Saturday, April 25, 2009

 

1.       1.Analysis of the super-structure is in dire need of a “localization.”  The standardization of globe viewed as a purely antiseptic process—dissolving the mythological fertility of natural, indigenous territories beyond capital’s “synthetic” reach—has worn itself out.  This is evident in the overly “utilitarian” works in cultural/globalization studies that recycle the same facts that forbid new interpretations while simultaneously pleading for now-time employment of information in politics.  Most of this fact-driven work draws its source-data from the most abstract, cosmological of registers that can nonetheless pass as “empirical.”  The statisticization of indigenous communities, for instance, basically re-articulates the role standard-of-living indexes have in producing an image of the world via a content-less McWeltanschauung.  We need to turn the globe in on ourselves, not seek it out in the peripheries.  

2.      2. Lukács reifies reification when he affirms Taylorism and takes it as truth when it claims to penetrate into the worker’s soul.  Critiques of globalization fall into a similar trap when they confirm that transnational corporations have homogenized the globe.  That capitalism hinges itself on standardization is nothing new. And, “a mode of thought completely anchored in an awestruck repulsion of the existing system, crudely reduces all reality to the existence of that system.”  This quote, Thesis 202 of The Society of the Spectacle slightly altered to read repulsion instead of celebration, articulates the pseudo-critical distance observed in pop-leftism today.  

3.      3. A kind of textual and performative repulsion of the system amounts to the denial that states that their desire somehow escapes capital; and this is what grounds their epistemological claims and the practicality of their solutions.  (In high school, I remember making silk-screened patches proclaiming “Trust Your Desire” or something like that take from a book published by the anarcho Crimethink collective.)  Desire is not a primal current immanent to the globe but not to capital; it is not to be trusted because, like the effects of capital, its effects are inascribable to a rational, willful agent.

4.     4. Observing the detours of our own desires within global capitalism would bring a specificity to critique that is lacking in the kind of negative hagiography of the other as the apogee of a flat, capitalist despair.       

   

Here’s a nugget of rich corporate-theologico televangellism brought to you by the local superstructure.

      

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Sheer Commodification




Some interesting things happening here involving bio-energetics, sex and commodity aesthetics.  In the erogenous zone of the airline, the "Sheer Energy by L' Eggs" product gives a little something extra, facilitating  that 110% service-industry spunk.  A hidden implication of this commercial is a libidinal investment in the everyday via the commodity, which is part of an entire milieu of commodifications present in the sexuality of service-industrial relations. The excruciating boredom of airline travel culminates in a performance of pure service--featuring Sheer Energy-- that evokes the type-cast sexualized aesthetic of the female flight attendant.  Being served becomes a service in itself; service is the service provided.  Prior to the diversification--but not elimination--  of  airline hiring practices in regards to appearance and gender, inflight experience resembled a kind of perverse sexual utopia that centered on masculine consumer desire coupled with company attempts to maintain a nostalgic image of travel luxury, all subsumed under a scripted role-play.      
Sheer Energy corresponds to needs directly posited by the service industry-- which is part anatomical and part mystical.  The latter element is seen in the energized super-humanity of the flight attendant, an occupation often associated with a paradoxically sleep-deprived, maniacal gusto.  Flight attendants figure in many ways to be the transcendent super-(hu)man of late capitalism,with a bubbling energetic reserve to invest not only in the service provided to flyers but also in a spectacular love for providing that service.  Super-humanity exhibits itself in this--albeit put-on-- ebullient personality that situates itself in the context of  inflight despair (the claustrophobia, the air, the technologically-provoked anxiety); service is valued on the basis of its ability to obscure the horrifying, banal and inhuman tendencies of micro-managed consumer experiences.  In this light, the flight attendant is the apogee of service industry valorization.    
The commodity becomes a source of abstract, post-caloric energy that fuels postindustrial labor.  The wear-and-tear of the workday is placed under erasure by this magical product.  The product itself makes her feel like dancing, even after standing for six hours.    
Sheer Energy also informs a feminine commodity aesthetic that can be procured through consumption.  70's and 80's advertisements exhibit similar tropes to the ones displayed by Sheer Energy--mainly that of securing a place as an object of desire by relating it to male preference.  "Men prefer Hane's pantyhose"; "Tab [cola] can help you stay in his mind"; the concept of Virginia Slims; etc.  Consuming becomes not only a way to reproduce the worker but also to more fluidly reproduce, capitalize and hyperbolize existing tendencies in the field of desire.  Products who, at least in their ads, evoke the body are instrumentalized in commodity-hermeneutics in which the maintenance and care of the consumer is the objective; the result is the commodification of the consumer body itself (as well as, more residually and less violently, a commodification of hetero-male desire).  

Thursday, April 16, 2009

DIY @ Target: A Shabby-Chic Dialectic

In light of its recession downsizing and mega-corporate sublation, I thought I would post some poetic (and tragic) reflections on grass-roots capitalism from the blog of Shabby Chic founder Rachel Ashwell.

 “Shabby Chic on-line has had to close its doors. 

But Simply Shabby Chic continues in Target stores. 

Enjoy the treasures that you have bought over the years.

 Hopefully bringing more smiles than tears.”

           “Being an artist, a romantic, and a dreamer, I find it very easy to reflect on my life experiences in a storybook setting.”

 “This past week my manufacturing plant has been selling off fabrics, 
much of it of course is plain white.
Some are Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic floral prints.
Most of the buyers coming through have been sympathetic and nostalgic.
However some attempted to steal Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic tags and 
labels so they can sell them an authentic Shabby Chic product.
This was disappointing to me.
This feels dirty…”

 “While the fabric is of course Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic, 
the products that they will be made into are not.
So for any of you who care whether you are buying authentic 
Rachel Ashwell Shabby Chic products, there will be some impostors for a while.

I have always wondered what if feels like being in the head of person 
that copies. To me that is life as a destination without a journey.
Why would anyone want to create something that wasn’t their own heart 
and soul?
Just for money I suppose.
That’s something I don’t understand…”


           “REM
’Everybody hurts’
(And yes it hurts... it hurts because I love my stores, 
I love my employees, I love my artisan vendors, I love my customers, 
and things are broken for the time being.)”


  “The jewels sit safetly on a solid gold band .....for I have the knowledge 
that my childrens character has been forever changed.
They have never experienced the world without Shabby. Its a beauty 
and strength they assumed came with breathing. They have learnt the 
fragility of everything. Consequently they understand life, 
just a little bit more…”


  Grass-roots entrepreneurship is a permutation of capitalism at odds with principles of rationalization, thus the subsumption of DIY-home décor-come small-time industry by Target.  Note how Rachel desperately clings to the concept of “the original."  Creative/local/DIY/etc. capitalism gains its nostalgic quality from this emphatic copyright privatization of the concept and product, which allows consumers to indulge in the commodity’s mythic tale of origin in the authoritative hand of a human.  Our epoch is that of craftsmanship’s fetishization, the aesthetics of craft connote personality while erasing the real relations of production.      

Monday, April 13, 2009

Photography, Universality, Profit




In 1986, United Colors of Benetton launched an advertising campaign on "themes of difference." UCB commissioned designer Oliviero Toscani to create images of "couples" to both illustrate the realities of certain conflicts and to posit a peaceful solution to those conflicts. Perhaps, however, that is already giving the company too much credit. The ad campaign was extremely controversial due to the extreme ambiguity of its imagery.
One image, for example, shows two children embracing. One is the veritable symbol of a curly haired, Anglo cherubim, the other is a child of African descent with hair modeled to resemble devil horns. What is most obvious is the depiction of certain dichotomies Westerners are familiar with (good/evil, white/black) but what the viewer is supposed to do with these materialized binaries, no one knows. The embrace between the children is at best confusing: What does it mean for stereotypes to hold and cherish each other? The humanity of the children cannot be fully separated from their symbolic representation, and so any clear humanist interpretation is lost. I have posted several more images below.

Other images in the campaign were taken from actual current socio-political events, but were absent of any explanatory literature about said events. Literally, the only literature present in all the ads was the words "United Colors of Benetton."


On its website, UCB characterizes itself as "a brand that has aimed, for over 20 years, to create “value” by capitalizing on an image." It goes on to say, "A company that emphasizes value and chooses to create value is no longer communicating with the consumer but with the individual. Actual consumption is repositioned within the overall context of life. By entering the universe of values, the brand frees the product from the world of merchandise and manufacturing and makes it a social being of its own."

Benetton believes that through its imagery, its products transcend the world of capital and are recontextualized somehow as social and ethical objects. Benetton is literally trying to sell social consciousness.

Can a photograph, with its multilayered gaze between subject, camera and photographer treat the subject with respect while simultaneously re-presenting the subject to the world? Can images similar to the Benetton ads actually speak to some kind of universal humanity, if the processes by which they are produced and presented are altered?

I present case two: The art of JR and the communities who work with him. The anonymous artist JR has been doing photography work globally for at least ten years. He began his work in Paris and has more recently done projects in Brazil, Kenya and Palestine/Israel. He establishes ties with various communities, lives with and works with them and produces large scale photo projects. His work appeals to what one could argue are the most universally recognizable images for humans: the face and the eyes. He juxtaposes these images on to the sides of buildings, walls, stairs and rooftops. His most well known project "Face2Face" invites the viewer to re-examine the conflict between Israel and Palestine by appealing to our recognition of facial expressions. JR collaborated with both Palestinians and Israelis to produce a series of funny faces, including what he calls the "HolyTrinity" (seen below) and had crews of volunteers paste the images on the dividing wall as well as local marketplaces and courtyards. What is striking about these photographs is that they don’t invite the viewer to interpret them inasmuch as the faces declare their own opinions. Their placement on the dividing wall is a critique of the wall as absurd, innocuous, ridiculous.


The Benetton ads seek to create a sense of hope or outrage and then use the Benetton name to direct the consumer to action through the purchase of merchandise. But JR’s usage of photo and edifice offer familiar visages that transform their locations as sites for action and change. JR’s work, if I may be so bold to say it, offers the idea that there can be a universal value, emphasizing that which humans will always recognize and feel bonded to in a globalized world.


For more of JR's work check out www.jr-art.net


Sunday, April 12, 2009

Globalized Resistance

The model of the World Social Forum is that “another world is possible”. One free of globalization and capitalist exploitation, free of a racist and gendered society, a place we can all live in without the fear that we are destroying our environment. For many the World Social Forum is a joke, it presents no reasonable effort to change the system we are living in and it is primarily a gathering for activists and radicals to commiserate together. However, considering the advent of globalized resistance it is an interesting phenomenon. Furthermore, there is the question of what strategies to use against a system that is growing ever more solidified outside the bounds of nation-states, where people cannot get to the mechanisms of the system to try and change its course. Examples of the issues concerning strategy and isolated resistance are prevalent since the beginning of the economic crisis on the right and left. What the World Social Forum has been unable to achieve since TINA (This is no alternative) the economic crisis has aided in.

The spark—Greece

Greece has been the catalyst for social movements all over the world. After the shooting of a 15 year-old boy in Athens, the country went into chaos. Reacting to years of economic inequalities, police brutality, and governmental disillusionment. On December 6th the riots began and they would last for the entire month of December. These events consisted in sustained rioting in almost every major municipality in Greece and two separate two and three day General Strikes. The government did not step down and the riots were a failure in their goals, but a success in that they managed to spark scenes of outrage around the world.

Subsequently, the end of January would see general strikes, lock-outs, and riots in countries all over the world, not marching in solidarity with Greece, but working for their own rights. After Two weeks of protests, riots, and strikes Iceland collapsed and a new leftist government was elected. The same would occur in Latvia, where a month of strikes and riots, would bring the government down in February. Even in the authoritarian society of China there have been revolts against the government with people fighting for workers rights and benefits.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/economics/article5627687.ece
www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601085&sid=aeUDEk2WjWRQ&refer=europe
www.fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/economics-and-demography/latvias-government-resigns/

In France general strikes have been occurring once every other month since the beginning of the crisis. They have drawn out people to march in the millions. However, a general strike is not effective if it doesn’t last for a few days. At this point, their movements have only been able to stay intact for two to three days.

http://www.guerrillanews.com/headlines/20011/General_Strike_in_France
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13334113&fsrc=nwl
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/4394671/French-strikes-Violence-erupts-as-thousands-gather-to-protest-on-Black-Thursday.html

These sites’ articles describe the January general strikes and the most recent ones that happened on March 19th. The interesting thing about the French general strikes is that resistance is hardening, with unions and students aligning resistance against the status quo. For France, the result has been tumultuous, despite protests en masse and a vote of no confidence France still rejoined NATO and isn’t responding to the people’s demands. However, the events in France spilled over to its overseas territories (colonies), Guadeloupe and Martinique. Both of these islands have been on general strike for weeks. Recently both won negotiations with France and France gave in to their demands.

http://www.greenleft.org.au/2009/788/40587
http://www.workers.org/2009/world/guadeloupe_0319/

There have been riots, strikes and lockouts in countries all over the world in response to the collapse of the globalized system.

http://www.reuters.com/article/bondsNews/idUSLB96103520090312?sp=true
http://www.reuters.com/article/gc06/idUSTRE52F3PB20090316
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/03/27/afx6223702.html

With rises in unemployment, inflation, and the prices of food, gas, and most other basic commodities around the world, people are beginning to take notice and stand up. The fascinating thing about this is that after Greece activity around the world has skyrocketed. An economic disaster that may have remained localized in one nation in different time period has spread all over the world in a globalized system. Therefore the reaction has also been a global one. The interconnectedness of the human population (or our ability to interact in the noosphere) has precipitated the spread of subversive or radical activity. In this light it is arguable that as much as the Trans-national Corporation or the global Bourgeois have learned how to exploit the world, people are learning how to use the same system to communicate a message of resistance. However, I would argue that though the resources are available for a globalized resistance, people are unorganized and lack vision and strategy; therefore any action is petty and fruitless, leaving the people who know how to use the same globalized system to exploit unchallenged. This problem leaves a vacuum from which people like Skylar write in an optimistic light, explaining a systematic vision for how to fix this issue. When in reality they merely restate the obvious and provide no substantive stratagem. A globalized reaction exists, fervor exists, room for people to critique the status quo exists, but there is no cohesive alternative being presented. While we study globalization and wonder what we can do there are thousands marching towards some unknown end. The question remains as students in a high level institution safe from the problems of the world, shouldn’t we being reacting by trying to develop the very Stratagem that the entire planet lacks?

-Kevin C.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

FETISHISM OF THE CONSUMER

Appadurai writes on page 42, "the consumer has been transformed through commodity flows (and the mediascapes, especially of advertising, that accompany them) into a sign, both in

1. Baudrillard's sense of a simulacrum that only asymptotically approaches the form of a real social agent

and in

2. The sense of a mask for the real seat of agency, which is not the consumer but \the producer/ and the (many forces) that (constitute production).

This second principle is related precisely to Sweezy's Marxian conception of consumer (p222), when he discusses those forces that serve to stave off prices by raising levels of consumption, the movement into a consumer-oriented arrangement of social life, raising the question of WHEN, the moment where, human beings become homo consumins, when consumption becomes the principle indicator, when the worker is no longer held to work and labor in the interests of limitless accumulation of wealth in the hands of capitalists but is allowed to ensure the re-generation of the capitalist scheme through the extension of his work as CONSUMER, a kind of double compulsion. Marx found the consumer not-so-interesting since it did nothing exceptional, only starting the process anew.



Simulacrum




"It is the fantasy of seizing reality live that continues - ever since Narcissus bent over his spring. Surprising the real in order to immobilize it, suspending the real in the expiration of its double. You bend over the hologram like God over his creature: only God has this power of passing through walls, through people, and finding Himself immaterially in the beyond. We dream of passing through ourselves and of finding ourselves in the beyond: the day when your holographic double will be there in space, eventually moving and talking, you will have realized this miracle. Of course, it will no longer be a dream, so its charm will be lost." -Jean Baudrillard, "Simulacra and Simulations."

[Copyright © 1997–2008. European Graduate School EGS. The URL is http://www.egs.edu/faculty/baudrillard/baudrillard-simulacra-and-simulation-11-holograms.html.]




Asymptote

As one moves along the graph of f(x) in some direction, the distance between it and the asymptote eventually becomes smaller than any distance that one may specify.

If a curve A has the curve B as an asymptote, one says that A is asymptotic to B. Similarly B is asymptotic to A, so A and B are called asymptotic.

[Wikipedia. The Free Encyclopedia!]






The consumer, through this enchantingly complex commodity flow, and the mediascape attached to/derived from/apart of, it, has been transformed into something beyond a consuming mouth and defecating anus. The consumers holographic double appears, like a phantom, out of this commodity flow/media-scape. The double is a real social agent, but now and infinitely a shadow of the consumer, never to be embodied in/by the consumer self.


AND (according to Appadurai) there is also a sense in this 'fetishism of the consumer,' that the consumer has been transformed into a sign in another sense - as a mask



for the REAL SEAT OF AGENCY, which is not the consumer, (but his double, his holographic other), "the producer, and the many forces that constitute production."

Global advertising is the KEY technology for the global dissemination of all these carefully selected ideas of consumer agency.

1). These images are increasingly distortions.
2). Very subtle
3). Consumer thinks of self as actor
4). Consumer is at BEST a chooser

Q) Choosers have no agency?
A) No real agency.



Q) Is there not something in Baudrillard's sense of a simulacrum (that only asymptotically approaches the form of a real social agent) that might possibly be opposed to this notion of a mask for the real agency in the producer??

If there are only distortions and fantasies of agency, then why extend the sign to the idea that agency might then exist in the producer? Why this opposition between producer/consumer where agency is located in one besides the other? This is the idea behind the simulacrum. They are both implicated in a mediascape that has loosed havoc upon any location of so-called real agency thereof.

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

There IS "No Agency"

In Marx’s model, humans perform acts of labor on nature to create commodities, which they bring to market to exchange with each other. An interaction of use values thus gives rise to their general determination as exchange values, but the latter requires a collectively agreed upon unit; thus appears money, “the absolutely alienable commodity, because it is all other commodities divested of their shape, the product of their universal alienation. It reads all prices backwards, and thus as it were mirrors itself in the bodies of all other commodities, which provide the material through which it can come into being as a commodity. At the same time the prices, those wooing glances cast at money by the commodities, define the limit of its convertibility, namely its own quantity” (Capital Volume One, 252). Money and commodity first exist in mutual interdependence, and the former, a single unit of exchange value as such, exists only for the sake of and as a means to commodities, pure potential in itself, manifest only in particular exchange values in the monetary form, for the sake of consumption of commodities. This money becomes capital, however, when individuals do not merely sell a commodity for money to buy another commodity (C-M-C), but rather reverse the process, and buy a commodity for the sake of re-selling it (M-C-M), focusing on the means as an end in itself; money feeds on itself as an end in itself to create more money, and commodities serve only as vehicles of money for the purpose of its growth. This growth is limitless because it is simply the pure law of more, of surplus value. Value “suddenly presents itself as a self-moving substance which passes through a process of its own, and for which commodities and money are both mere forms…instead of simply representing the relations of commodities, it now enters into a private relationship with itself…it differentiates itself as original value from itself as surplus-value, just as God the Father differentiates himself from himself as God the Son, although both are of the same age and form, in fact one single person” in a perpetual process of “self-valorization [which] brings forth living offspring” (263), throws a plethora of commodities off of itself to further profit. Just as a commodity is recognized as embodied money, so is money recognized as a commodity, an end, a thing which, in essence, can be bought or sold. From this point on, it is money which is buying and selling itself through the cycle of production, consumption, exchange. This infinite feedback loop erases all fixed reference points, all difference between means and ends, and the system becomes even more circular and rhizomatic in the global market, when different monies come together as so many commodities and reflect each other in the relational scrambling of value, so that in the end the process can only be defined as “money which is worth more money, value which is greater than itself” (264).
The process is pulled along from beginning to end by the same desire. Humans are driven to the market by the social impulse, by desire, by labor; use-value, and with it exchange value, are reflections of individual and collective desire; finally, money symbolizes desire-in-itself as a fluid potentiality capable of desiring itself, stirring its own effulgence through and beyond the symbolic market. Money is the desire of the market as an autonomous entity that breathes through supply and demand, wriggles its limbs through the proliferation of commodities, constantly wavers and flickers with a pulse of its own in the fluctuating values of each commodity, as the market becomes attuned to, sensitive of itself; at the heart of this beast is the pyre of desire on which the material commodity is sacrificed, transubstantiated up to capital, and reborn again as more commodities in a limitless regenerative process. Just as a single human is a desiring-machine, so is the market a desiring-machine, and both throw off “the useless and infinite fulfillment of the universe” (Bataille, 21).
Bataille envisions an ever-growing surplus of burnoff, Marx sees the mechanism of this glow in the self-consuming and –transcending value, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin likewise describes how “at each further degree of combination something which is irreducible to isolated elements emerges in a new order” (The Phenomenon of Man, 268). The pivot of globalization hinges, in Teilhard’s words, on the question “how, without being impeded or deformed, can the innumerable particular curves be inscribed or even prolonged in their common envelope?” (260). His Omega is not the erasure of difference in homogenous singularity but rather “the exaltation, not merely the conservation, of elements by convergence” in which “union differentiates…the Universal and Personal (that is to say, the ‘centred’) grow in the same direction and culminate simultaneously in each other…[heterogeneous elements] do not tend to lose their outlines and blend, but, on the contrary, accentuate the depth and incommunicability of their egos…[so that] the more ‘other’ they become in conjunction, the more they find themselves as ‘self’” (262). It would be mistaken, then, “to represent Omega to ourselves simply as a centre born of the fusion of elements which it collects, or annihilating them in itself”, a homogenizing signifier. Rather “by its structure Omega, in its ultimate principle, can only be a distinct Centre radiating at the core of a system of centres; a grouping in which personalization of the All and personalizations of the elements reach their maximum, simultaneously and without merging, under the influence of a supremely autonomous focus of union” (262). It would manifest as a sharpening of the entire global picture, a universal Democratic-Socialist localization founded on a mutual respect of difference upon a ground of unity that grows more firm as each part solidifies itself as irreducibly heterogeneous. Such is the dream of the immanent synthesis of global government and market, where the former emerges as a reflection of the latter; Pierre’s twist is that this self-sufficient global network is founded in reference to a transcendent Other, the above-mentioned force of surplus desire pointed to (reified?) as the true site of agency.
Global capitalism has achieved a perverted immanence wherein the desire of the market spills over into the governance of the people, a governance which rather than emanating from a transcendent ruler (often equally unbalanced) is diffused throughout the self-transcending productive and consumptive flows of cultural-ideological brainwashing; this unbridled proliferation of semiotic capital-desire is overcathected, neurotically imbalanced in the capitalist repression of the proletariat. Unification exists “at the top among the few, the very few”, while fragmentation rules “at the bottom among the many, the very many” that, in reaction to the former, cling to a disappearing individuality (Hetata, 283). The corporations control the nation-states and the people, but the corporations, like commodities, are ripples on the surface of the organism of capital that transcends and creates us, and ignorance of this fact “causes us to undergo what we could bring about in our own way” (Bataille, 23). The exponential surge of capital has carried along with it a noosphere of, in the words of Donna Haraway, “distributed, heterogeneous, linked, sociotechnical circulations that craft the world as a net called the global…[in a] historically specific technoscientific womb” from which spring forth “cyborg life forms that inhabit the recently congealed planet Earth… imploded germinal entities, densely packed condensations of worlds, shocked into being from the force of the implosion of the natural and the artificial, nature and culture, subject and object, machine and organic body, money and lives, narrative and reality. Cyborgs are the stem cells in the marrow of the technoscientific body; they differentiate into the subjects and objects at stake in the contested zones of technoscientific culture” (ModestWitness@SecondMillenium, 14). This is Teilhard’s vision of a heterogeneous bioecotechnoscientific body evolving from, in Haraway’s words, “the domain of ‘life’, with its developmental and organic temporalities…[into that] of ‘life itself’, with its temporalities embedded in communications enhancement and system redesign…life enterprised up, where…the species becomes the brand name and the figure becomes the price” (12). To surrender autonomy to the capital Other does not mean homogeneous takeover, rather in the force which transcends us is found the ground of our unity, wherein a unified world government can cradle and channel the diffuse world market towards this Other before whom can be displayed the full depth of heterogeneous waste.

The Miracle

This is the miracle. Look closely at it. It happened on March 28, 1992:



Sports, one might say, games played by young men and women, hold the viewer in rapture because of the ever-present chance of witnessin
g a miracle. When Christian Laettner (aptly named) hit this fadeaway jumpshot to win the East Regional Final in the 1992 NCAA Tournament, and we, the crowd, erupted, when we cried or tore our hair out, there was grace in the air - a feeling that something had passed, and it was something. So, please, this is the miracle. Look closely at it.

But what are we to do, we believers, when the miracle has grown old? Can we relive our ecstatic moment?



But are we tired of Christian's miracle? Are we ready for something new? Are we looking for a new way to reach this euphoric state?

One element that is oddly not featured in the internet version of this commercial is a moment that occurs at the end of the TV spot. I will let Todd Zeigler of the Bivings Report explain:


"What was interesting wasn’t the commercial itself, but the call to action at the end. Where most commercials insert a logo and URL in the last frame, Vitamin Water included a link to their Facebook page at www.facebook.com/vitaminwater. I’m no expert on TV commercials, but this is not a strategy I recall seeing before and it caught my attention... Advertising the Facebook page will catch the attention of people like me by jarring us out of our slumber by doing something unexpected. It is new and different. In addition, unlike Vitamin Water’s regular site the Facebook page actually gives me something to do - I can become a fan and connect/interact with other Vitamin Water lovers. By becoming a fan, I am essentially endorsing Vitamin Water to my network on Facebook, who will find out about my new relationship with Vitamin Water via their Facebook news feed. I’m telling the world that I think enough of Vitamin Water to associate my brand (meaning my Facebook persona) with theirs."

Todd Zeigler was formerly an intern in the press office of Senator Fred Thompson. He is currently vice-president of The Bivings Group and writer for the Bivings Report. "The Bivings Group’s sole focus," as their website (bivings.com) states, "is on helping our clients use technology to converse and communicate with the audiences that matter to them. In everything it does, The Bivings Group believes the power of the Internet lies not in the technology, but in it its strategic use." Zeigler believes that Vitamin Water's use of Facebook in their commercial is: (1) a call to action; (2) something to jar us out of our slumber; (3) a way to connect and interact with other "lovers"; (4) a way to be a fan; (5) an opportunity to make an endorsement; (6) an invitation to tell the world; and (7) a reaffirmation of one's brand, and thus, one's self.

Perhaps Vitamin Water has not only relived the miracle, perhaps it has transformed it. Now the miracle doesn't merely make us smile, cry, or scream. The miracle now becomes a "call to action!" and "something to jar us out of our slumber!" Christian's shot becomes the first act in our potential relationship with this miracle. We, the believer, can now interact with the Vitamin Water bottle which - as pictured on the Facebook page - is conflated as both equal to the basketball itself and the player (who one could imagine pictured in the foreground of promotional picture with the b-ball behind.) In this way, the bottle is both the actor and reification of the miracle. We, the believer, are now able to take part in this holy experience. There is hope for us yet.

Through Facebook we join an community in celebration. Much like we become fans of athletes or teams or sports, Vitamin Water collects our adoration. Through an invitation, the believer is allowed to praise his idol as well as connect with other believers. Rather than sitting on one's couch doing nothing, one sits on one's couch actively - the believer becomes responsible for his cause, his belief, his Vitamin Water. Through this network of action, Vitamin Water becomes even more powerful, but so do we. Our miracle (the one we have shared) becomes legitimized through this collective action. I have created a graph to show exactly how this process unfolds:


While there can be only one in the end, our messianic urge is fulfilled. While we cannot be the object we so desire, it could not exist without us. We remain a member of the bracket or network. We do not disappear once the end is reached. Through our action, we are forever a part of the experience.

The messianic figure of the present, our President Barack Obama, makes sure to remind us of our importance each day. As the living miracle, it is his duty. He has set up a network-based website, similar to Facebook, that allows us, the believer, to speak to our government each day. We cannot know who above reads our words, but the fellow believers (the ones left behind) are sure to. In Obama's victory, the world finds new ways to grapple with the miracle - this time in the sport of politics. But it is Obama's genuine love for the sport of basketball (a love that started in Hawaii with) that brings us back to the miracle - to the moment (as CNN so daringly calls it).



In taking part of the bracket system, Obama is both submitting himself and submitting the game to a greater power. By making his "picks," Obama is becoming a believer - just another fan waiting for the miracle. But filling out the bracket (much like filling in a blank space on Facebook) also allows the fan (in this case Obama) to take part and be responsible for the potential miracle. The recent craze for fantasy sports attests to this fact. The believer is no longer content to merely watch the miracle pass by. He must, in some way, take part in it, and so, know better than it. But while the believer plays the omniscient "maker" of the bracket, he is also subject to it. Its weight - both a collective (through the network) and singular (through the miracle at its end) - is an oppressive freedom, religious almost. The believer watches the game knowing that he knows best, but that everyone else does too.

The transformation the miracle has undergone has been from "beyond man" to "of man." The believer has, in a sense, learned to create his miracle.

melika08 writes on caloriecount.com: "So I was at the grocery store today and I saw a huge display of vitamin water. Usually, I don't pay attention because I try to stay away from beverages. It's just extra calories that I'd rather eat! But then I realized these were different! They are sweetened with Stevia extract thats all natural. I really like vitamin water lemonade flavor so that's the one I tried! It's reallly yummy and honestly it tastes exactly the same! Ahh I'm happy!!! Don't get me wrong I love water, but this is a nice change."

It seems that the miracle that fills us and replenishes us - water - has been transformed. Today Vitamin Water fills our shelves, our bodies, and our souls. For years, health nuts have struggled to get stevia (a plant that can be turned into a healthy sugar alternative) FDA approved. But the FDA came up with excuse after excuse as to why this would not happen. Several months ago, Coca-cola (owner of Vitamin Water) patented and got FDA-approved an extract of stevia, which they named Truvia. Cocacola speaks louder, truly.

And now, as of a few days ago, Vitamin Water 10 is on the market - 10 calories, that's all. As their label says: "Naturally sweet... supernaturally tasty." But Vitamin Water 10 is not just a man-made treat, nor is it straight from the earth. Rather, through a combination of man's power and nature's resources, it has transcended what we know - it is supernatural, a new miracle. It knows better, and so we can we. It is up to us. As its new commercial states: "Vitamin Water 10: It's one-upped nature." In this commercial, an imaginary company called Water Inc. is featured. The chief executive is named Mother Nature. She complains that Vitamin Water 10 is "cutting into our market share... We need to take back our competitive edge!" But can she? Should she? The believer must decide.

He clicks on a link. Vitamin Water has 269,779 fans. He reads. Geoff Smith, who has no profile picture, says yesterday, at 6:02 am: "Vitamin Water go global!" Is Vitamin Water not global? the believer asks. Is the miracle not eternal?


Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Intolerant Globalization


In the last decade, Russia has seen a capitalist boom that has changed the skyline of its two capitals - Moscow and St.Petersburg - to a flashing, pulsating sea of advertisement. To proponents of developmental theories of democracy, this is an obvious sign of a positive change in the country. After all, the famous opening of the first McDonald's in Moscow in 1988 was meant to be a sign of things to come. The McDonald's corporation even planned to train Soviet managers "in McDonald's tradition...at one of the company's 'hamburger universities' in Illinois, London, Munich, and Toronto". Over twenty years down the road, Russians have definitely mastered all the necessary skills related to fast-food, albeit with a local flavor.

An interesting example of a new restaurant chain is "Yaposhka" (which literally translates to little Jap) a joint catering Japanese-Russian cuisine to several cities across Russia. Its logo shows a caricature of a Japanese man holding a hot bowl of noodles. The chain tries to differentiate itself from other Japanese restaurants by offering a split menu featuring sushi and "anti-sushi". By "anti-sushi" they mean traditional Russian cuisine in the form of pickled fish and vegetables, potatoes, and dumplings called pelemeni. Even the dinning area is divided along this ethno-culinary divide. With the proliferation of foreign restaurants around Russia's big cities, "Yaposhka" wanted to stand out as being more Russian than its competitors. Xenophobia, a relatively new phenomenon in Russian history, is firmly taking hold over the minds of the population. Within the last five years, a wave of racially-motivated killings of Chinese migrants, African students, and Central Asian guest workers has become an epidemic according to Human Rights Watch. Russian society has tended to turn a blind eye to the violence, as anti-foreign sentiment prevails among the masses.
"Yaposhka" attempted to tap into people's xenophobia to market their product in Western capitalist fashion. Everything from its slick design, classy website, costumed personnel, flashy logo, and quick service has been directly inherited from the capitalist West. With the help of the the latest marketing technologies, consumer research, and branding this Russian chain, like many others, is going after the desire of consumers. Using these very successful advertisement strategies, learned from the West, this restaurant chain marketed its blatantly racist brand to the Russian market. As it turns out, capitalism does not, however, make societies more tolerant.

Recently, due to pressure from the Japanese Embassy, the restaurant chain was forced to change its name to simply "Yaposha" thereby getting rid of the Russian diminutive ending -ka. Getting rid of the "little" did nothing to change the xenophobic nature of the chain's name. The company attributes its success to its "democratic style":

The concept behind our cafés is based on a sense of democracy. It is present in everything here: the restaurant's location, interior design, menu options, pricing, and the type of service we offer to a wide spectrum of consumers. And as they say, as long as there is demand - there will be a supply for it.


In a country where the consumer is becoming king, no one seems to care.

They even sponsor various children events. Here's the"draw your own Jap" contest:



























And here's their lovely mascot giving out prizes:


















Sources: www.yaposha.com,
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/04/30/business/mcdonald-s-in-moscow-a-bolshoi-mak.html

Sunday, April 5, 2009

Obey Your Thirst

The various international manifestations of the global “cola wars” sees mega-corporations PepsiCo and the Coca-Cola Company engaging in bitter fights over market access, branding rights, natural resources, etc. in every nation on the planet. A quick, media-saturated tour of a few of these manifestations provides some insight into the socio-economic, politico-libidinal manipulation characteristic of modern globalized capital…
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Most soda is branded under the parent company of either PepsiCo or Coca-Cola Company and typically each company offers a competing brand in the same “flavor market”.
In the case of lemon-lime flavored soft drinks, however, there are three popular brands available to American consumers—Sprite, 7-Up, and Sierra Mist. This begs the following question: How can there be a lemon-lime soft drink option outside the PepsiCo/Coca-Cola dichotomy?

Of course, there cannot be.
Coca-Cola Company owns Sprite and the lesser, third-party Dr. Pepper-Snapple Group owns the 7-Up brand in America—PepsiCo, however, owns the 7-Up brand in every other country in the world. PepsiCo, lacking an alternative to pit against cola-war arch-enemy Coke, introduced the Sierra Mist lemon-lime brand exclusively in US markets to go head to head with 7-Up and Sprite. Thus the transnational corporate battle for lemon-lime supremacy unfolds like this: PepsiCo, owner and distributor of 7-Up across the globe, created the Sierra Mist brand specifically to compete against 7-Up—one of its own products—in the domestic American market alone. The incestuous, homogenized lemon-lime soft-drink options articulates a particularly bleak, if not comic picture of the state of consumer society where quality and any actual difference between products is subordinated to a business model which manipulates consumer desire and has no inherent logic or goal other than turning pure profit.
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A quick detour—a recent 2006 marketing campaign for Coca-Cola brand lemon-lime soft drink Sprite shows a level of straightforward honesty in their intentions that is rare even in the realm of brutally manipulative corporate ad campaigns.
The traditional “Obey Your Thirst” motto of Sprite was foregone for the more succinct “OBEY”, which began to appear on all Sprite cans and bottles, as well as a series of billboard and magazine ads in which an all too appropriate theme of subliminal messaging was used. The ads were shockingly similar to those that appeared in John Carpenter’s 1988 film “They Live”—a movie where “the ruling class within the monied elite are in fact aliens managing human social affairs through the use of subliminal media advertising and the control of economic opportunity”[1], which of course was a biting commentary on the deep culture of conspicious consumption in 1980s America.

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Another striking example of the conflation of political, economic, social and libidinal spheres in the globalized cola-economy is the manner in which the two major soft-drink corporations also find themselves wrapped up in the politics of the Middle East and their relationship to the state of Israel.
Historically, PepsiCo and Coca-Cola have refused to set up bottling plants and sell their products in Israel out of fear that a boycott by the Arab world would result in a crushing loss of market dominance that could tip the scales in one direction or the other in the global “cola-wars”. However, under pressure from American pro-Israeli lobbying groups who threatened boycott in the even more invaluable American market in the mid-1960s, Coca-Cola began producing and selling soft drinks in Israel. Pepsi, on the other hand remained firm in their refusal to set up bottling plants or sell their products in Israel, resulting in a carving up of the Middle East along cola-company lines—Arab nations boycotted Coca-Cola and almost exclusively drank Pepsi products, and Israel and its American lobbying allies put intense pressure on Pepsi to introduce its products to their country, which eventually happened in the early 1990s.[2]

As the cola-war raged on in the Middle East, alternative cola companies began to emerge in the region with specific political agendas set against the corporate policy of the big two. Mecca-Cola, for example, reappropriates the iconic logo of Coca-Cola in a project that the BBC describes as “designed to cash in on anti-American sentiment around the world” with the goal of becoming the “drink of choice for Muslims everywhere” in order to “push out the icon of American capitalism.”[3] Tawfik Mathlouthi, CEO of Mecca Cola, explains their mission statement as combating “America's imperialism and Zionism by providing a substitute for American goods and increasing the blockade of countries boycotting American goods.”[4] 10% of Mecca Cola profits go to charities in the Palestinian territories, specifically “associations who work towards peace in the world and especially for peace in the conflict between Palestinians and fascist Zionist apartheid.”[5] Similar products have emerged in the Arab world that are worth checking out: Zam Zam Cola, named after the Well of Zamzam in Mecca, an important stop on the Hajj, whose director Ahmad-Haddad Moghaddam hopes “the faithful will refresh themselves” with Zam Zam during the annual pilgrimage.[6] Quibla Cola, who donate 10% of their profits to humanitarian causes in the Muslim world, also reappropriate the iconic Coca-Cola imagery, and encourage drinkers to “liberate your taste.” All of this resistance, of course, is inscribed within an established international capitalist business culture and economic discourse, even with the appeals to political and ethical ideals.

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In concluding, check out these classic cola commercials--

Right now change is loose on the planet.

This one speaks for itself.


[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Live
[2] http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/israel.asp
[3] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2640259.stm
[4] Ibid.
[5] http://mecca-cola.com/
[6] http://www.islamonline.net/English/News/2002-08/27/article07.shtml