My War, or that Chuck Dukowsky frame of mind
Excuse me; I was caught up in the reality bending expanse of another David Brooks op-ed in the New York Times and I forgot I was supposed to be writing a post tackeling something Robert Bratton sent my way last Sunday.
What he sent was a link to Library Juice, a librarians E-zine: Issue 7.15 Item No. 6 A Burger King Bill of Rights Document of NeoTotalitarianism by Rory Litwin. Robert sent this under the subject line: Taking things a little too seriously? The piece procedes firmly tongue in cheek , to be sure, but satire always has a target. Litwins has something deliberately in his crosshairs. His analysis in part :
more than a
joke. At the deeper level it is a cold announcement, from the seat of
corporate power, of the limitation of our rights and freedoms in consumer
society. It is an assertion that our rights do not really go beyond what
defines us as consumers. As American citizens, the right to "hold the
pickles and hold the lettuce" and "mix coke and sprite," which Americans
gleefully accept as the pursuit of happiness are here asserted to be the
only kind of rights we really have.
I laughed and accepted the joke on the level intended. but then I began to think of this automobile commercial I had seen a night or two earlier. I watch too much television and see too many advertisments that is good for me . The car commercial seemed to go beyond the "did you always like to scribble outside the lines as a kid - well this car lets, heck demands, you take a right turn off the road - right now! And go way outside the lines (available in silver and blue, w/ABS stanadard)." It went beyond the "Haven't you reached reached the station in life where you need to sit in the fine well appointed coach of the Chevy Ulterior motor vehicle". It didn't take the approach of those car commercials which show blissed out 40, or 50 somethings zipping solitary, serene thorough some empty wilderness of sparse trees, mountain coasts, and tiny winding roads. Which cannot exist in the real world, but has been photoshopped in from somebody's private orchard or a national park. I am mystified by this last type of commercial, the enormous popularity of video games like the grandtheft auto francise indicate that most peoples real car fantasies involve driving down a sidewalk in south central LA at 88 mph, bouncing calcium deficient pedestrians off their windshield. The H2 commericials seem, at least, to be aware of this. Now that's self actualization!
The commercial I saw - I can't remember brand it was for or even what kind of automobile; though I think it was aimed at the younger end of the market - was quite adamant you couldn't be the type of person you wanted to be seen as unless you bought this car, and it made you that person. Pick-up truck commercials refuse to admit you can assume a stable gender catagory unless you buy their "big, load haulin' vehicles
Rather than testing our credulity against the notion that burger king is tring to get us to equate freedom with menu driven choice. Let's ask the other question that can be asked about this. Is there any normal mode of being in this culture that doesn't involve a deliberate move towards a defining set of of product catagorys that make us visible and understandable to the rest?
It's not just a case of marketeers noting down a description of what they find in society and writing to it . They actively seek to define us. They may be unaware of the power they have to restrict or channel our potential - they may be very aware of it. While writing this I watched a 60 minutes segment on guerilla marketing, another term for the phenomenon of astroturf" marketing that has come up (and come up) in sites like Metafilter from time to time. When outright deception raises no red flags, don't count on their being any point at which marketers will stop. It may be unlikey that a truly successful consumer culture, one that creates indentity through the act of consuming, could operate without such narrowing. What we can be must conform with what can be mass manufactured. Fall into one niche market too many, and you will simply cease to exist.
11:11:17 PM  ;;
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