From: david buchanan (dmbuchanan@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Oct 30 2005 - 23:21:00 GMT
Howdy MOQers:
I've been reading Arlo's comments about advertising in the "Any help" thread
and thought the topic deserved its own thread name.
Arlo quoted Wikipedia:
"Advertisers often attempt to associate their product with desirable imagery
to make it seem equally
desirable. The use of attractive models, a practice known as sex in
advertising, picturesque landscapes and other alluring images is common.
Also used are "buzzwords" with desired associations. On a large scale, this
is called branding."
dmb says:
I think Mr. Wikipedia is way too kind. I mean, think about the centrality of
advertising in a culture like ours. We could accurately, if not wholly,
characterize the mainstream, popular culture of the USA as an electronic
consumer culture. Its all about the media and the shopping centers. How
about if we extract the operative words from that quote (desire, attraction,
allure, etc) and then consider the sheer magnitude of consumer lust
generated by so many ads in such a culture.
Yea, there are those who are hip to this game and know how it works. The
advertisers have designed a message just for them, one that let's them
believe in their own hipness even as they make the sale once again. I mean,
these guys know how to push everybody's button, they have everybody pegged
into neat demographic groups. They're extremely sophisticated in their
ability to inspire the various forms of fear and desire regardless of the
product or the target customer's demographic profile.
And then consider the fact that the vast majority of media outlets utterly
depend on advertising dollars in order to exist and function at all.
Natually, this means that media consumers can hope to avoid ads for only
short periods and usually for a price. Add the idea that the media is not
selling shows to the viewers so much as they are selling viewers to the
advertisers and you can start to see that our culture is becoming a big,
tacky porn-fest. I can't even imagine what kind of damage this endless swirl
of desire is doing to our collective hearts and heads, but I know its not
good. I think this sea of electronic desire is what keeps us running after
that mechanical rabbit, as Pirsig describes it in LILA. The following quote
come from chapter 30 of ZAMM:
"The city closes in on him now, and in his strange perspecitve it becomes
the antithesis of what he believes. The citadel not of Quality, the citadel
of form and substance. Substance in the form of steel sheets and girders,
substance in the form of concrete piers and roads, in the form of brick, of
asphalt, of auto parts, old radios, and rails, dead carcasses of animals
that once grazed the prairies. Form and substance without Quality. That is
the soul of this place. Blind, huge, sinister and inhuman: seen by the light
of fire flaring upward in the night from the blast furnaces in the south,
through heavy coal smoke deeper and denser into the neon of beer and pizza
and laundromat signs and unknown and meaningless signs along meaingless
straight streets goin off into other straight streets forever.
If it was all bricks and concrete, pure forms of substance, clearly and
openly, he might survive. It is the little, pathetic attempts at Quality
that kill. The plaster false fireplace in the aprtment, shaped and waiting
to contain a flame thatt can never exist. Or the gedge in front of the
apartment building with a few square feet of grass behind it. A few square
feet of grass, after Montana. If they just left out the hedge and grass it
would be all right. Now it serves only to draw attention to what has been
lost.
Along the streets that lead away from the apartment he can never see
anything through the concrete and brick and neon but he knows that buried
within it are grotesque, twisted souls forever trying the manners that will
convince themselves they possess Quality, learning strange poses of style
and glamour vended by dream magazines and other mass media, and paid for by
the vendors of substance. He thinks of them at night alone with their
advertised glamourous shoes and stockings and undeclothes off, staring
through the sooty windows at the grotesque shells revealed beyond them, when
the poses weaken and the truth creeps in, the only truth that exist here,
crying to heaven, God, there is nothing here but dead neon and cement and
brick."
dmb continues:
The vendors of substance. Hmmm. I gotta tell you, during the conference in
Liverpool, Bob told me the REAL reason he loves motorcycles and sailboats so
much. They allow him to escape from advertising without locking himself in a
room, which tends to be depressing and isolating and only makes things
worse. But bikes and boats allow you to see parts of the natural world that
isn't all cluttered up with ads. He said Pepto-Bismol ads were the ones he
hated most of all. He said something about "that hideously phony color".
Philosphically speaking, Coke really is the real thing, he insisted. OK, I
made that up. He never said anything to me about any ads or any kind of
diarrhea medicine or any kind of soda pop. I'm just trying to be funny.
Unless its not funny, in which case every word is true. I swear. But if it
sort of hits you later or seems funnier in the morning, then I definately
made the whole thing up just to amuse you. Otherwise, its all true. Let me
know, will you?
I thought the lyrics from Jackson Browne's THE PRETENDER hit a similar
theme. Although less gothic in its imagery, we get the same sense of a
heart-sick emptiness and its relation to consumer culture...
I'm going to rent myself a house
In the shade of the freeway
I'm going to pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I'll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I'll get up and do it again
Amen
Say it again
Amen
I want to know what became of the changes
We waited for love to bring
Were they only the fitful dreams
Of some greater awakening
I've been aware of the time going by
They say in the end it's the wink of an eye
And when the morning light comes streaming in
You'll get up and do it again
Amen
Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender
Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring
And the junk man pounds his fender
Where the veterans dream of the fight
Fast asleep at the traffic light
And the children solemnly wait
For the ice cream vendor
Out into the cool of the evening
Strolls the Pretender
He knows that all his hopes and dreams
Begin and end there
Ah the laughter of the lovers
As they run through the night
Leaving nothing for the others
But to choose off and fight
And tear at the world with all their might
While the ships bearing their dreams
Sail out of sight
I'm going to find myself a girl
Who can show me what laughter means
And we'll fill in the missing colors
In each other's paint-by-number dreams
And then we'll put our dark glasses on
And we'll make love until our strength is gone
And when the morning light comes streaming in
We'll get up and do it again
Get it up again
I'm going to be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender
Where the ads take aim and lay their claim
To the heart and the soul of the spender
And believe in whatever may lie
In those things that money can buy
Though true love could have been a contender
Are you there?
Say a prayer for the Pretender
Who started out so young and strong
Only to surrender
dmb concludes:
Ok, so far we have quotes from Wikipedia, Pirsig and Browne. An attempt to
depict the pervasive effect of ads in our consumer culture. That's probably
enough to make my point. But how about if I remind you what Bill Hicks asked
of advertisers. You could say he believed advertisers could improve the
quality of the world, by leaving it. "Kill yourself", he said. He was a
comedian and he was several steps beyond hilarous, but insisted this request
was not a joke. "Kill yourself", he demanded. "And don't wait for the punch
line because this is not a joke", he said. "Just kill yourself." Or
something to that effect. I like to end with Hicks because it makes my
position seem moderate. I only want advertisers to find a different line of
work. But when they die and go to hell, they'll be eternally thirsty and
hungry and horny fact-checkers for FOX news. (Sound FX: diabolical laughter
with echoes and reverb)
Happy Halloween.
dmb
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