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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.

 

How the Film "Arrival" Predicted the U.S. Election

I’ve heard it said that often that the most interesting thing about a story is the part that’s left out. Lately, though, at least when it comes to movies, I’ve found the most fascinating aspect of the film is in what’s been added to the original.

I’m thinking of here of films based on novels, or some other pre-existing story. The written narrative will present the tale one way. But when it is adapted, it will often be embellished – with the goal of making it more exciting on film. And when you look at the embellishments, what’s added sometimes tells another story altogether.  A story that is often about the political mood of the country.

Arrival – The Story

The recent film, Arrival, is a case in point. As has been covered by reviewers, the movie is an adaptation of a novella (titled “The Story of Your Life”) by the science fiction writer Ted Chiang. Chiang’s version of this tale is an elegant thought experiment, which explores the implications of a linguistic theory, known as the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. As I remember it, the idea behind this hypothesis is that the way we communicate radically shapes the way we see reality – so much so, that people speaking different languages live, essentially, in separate worlds.

Chiang’s story enacts this concept beautifully. He imagines a first-contact scenario, where, when the aliens arrive (in the form of ships hovering in the atmosphere) no one can figure out why they’re here – or what they’re saying. The military enlists the help of a linguist to decipher their communications. In doing so (by studying the aliens’ circular writing script), she discovers a non-linear, holistic language, where time, as we know it, doesn’t exist. As she learns this language herself, her own sense of time dissolves, and she sees her own past, present and future, her entire biography, at once.

Arrival – The Film

The film version of this story keeps Chiang’s narrative as its center, and does so quite skillfully. As a word-person myself, it’s a thrill to see the great Amy Adams, as hero, lecture the military brass on linguistic theory – and this, in a sci-fi blockbuster! But as I mentioned, what the movie adds is just as intriguing, especially in light of the 2016 election.

To make Chiang’s cerebral tale play more like an action flick, the movie surrounds it with another story, one involving a world crisis. In it, the Russians and Chinese are also trying to decipher the alien script. Unfortunately, they misinterpret what these beings are writing – thinking instead that the aliens are urging the nations of the world to attack each other.

Outraged, they begin to issue ultimatums, ordering the aliens out of their airspace, and they ready their atomic weapons. Luckily, the sane American linguist talks sense (in a rather dramatic way) to the head of the Chinese military, and saves the day. At this point, the aliens split.

The film ends on a utopian note. Collaborating with linguists from all the world’s nations, Adams’ character publishes a guide to learning the aliens’ language. Presumably, once we all learn its script, we will have a universal language to settle our differences in – and a new, more holistic vision of reality to boot.

The Prediction: Global vs. National

Produced well before November 2016, the film’s political subplot predicts, with great accuracy, the forces that would soon divide the U.S. electorate.

In one corner, there are the angry, suspicious nationalists – in this case, the hotheaded Russians, Chinese and more militant members of the U.S. defense forces. In the other, there are the rational cosmopolitans – Adams’ linguist, her partner, a brilliant physicist played by Jeremy Renner, and the other world’s linguists and scientists (some of whom are persecuted). They urge restraint, and a generally a cool, scientific and enlightened attitude.

The event that sets these two camps into opposition is the same one as that which rocked the recent election: the arrival of the alien other. In the movie, these “others” transgress air space; in contemporary politics, they cross borders.

As one might expect, the way the film sketches out these two sides seems hokey and caricaturist (not to mention a bit chauvinistic, in its portrayal of the U.S. as the center of the world's reason!).  But cannot the same be said of our national, political communications?  The Democrats promised repentance for their trade-deal friendly past.  Yet, as Michael Moore predicted, they were nevertheless stereotyped as globalist and “neoliberal”, because of their track record on such issues.

And when it came to the new “America First” party, you had to wonder about the credibility of their patriotic image and rhetoric, when their candidate went around publicly wishing that the election would be hacked by a foreign power.  But, apparently, the nationalistic branding worked well enough.

I wish I could believe that the film, seeing how prescient it was about the this conflict, also offered a way to resolve it. But, here, alas, Arrival seemed to get a bit Pollyanna. For to break such a deadlock, what’s needed is not just a new language – but a new politics altogether.

And that’s not the kind of thing you can get from another world.

 

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:

  

 

 

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? 

Nationalism and Poetry: Thoughts on Pascale Casanova and Adam Zagajewski's "Poems on Poland"

I noticed during the State of the Union the other  week, how frequently the theme of economic nationalism was invoked (bringing jobs back home, rewarding companies who base their manufacturing here, etc.).

And judging from the polls afterwards, it worked -- across the political spectrum.  This got me thinking about nationalism in general.  If ideas about "the Nation" strike such a chord, how might they affect aesthetics?

In an essay in the latest New Left Review, literary historian Pascale Casanova argues that feelings about "national identity" are actually a central, if sometimes unconscious, element of literary production.

Even writers who eschew such identification, embracing a sort of cosmopolitanism, are only able to do so because of the confidence their national culture affords them.  In other words, if you're a writer from an older literary cuture, one already respected on the world stage, you don't need to worry about your right to write.

But for nations just emerging, the driving aesthetic often has to do with discovering, refining and battling  for a national identity.  And making the case that one's own culture can stand, aesthetically at least, toe to toe with the giants.

One might imagine, by extension, that an important step in such aesthetic nationalism would involve fighting off the images cast upon your culture by the more powerful.

These ideas came to life for me as I was rereading a poem by Polish poet Adam Zagajewski.  Poland, as a national culture, is certainly in a state of (re)emergence, since it only recently has escaped (yet again) the domination of its aggressive neighbors.

Zagajewski's poem records the aesthetic after-shocks of such a history:

POEMS ON POLAND

I read poems on Poland written
by foreign poets.  Germans and Russians
have not only guns, but also
ink, pens, some heart, and a lot
of imagination.  Poland in their poems
reminds me of an audacious unicorn
which feeds on the wool of tapestries, it is
beautiful, weak and imprudent.  I don't know
what the mechanism of illusion is based on,
but even I, a sober reader,
am enraptured by that fairy-tale defenseless land
on which feed balck eagles, hungry
emperors, the Third Reich, and the Third Rome.

The picture painted of Poland by more powerful nations here reminds me of Donald Lopez's classic book on the cultural history of Tibet, Prisoners of Shangri-La.  In it, Lopez examines how that country has been portrayed in books (and skewed translations of Tibetan texts) by Western scholars, New Agers and explorers.

This "mystical kingdom" has been seen as everything from a utopia ("Shangri-La") to a sort of medieval slave state; its people portrayed sometimes as superstitious and even barbaric -- at others, deeply wise (if idealized) magicians.  But like Poland, however Tibet is pictured, it generally ends up seeming like a place lost in the past and its own passivity.  It's rarely an actor on the modern stage.

The Poetics of U.S. Nation Building

But the nationalist muse doesn't only inspire smaller, less powerful countries.  As U.S. literature came into its own, as Casanova points out, it too competed on the stage of international cultural politics.

Throughout the 19th century, U.S. writers, in their own quest for cultural independence, saw themselves in competition with Britain.  This nationalist impulse reached a high point in Whitman (who has been hailed as "America's  Shakespeare").  As Casanova puts it:

"Walt Whitman's writings contain magnificent pages on the power, novelty and immensity of American verse, while the United States themselves constituted 'the greatest poem' of all." 

It's amazing how such poetic nationalism persisted -- especially in view of how dominant the U.S. became by the mid 20th century.  As late as the early 60s, for example, poet George Oppen criticized U.S.  poets for looking away from their home soil -- and toward "the exotic arms of Zen" -- for inspiration.  Oppen remarked that for his generation, developing a more homegrown poetics (Williams being the ground breaker here) was considered the radical position to take.

Why?  "We grew up on English writing..." he wrote, and "the more open society [of the U.S.] made possible the literary career of the obviously non aristocratic spokesman who, once he tired of Invocation to Someone Else's Muse, had to make his own poetry."

Nevertheless, I'm not sure how appealing such ideas are for U.S. poetry anymore.  A few years back, I remember attending literary events attempting to answer the question of "What's American about American Poetry" (as if few knew anymore).

But I wonder, if the national economic ideology shifts away from the globalism of the last 25 years or so, how might this affect poetry, or our aesthetics in general.  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?

 

"Imported from Detroit" and Made in America: Dr. Dre and John Varvatos in Chrysler Commercials

Chrysler's "Imported from Detroit" campaign (the brainchild of French-born marketing guru Olivier Francois) covered on this blog a few months back, tuned out to be a hit.  brandchannel recently reported on its success:

"Chrysler was clearly onto something when it launched its breakthrough 'Imported from Detroit' campaign.  Sales spiked, leading the company to launch phase 2.  Explaining the positioning, Chrysler CMO Olivier Francois told brandchannel 'American coolness is essential to our strategy, because that's exactly what imports do not have, and some other American [luxury] brands don't have as well."

Here are two of the latest spots from the campaign that build on its position.  One featues Detroit-born high-fashion designer John Varvatos, the the other Dr. Dre:

 

 

The Chrysler 300 in these ads is considered a luxury car.  And one of the reasons the spots work, it seems to me (and perhaps one the secrets of the "American" positioning),  is that they're able to make luxury seem cool, rather than just boujie.  But how do they do that?

For one thing, they suggest that in America there's little shame in luxury.  Because this sort of luxe is accessible across class and race lines, if you work hard enough.

And the bold, blue-collar celebrity endorsers in these spots (like Eminem in the kickoff spot) have a nice rub-off on the car itself. Their presence and authenticity assure not only fine workmanship, but originality and most of all hipness.

A Bit Utopian...But So What?

You could say then, that these commercials work on reinventing the American Dream, not to mention the industrial might that made it credible.  Whether such a meaning rhymes with the current state of the economy may not really matter.  Ads are about wishes (often utopian) as much as they are about products.

But not only that.  Due to the increasing class stratification in the U.S., where "the top 1% alone control nearly 40% of the wealth,"  it turns out that the top 10% of households now "account for almost half of consumer spending."  In other words, the message of these spots simply doesn't have to be believable to everyone to make them effective.

And recent data reveals that "American Made" is an appealing pitch to the affluent.  brandchannel points outs that "traditionally, it has been the lower end brands that have leveraged the appeal of American-made, but now luxury brands have picked up the theme...

"An American Express Publishing/Harrison Group survey conducted this year showed that more than 75% of wealthy consumers like brands made in America, and 65% of them buy American-made products whenever possible."

The piece I'm quoting from speculates that the appeal of such branding could be the result of anything from ideas that buying American is good for business, patriotic -- or that such products are simply made better.  It also mentions a website (MadeInUSAForever), whose following is growing quickly, dedicated to this sort of "nationalist" shopping,  that offers more reasons why people should consume this way.

 Certainly, the idea that your consumption habits have political consequences has been richly elaborated throughout U.S. history.  The very identity of "the consumer", in fact, was invented in part by the New Deal administration as a counterweight against corporate power.

For that matter, the success of the Chrysler campaign itself will have an effect on current politics. Because the the U.S. car industry's rebirth was jumpstarted by government investment, it will be a key theme for the Dems in the upcoming presidential race.  The Obama campaign is even replacing McCain's "Joe the Plummer" with "James the Jeep Worker."

As far as the Chrysler campaign goes, though, I think the appeal is best explained by a bit of literary, rather than political, history.  It turns out that nationalism is tied to distinct meanings in terms of aesthetics, too.

The great literary historian, Pascale Casanova, tells us that in the evolution of world literature, France, via of course Paris, once assumed total dominance.  So much so, that the styles of Parisian art and writing were considered a universal measure of the best there was.  French aesthetics were judged the most sophisticated and "cosmopolitan" (or, as we'd put it today, they were the signature style of "globalism"). 

But, as German national consciousness rose, to compete with the French, another measure of good literature came about.  According to the German philosopher Herder, the arts, rather than copy the global standard (or aim for universality), should strive for authenticity.  And this would be achieved, he theorized, if they sought to express the "soul" of the Nation and its people.

Chrysler's CMO is following Herder's strategy for his brand communications.  What's more associated with the "American soul" than cool?

But, ironically, it's taken a sophisticated, French-born, cosmopolitan executive to grasp this. Thoughts?

 

Existential Pop: Dr Pepper Meets the Incredible Shrinking Man

Lately, I 've found myself amused at a Dr Pepper commercial (originally created, I think, in 2009) set in a self-help group.  It seems the animated characters in the spot meet for support in dealing with a particular social handicap: the world refuses to acknowledge their existence:

 

What caught my eye about this commercial was its comic light touch -- even when alluding to something everyone from therapists, to philosophers, to the great modern writers seem to agree is a serious one: the establishment of a personal sense of "being" -- or, as it's more commonly referred to today, an "identity."

This concern even got translated into a specific form of cultural politics (usually called "identity politics" or "the politics of recognition").  In the 80s and 90s, "identity" movements arose on the liberal side of the spectrum (concerning rights around the issues of gender, ethnicity and sexuality).  Later, this style of politics was mimicked on the Right, often around religious beliefs and traditionalist lifestyles.

Cultural Studies scholar Nancy Fraser analyzes the philosophical roots of this tendency:

"The usual approach to the politics of recognition -- what I call the 'identity model' -- starts from the Hegelian idea that identity is constructed dialogically, through a process of mutual recognition. According to Hegel, recognition designates an ideal reciprocal relation between subjects, in which each sees the other both as its equal and also as separate from it.  This relation is constitutive for subjectivity: one becomes an individual subject only by virtue of recognizing, and being recognized by, another subject.  Recognition from others is thus essential to the development of a sense of self."

As Fraser indicates, a sense of identity is created socially as much as it is internally.  One essential for its establishment is that others take you seriously.

What's comic about the spot is that you see this logic  applied to establishing a brand identity.  The problem the Dr Pepper guy has is signaled by Santa Claus: people think what he stands for (a diet soda with great flavor) is a laughable myth.

Intentionally or not, what this setting also brings to mind is the brand identity issue a soda with a hard-to-categorize taste like Dr Pepper already carries with it.  As the Wiki about Dr Pepper puts it:

"W.W. Clements, a former CEO and president of the Dr Pepper/7-Up Company, described the taste of Dr Pepper as one-of-a-kind, saying "I've always maintained  you cannot tell anyone what Dr Pepper tastes like because it's so different. It's not an apple, it's not an orange, it's not a strawberry, it's not a root beer, it's not even a cola."

For that matter, even where the name "Dr Pepper" comes from is somewhat of a mystery.

In any case, such a lighthearted take on angst about the "question of existence" brought to my mind, by way of contrast, another version of pop-culture existentialism -- this one from a much earlier era...

"The Incredible Shrinking Man" Ponders His Existence

If you're obsessed with classic Science Fiction films like I am, you may be familiar with the story of "The Incredible Shrinking Man."  In the 1957 movie, the hero of this flick runs into a radioactive cloud, while he's out boating.  Soon after, as a side effect, he begins to shrink.

As he gets smaller and smaller, common household creatures -- cats and spiders -- turn into horrific monsters.  But as the movie progresses, he becomes too small for even them to see (or torment). Then his problems grow more philosophical.  As he faces the prospect of becoming as tiny as a molecule, or even an atom, he wonders whether, since living things can no longer recognize him, he even still exists.

Here's the way he resolves his quandary in the closing monologue (which ends "I still exist!"):

 

Whatever Happened to the Age of Anxiety?

In this clip, it's the gaze of God that assures the hero of his continuing identity/existence.  But today, it seems to me, many people look elsewhere for the recognition they need to build their sense of self.

Is not one of the appeals of social media, with all the "friending" it encourages, that it offers a quick, technologic way to make a person feel like somebody?  And, establishing an identity this way is certainly achieved with a lighter touch than in previous eras: a modicum of recognition is just a few clicks away.  No wonder even "identity politics" seems to be fading from the scene.

But I wonder, does this mean the "search for authenticity" will soon be passe?  Any thoughts on this -- or these clips?

 

The Poetry of Political Tragedy: George Oppen's "Armies of the Plain"

As I was in the process of writing a post about a George Oppen poem I admire, the story about the shootings in Arizona continued to unfold.  I was struck by the sad resonance this event had with the poem I was writing about.

"Armies of the Plain" offers Oppen's reflections on the story of the Kennedy assassination, by way of a study of its two gunmen: Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby.

It's a provocative poem -- speculating not only on a possible motivation behind political violence, but on the connection it might have to poetry and aesthetic pursuits in general.

Armies of the Plain

1.

'A zero, a nothing':
Assassin.

Not nothing.  At nineteen
Crossing frontiers,

Rifleman of the suffering --
Irremediable suffering -- of the not great,

Hero and anti-hero
Of our time

Despite all he has cost us
And he may have cost us very much

2.

Ruby's day,
Bloomsday.

Ruby

Proud to have learned survival
On the harsh plains --  --

Bloomsday.

A man
'Of the Jewish faith . . .'

'and it is so stupid . .
And I never use the term . .'

Whose people wrote
Greatly

Desperate the not great,
Like Oswald the not great

Locked
In combat. 

The Art of the Warren Report

When I looked for some background on this poem, I found, in an extremely helpful essay by Stephen Cope (read it here) that it was informed by Oppen's reading of the Warren Report.  The phrases in quotes throughout the poem are taken from Jack Ruby's comments about Oswald and himself as recorded by the Report.

Oppen not only found this document convincing -- he thought of it as a masterpiece in its own right. In fact, he looked at the section in which Jack Ruby explained his motivation for shooting Oswald as a kind of American Bloomsday -- with Ruby as a more tragic, because more banal, version of Leopold Bloom from Joyce's Ulysses.

Playing off the actions of these two "nobodies" (who became (in)famous) against a work like Ulysses (and an immortal creation like Leopold Bloom), it seems, helped Oppen speculate on the motivation behind Oswald and Ruby's violent actions.

Oppen related the "desperate" desire for greatness, on the part of Oswald and Ruby, to his own motivation for writing poems.  Like him, they were compelled to look for meaning.

But Oppen felt that the social order didn't offer a lot of roles in which one could find such fulfillment.  As a result, most were forced to "lead...lives without meaning and without drama and without honor."

The Importance of Being Nobody

Another of the quotes Cope includes in his piece suggests to me that Oppen, in adopting the role of "poet" in answer to a yearning for meaning (or even greatness), realized that one of its advantages was that the literary world itself at times makes a virtue out of what drives many crazy: a lack of recognition.  As Oppen puts it:

"It so happens that I   well,
happen to occupy a position at the precise apex of the pyramid, there is no one who outranks me.  First, because I am a poet, which is what gives me a position somewhere in the upper layers of the cultural pyramid, and finally because I am an unknown poet, which places me in the highest position of our society.  I outrank the President of the United States.   It is understood that if the President had the temerity to invite me for dinner, I would contemptuously refuse.  If I did not refuse, I would no longer be an unknown poet, of course, and would no longer outrank the President."

Oppen isn't just being satiric (or snobby) here.  As the late, great sociologist of culture, Pierre Bourdieu pointed out, in esoteric realms like avant-garde poetry, there's a loser-wins scenario.

That is, as if to make a virtue out of the relative obscurity of one's endeavors, writing to achieve "greatness for the ages" (rather than mere fame for today) is often taken as a sign of artistic integrity (i.e.,  a refusal to sell-out).  Thus, lack of commercial/official/public popularity can help increase one's prestige, at least among other poets "in the know."

Of course, Oswald and Ruby (like most) didn't have access to such rarefied aesthetic worlds.  But without some such sublimation, the poem suggests, their desires for greatness end up being acted out in the literal world -- with explosive results.  As Cope puts it:

"Oswald's act amounts for Oppen to a caveat bearing on the hazards of confusing the literary with the literal, the poetic with the political, and of wanting to achieve historical greatness at a time, and from a place, when and where it is historically impossible to do so."

Granted, few would apply such an aesthetic/existentialist take on the assassins of today.  Their actions are usually explained as a result of paranoid psychology meeting gun-toting (or religious) propaganda.  But Oppen's poem suggests at least that an additional speculation might be proposed about the causes of our current insanity ...

That, in an age of celebrity, maybe a lack of fame is another thing that drives people nuts.

NOTE:
For an intriguing comparison between today's assassination culture and the 60s', see the posts at Lally's Alley, starting here. 

 

 

What's So Funny About Hermann Goering? Or, Why I'm Afraid of (Political) Clowns

Reading Roberto Bolano's Nazi Literature in the Americas, a satirical encyclopedia of the lives of fictional poets and prose writers, I came across one faux biography I found especially amusing.

Under an entry labeled "Franz Zwickau, Caracas, 1946 - Caracas, 1971", we get the tale of a "son of German immigrants", once called "Venezuela's best schoolboy poet".  Here is part of Bolano's "review" of a "badly written" volume titled The War Criminals' Son:

"A number of poems are noteworthy:
--'A Dialogue with Hermann Goering in Hell,' in which the poet, astride the black motorcycle of his early sonnets, arrives at an abandoned airfield, in a place known as Hell, near Maracaibo on the Venezuelan coast, and meets the shade of the Reichsmarschall, with whom he discusses various subjects: aviation, vertigo, destiny, uninhabited houses, courage, justice and death." (p. 90)

Why, I wondered, was this passage, in a book full of fascist camp, particularly funny to me?  Of course, such a description is part of a long line of literary and media images of goofy Nazis, stretching from Chaplin's The Great Dictator, all the way to Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds.  If, as Susan Sontag first wrote, there's something kinky about fascists, there's something laughable about them too.

This is because as losers, their inflated claims about superiority seem, in retrospect, silly and pompous.  And who looks more boorish than the pudgy Goering?  In his day, he must have been a terror -- but to us, he seems a clown.

You could even say  that satiric portrayals of such figures have created a modern archetype: the puffed-up, anti-intellectual authoritarian who invites our derision as soon as he (or now she) appears in the news.  By now, in fact, this sort of portrayal is so common that figures who embody it have become almost endearing (because of their very familiarity, if nothing else).

But I wonder sometimes if we fail to fully grasp the dangers of modern authoritarianism, precisely because it seems difficult to take our own political buffoons completely seriously...

The Postmodern Political Clown

Back in 2009, the philosopher Zizek began commenting on the parade of puffed-up leaders who now inhabited the world stage.  Blustery figures such as Berlusconi of Italy, Ahmadinejad of Iran, and Putin of Russia, he noted, shared certain personality traits.

All were rather clownish, tending to make flubs, off-color remarks and generally outrageous verbal mistakes in public.  They were also given to emotional outbursts, sometimes containing threats.  

And though he never compares them to Nazis, I couldn't help seeing one rhetorical connection: what makes these figures seem silly is similar to what makes our media images of fascists funny: their almost self-conscious, ironic courting of pomposity, braggadocio and a sort of knowing ignorance- -- as if each were acting the fool for our entertainment.

Further, as Zizek pointed out, it's not only humor that makes these figures popular:

"The wager behind Berlusconi's vulgarities is that the people will identify with him as embodying the mythic image of the average Italian ... Even his grandiose enactment of the role of the noble politician, il cavaliere, is more like an operatic poor man's dream greatness.  Yet we shouldn't be fooled: behind the clownish mask there is a state power that functions with ruthless efficiency.  Perhaps by laughing at Berlusconi we are already playing his game."

Those Lovable Mavericks and Populists

Recent U.S. politics has been nearly overpopulated with these sorts of figures -- from the Perots of the 90s to contemporary innovations such as the Palladinos and Mama Grizzlies.  They too invite laughter mixed with identification through the screwed up, but "earnest" ways they talk (not to mention their "authentic" emotional outbursts and tweets).

But you have to wonder, in light of all this, if the many parodies these figures inspire might not be helping to normalize their politics -- by integrating them into a "lively and diverse American Scene." Such joking around might even imply that it would be fun (and harmless) to live under their entertaining rhetoric full-time.  They appear on Saturday Night Live after all!

And there's another factor that makes them appealing.  The political theorist Gramsci described (back in the 1930s, under Mussolini) something he called Caesarism.  Gramsci theorized that when large segments of the public perceived conventional politics to be "gridlocked", people longed for an authoritarian figure from outside the system to intervene.

No doubt this is part of the appeal of our own "mavericks."  The more they signal through word, deed and emotional display that they are not part of "regular" politics (despite their corporate backing), the more they they are not only loved -- but seen as a possible solution.