

The Education of a Small-Town Guy

Such issues are played out hilariously through the hero of this tale: a small-town guy named Tim Lippe.  Lippe is ordered by his boss to attend a convention in Cedar Rapids, IA (a big city, for him).

His assignment is to redeem the credibility of his insurance company from scandal.  One of its main agents died in unseemly circumstances (via auto-asphyxiation) and there are rumors that the company's "Double Diamond Award" (for integrity) will be rescinded.  Lippe's job is to come home with the award once again.

Lippe is a true believer in the insurance business.  We find out that agents helped his mother get back on her feet after his father's death.  He's also seen his local company help flood victims and others in need

At the same time, he's shown to be incredibly naive, especially socially, and this is played to comic extremes when he meets up with worldly party animals: agents from other towns such as John C. Reilly and Anne Heche.

At might be expected, during the course of the film Reilly and Heche show him how to loosen up.  He even has a one night stand with Heche, who's married with kids but has no guilt about getting a little on the side at conventions like these.

Part of his education, though, also entails learning the dirty secrets of the Insurance Business.  Reilly reveals to him that the "Double Diamond Award" was achieved through a pay-off of the local President of ASMI (the industry organization throwing the convention).

To make matters worse, this same President (outwardly a holy-roller who starts each conference meeting with a group prayer) wants to deny Lippe the award this year on what amounts to a morals charge: he's seen Lippe partying with his new friends.  Lippe then compromises himself by paying him off (for the good of the company's name).

But, of course, in a feel-good comedy, cynicism is never rewarded.  Lippe's boss shows up and, with the help of his regained credibility, makes a deal to sell the company.  Lippe only gets to keep his job if he relocates to Milwaukee.

At this point, he revolts.  He gets in touch with his own clients who agree to stay with him, exposes his boss and the President, and forms his own company (joining forces with the other agents with whom he's been partying).

Who Are the Good Guys?

The movie takes a sort of romantic (and conventional) stance as to who you can really trust.  Those who "let it all hang out", are the most honest characters.  They're transparent (wearing their hearts on their sleeves).  And transparency, perhaps because of  the malfeasance that led to the crash, is an increasingly popular word in business culture today.

The portrayal of the villains is also familiar: the most outwardly straight-laced (and powerful) are the culprits.

Ethics or Politics?

Though a fable, this film offers an insight into a problem plaguing our economy.  The scholar David Harvey has remarked that what threaten "the system" nowadays are not the needs of those on the lower rungs -- but the privileges demanded by the high and mighty.

And, the movie also agrees with Harvey that, if the credibility of the economy is to be preserved, it will be achieved by the efforts of its foot soldiers.

But here the film parts ways with him.  Cedar Rapids suggests that if industries like insurance really did stick to the small-business (and small-town) values they preached -- if they took Lippe's ethics seriously -- a lot of problems would be eliminated.

Harvey sees the answer not in ethics alone, but also politics.  As he puts it: "Paradoxically, a strong and powerful social democratic and working-class movement is in a better position to redeem capitalism than is capitalist class power itself."

In any case, it's interesting that what's caused social upheavals in recent times is the same as what leads to trouble in the movie.  From Cedar Rapids to Cairo, what pisses people off is the idea that those they've been asked to trust are pocketing all the money and the benefits for themselves. Thoughts?