Category Archives: Featured Post

I touch, therefore I am

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Iphone-Touching

If you have any doubt about the deity-sized ego of Apple CEO Steven Jobs, this ad is proof that the iPhone now wants to replace God. I joked in a previous post that by making iPhone a keyword it doubled my Web traffic. But it was true. Yet AdAge reports that sales are not living up to the hype (article may be behind registration wall). But if you are God, nothing will.

The ad is an unmistakable reference to Michelangelo‘s “Creation of Man” image of the human finger touching God. Originally that was a conceit of the Renaissance that humanism would replace God as the central focus of society. Here we leap to a screen that enters us into heteropotic space– the in-between not here-nor-there of cyberspace. The image of the map on the iPhone screen indicates that with our fingers we have full control of the globe, the world at our fingertips, literally. But of course one company intends to mediate that experience: Apple. Don’t get me wrong, the iPhone is probably a great toy and as soon as the price drops by a few hundred bucks and ATT is no longer the sole provider I’ll probably get one. (Disclosure: I use and recommend Apple products and also advertise them here, but it doesn’t mean I won’t be critical of them).

The ad also reveals an emerging bias of contemporary culture: the tactile is replacing sight as the central sensory experience of our age. This is not to say sight isn’t a kind of “touching,” but more and more our bodies are getting involved with new media, whether it is with joysticks or wifi controllers. In general, I’d say that is a good thing, because the mind-body dichotomy has really gotten us into a dualistic heap of a mess. With the iPhone, “I think therefore I am” becomes “I touch therefore I am.” Too bad Descartes didn’t deploy more of his senses. Maybe our scientific revolutions would have had earth as a partner rather than as a specimen reduced to a field of visual objects that can be reduced and cataloged into conquerable parts.

I end with Paul Virilio, who observes that terminals, be they where airplanes and buses arrive and depart from or computer interfaces, are both entry and exit points:

Each surface is an interface between two environments that is ruled by a constant activity in the form of an exchange between the two substances placed in contact with one another…. What used to be the boundary of a material, its ‘terminus,’ has become an entryway hidden in the most imperceptible entity. From here on, the appearance of surfaces and superficicies conceals a secret transparency, a thickness without thickness, a volume without volume, an imperceptible quantity…. As with live televised events, the places become interchangeable at will.” (The Lost Dimension, p. 17)

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The virus of media viruses

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Herpes Simpex Virus

Too bad good ideas don’t catch like this herpes virus.

Advertising Age – VIDEO: Questioning the Basic Assumptions of Viral Marketing:

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Computer modeling studies conducted by Columbia University professor Duncan Watts raise serious questions about several fundamental assumptions that anchor the viral-marketing craze. Ad Age editor-at-large Matt Creamer discusses the findings, which fault some points in the books “The Tipping Point” and “The Influentials.” Those two best-sellers helped set fire to the idea that targeting very small groups of influential consumers could ultimately send low-cost cascades of marketing messages across the culture.

The above clip is from a very interesting article about new evidence that shows how the concept of media viruses is faulty. Ironically, it seems like the concept of a meme became a media virus itself. If you read my previous post on the topic, you will know that I, too, am skeptical that memes and media viruses truly exist. After all, try this experiment: recite the Ten Commandments and then ask a total stranger to do so and see if you agree on the exact meaning of each commandment, in particular, “Though shalt not kill.” Also, if you are in a room full of people, ask each one to define the word “love.” Catch my drift?

Reggae, holograms, electricity, al gore: blogging live earth

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The first Live Earth: The Beatles on BBC’s One World, 1967

I didn’t think I would find myself in front of electrically generated nerve pulses broadcast simultaneously across a globally networked world, but so be it. Live Earth has arrived. Electrical activism against electricity.

Nonetheless, I was impressed by one thing in particular: critics will scoff at the holographic version of Al Gore appearing on the Japanese stage (an image that faintly harks to Star Wars Princess Leia’s infamous distress call projected from R2D2), but it may be the first time a holograph appeared live on TV around the world. It may not have the artistic merit of “All You Need is Love,” which the Beatles performed in 1967 in the first ever live global broadcast by satellite, but it is a sufficient reminder that the holographic paradigm is infiltrating the mass consciousness. Why is this important? Well, as many people have commented concerning the shift in global thinking that is necessary for sustainable change, we all have to start seeing ourselves in relationship to everything else. Some believe the universe is modeled on the principle of the hologram, which simple means that all things contain elements of all other things. There is no separation between me and you. Finally, this is what media should be used for.

Anyhow, last week I blogged about the iPhone and my Web traffic quadrupled. So: iPhone, iPhone, iPhone! OK, with that said, It’ll be interesting to see what happens when I write “Live Earth.” I suspect our technological fetishes will outpace environmental activism for the moment, but as my short screed on the holograph points to, sometimes it’s important to look at the form of our technology as vastly more significant than its content (remember McLuhan’s famous aphorism: the medium is the message). During the broadcast I saw a commercial for a new Nokia phone which is being advertised as a computer, not a phone. I honestly doubt that anyone 20 years ago would have imagined that computers would converge with portable phones, but it is significant that this phenomena was not planned, but self-organized. Despite ourselves, we are connecting quicker than we could have ever have envisioned, and it’s due to a small piece of electronics that fits in the palm of our hands. Let us hope that it doesn’t also give us cancer.

Other thoughts as things develop:

* The best think about the broadcast are all the little films, infomercials and PSAs. I hope they find their way around the Web (and a cell phone near you). You can view them here. Unfortunately they will not let you embed the video. That is so 20th Century!

* Reggae is clearly the international vernacular of music and activism. How ironic that a remote island that has long been victim of the world’s most atrocious colonial practices (and still is as the documentary Life and Debt shows us when it uses Jamaica as a case study for the disastrous polices of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund) produced the most uplifting and powerful beats in the world.

* You want solutions? Click here for cool information graphics that demonstrate practical tips to alleviate climate change.

* As I watched Al Gore, I also thought about the anti-Al Gore, Dick Cheney, and how much he reminds me of a dinosaur. Then I realized that maybe he really is a reincarnated dinosaur trying to reclaim his ancestors who have decomposed into sludgy oil.

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Space is the (non)place

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Leapard-2
Leopard
“But for Alice the visible world does not run up against the screen of the mirror; the reflection is not a limit but a point of passage.” Paul Virilio

I checked out the new Mac Leopard OS and see that the dock is redisgned in order to have that mirror effect that is so popular these days, and it has also incorporated a new feature, “spaces.” Like all design trends, this will surely be dated in the near future, but I think it’s worth noting the siginificance of this aesthetic for the now. Three points:

1) It is a step closer to making the desktop look like a three dimensional space that you enter. Screens, as many great scholars have noted, are aready portals into a new space. The common term is cyberspace, but Foucault coined one that I find more useful: heterotopia (I wrote the wikipedia entry that this links to, yet I dsicovered that some idiot moved my entry and then deleted it in the “utopia” section- damn that user generated content!). “Hetero” means “other” and “topia” is place, hence other place, the electronic space we enter our disembodied selves into, such as the space of a phone call. Where is it taking place? Here or there? As Sprint once stated in its marketing campaign: “be there now.” That says it all. The mirror effect of Web 2.0 graphics is an aesthetic reminder that we are entering a new space.

2)Remediation. As Jay David Bolter an Richard Grusin have documented so well in their book, “Remediation,” new technologies don’t obliterate old ones, but compost them (my term). Hence, the Rennaisance never went away. The mirror effect on the new Dock has an exagereated sense of perspective space. In other words, a receding site line into infinite space. Again, this creates the illusion of 3-D space, but also implies a limitless horizon point, which is a perfect description of the Web. It never ends, and if you can tell where it does, I have a pot of gold waiting for you there.

3) Finally, this is further evidence that we have been invaded by the mirror lords. Calling it The Book of Imaginary Beings, in the1960s Jorge Luis Borges assembled an album of mythical beasts from world history in which he recounts an ancient Chinese tale about a time when people could move in and out of mirrors. “In those days the world of mirrors and the world of men were not, as they are now, cut off from each other.” The specular and human realms lived harmoniously until one day the mirror people invaded, but the Yellow Emperor’s magic arts prevailed. The mirror people were banished to their world and forced, as in a “kind of dream,” to mimic our behaviors. Someday, the fable goes, the spell will wear off. Little by little their movements will no longer imitate ours. And in the distance through the mirrors, we will hear the clatter of weapons. When this day comes, the barrier of reflection will be broken, and the mirror people will return.

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Free Paris!

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Paris-Nappy

So, this might surprise you, but I support wholeheartedly the insipid commentary and coverage of Paris Hilton’s prison term. Many in the Left have derided the media for wasting so much time on her, but I find it curious that they are vicariously covering Paris by criticizing the press’ coverage. I think that’s a bit hypocritical. There is nothing wrong with a guilty pleasure such as this.

The chief argument is that when so many people are getting killed everyday in Iraq, why not spend the ink or pixels on the victims of war? Well the problem is that many do not identify with abstract numbers or concepts. They are interested in the drama of people who they are familiar with. One way to address this gap in coverage would be to have more stories on non-glamorous people in war zones. I was disappointed post-9/11 when the New York Times features only profiles of those killed in the Twin Towers and not of those civilians killed in Afghanistan from “our” bombs. No doubt firemen and police officers have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan as a result of our war-making efforts. Would we think differently about war if we identified with the victims of “collateral damage”?

I think it’s worth acknowledging the fact that the new media reality promotes a mythological consciousness. For too long our culture has been bogged down by science and facts to our detriment. Somewhere along the way we lost our bearings and sense of purpose. Now, I don’t particularly agree with the philosophy of our new myths, but let the people speak and have their pop culture too! I worry that media critics are becoming too much like Maoists or Jehovah Witnesses. In my book, personal tragedy and drama is the stuff of life. So maybe it is not as artful as Shakespeare, but I think we can admit that we all get a small thrill by living through others as they destroy themselves. The fact that the high and mighty can fall to Earth is a small reality check for the masses that even the rich and famous are subject to the laws of gravity. The obsession with these particular “debucelebs” has a lot to do with this sense of equanimity.

Incidentally, the above image is of a “pano” (the Chicano vernacular for handkerchief prison art) supposedly created by Paris. These days I don’t believe anything, so I don’t know if she really made it with a smuggled ballpoint pen. But…. if she did it is an interesting commentary on the two things that are her particular lifeline, a phone and being on TV. Compare that with the art made by other prisoners and you’ll discover different themes, often religious, but usually about lost love. Perhaps this is a story about another kind of lost love: the one in the media mirror.

PS Speaking of Mao, there was a faux pas committed by Cameron Diaz when she showed up in Peru with a handbag featuring Mao’s likeness. It’s sad that Cameron was unaware of the tragic history of the Shinning Path movement, and even sadder that she is unaware of Mao’s history. Goes to show the truism that in postmodern times signs are drained of content in order to live on as fashion accessories.

PPS When I originally wrote this I forgot to say that one of the main reasons people are upset about the Pairs phenom is because evening news is having an identity crisis. It used to be that if the authorities from mass media, i.e. Walter Cronkite, spoke the truth about the facts, then democracy would properly thrive. I think people are having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that TV news is entertainment. My advice, get over it and build new models.

Brands and schizophrenia

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Santanas-Coffee
An example of Mexicans playing with Poly Identity

I feel bad for advertisers (OK, not really) because I often here industry pundits complain that the media audiences are too scattered, and have too much ADD to focus on their messages. Too bad, I’m crying crocodile tears. You see, part of the problem concerning people’s inability to focus on brand messages is a) there are too many of them, b) advertising is partly responsible for the scattered attention span, and c) who cares. Now another interesting problem: poly identities. As multiple worlds proliferate the Web, people are developing multiple personalities. I should know, I have the same problem. I often get confused about which tone and approach to use on this blog, and have found it difficult on some occasions to restrain myself as do not do in the comments sections of other people’s blogs. As a Latino, I have also had to traverse multiple identities. It’s part of life in the border world. My suggestion, if anyone is listening, is that if marketers want to know how to deal with poly identity, then they should take a bus down to Juarez or Tijuana and check out the scene there.

Media archeologist Jonathan Crary interprets the problem perception and identity as a double bind. This, he says, results from conflicting modes of mental engagement originally required of industrial work’s tight focus and the multisensory shock created by exploding urban environments and new media. This is at the root of our contemporary predominance, if not false, diagnosis of ADD:

In a culture that is so relentlessly founded on a short attention span, on the logic of the nonsequitur, on perceptual overload, on the generalized ethic of ‘getting ahead,’ and on the celebration of aggressiveness, it is nonsensical to pathologize these forms of behavior or look for the causes of this imaginary disorder in neurochemistry, brain anatomy, and genetic predisposition… [T]he behavior categorized as ADD is merely one of many manifestations resulting from this cultural double bind, from the contradictory modes of performance and cognition that are continually demanded or incited (Suspensions of Perception> p. 36-7).

He further laments “the sweeping use of potent neurochemicals as a strategy of behavior management” (Ibid p. 37). Amen.

For a clearer picture of what brand developers are thinking in regards to Poly Identity, read on…

trend report – POLY ID:

Gen Y is getting pretty clever at proliferating many different identities for one life. Certainly the Internet invites all of us to generate multiple brands of ourselves, but this generation knows how to work their identities. Each allows for the many facets of one person and lets them escape where they are at or enter new worlds.

Where a brand sits in relation to these broad-ranging identities is critical. If the responsibility of a brand is to reflect and mirror culture, a brand has to ask “What good am I?” a few times over. The more complex and creative one’s web of identities become, the more clever that consumer will be at snuffing out “poser” brands.

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OldTube in new media bottles

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Colorbars

As the article below indicates, there is extensive hype about NewTube (a placeholder name until NBC Universal and News Corp. come up with a brand identity), which is essentially the big media response to YouTube. Although considering that google now owns YouTube, it’s getting harder to view Internet behemoths as the “little guy” anymore. But I think there is something missing in the discussion about the looming battle of on-line media networks. The essential difference (to me) is that NewTube will not allow users to upload media. So whereas YouTube has spontaneously self-organzied into a “people’s archive,” NewTube is just going to be a venue for corporate media that pays lip service to consumer democracy through its remixing feature. No doubt there will be stuff that people will want (or think they will want due to extensive marketing bombardment that is surely in the works).

I’m not surprised that “traditional media” responds favorably to NewTube, because it fits the paradigm of top-down content generation. I think some old media companies will adopt more citizen journalism and locally produced content as new media practices seems to favor, but if NewTube is any indication, it’s more an example of OldTube put into new media bottles.

NewTube Is Just The Beginning:

For media geeks, NewTube (its executives, unsurprisingly, prefer the clunkier handles NewCo or NewSite) is big news. But the venture, expected to launch this summer, is merely one of myriad developments that will remake the world of Web video in the next few months. Google (GOOG ) is expected to begin rolling out advertising systems for YouTube this summer. This spring, News Corp.’s MySpace will formally push into YouTube’s video-sharing turf, launching an offering that insiders currently call MySpace TV. And top executives at Time Warner suddenly sound confident that a mutual technical solution to copyright issues with YouTube—the subject of a lawsuit Viacom (VIA ) filed in mid-March—is close enough to make likely a content-licensing deal. (Spokespersons for YouTube and other companies declined to discuss potential deals or negotiations.) Mingling within these overlapping layers of competition and cooperation is the suddenly less remote prospect of making some actual money.

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Mapping corporate media

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Foxad

“We report. You Decide.”

Wondering where your news comes from? One of the underlying principles of a “propaganda environment” is an information complex in which the values of the system are internalized. Remember that traditional media are corporations in the business of selling programming, including news. One of the criticisms of traditional media (as opposed to networked media or citizen journalism) is that they generate their own reality: they define what is “information,” not the reverse (i.e. the Fox News slogan, “We report. You Decide.”). Only rarely do the carefully orchestrated presentations of news get unhinged: natural disasters and major events like 9/11. I found it curious, though, that within 12 hours of the airplanes hitting the WTC, news companies had already edited amateur video into a narrative that looked like a film trailer. This is an example of how events are made into packages.

Anyhow, below is an interesting map of the interlocking interests between news companies and other major multinational corporations. For a detailed map of corporate board rooms, go here. The following is a snapshot that is a couple years old, and some of the members will have changed by now, but you will get the picture.

Project Censored Media Democracy in Action:

A research team at Sonoma State University has recently finished conducting a network analysis of the boards of directors of the ten big media organizations in the US. The team determined that only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. This is a small enough group to fit in a moderate size university classroom. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. In fact, eight out of ten big media giants share common memberships on boards of directors with each other. NBC and the Washington Post both have board members who sit on Coca Cola and J. P. Morgan, while the Tribune Company, The New York Times and Gannett all have members who share a seat on Pepsi. It is kind of like one big happy family of interlocks and shared interests. The following are but a few of the corporate board interlocks for the big ten media giants in the US:

New York Times: Caryle Group, Eli Lilly, Ford, Johnson and Johnson, Hallmark,
Lehman Brothers, Staples, Pepsi
Washington Post: Lockheed Martin, Coca-Cola, Dun & Bradstreet, Gillette,
G.E. Investments, J.P. Morgan, Moody’s
Knight-Ridder: Adobe Systems, Echelon, H&R Block, Kimberly-Clark, Starwood Hotels
The Tribune (Chicago & LA Times): 3M, Allstate, Caterpillar, Conoco Phillips, Kraft,
McDonalds, Pepsi, Quaker Oats, Shering Plough, Wells Fargo
News Corp (Fox): British Airways, Rothschild Investments
GE (NBC): Anheuser-Busch, Avon, Bechtel, Chevron/Texaco, Coca-Cola, Dell, GM,
Home Depot, Kellogg, J.P. Morgan, Microsoft, Motorola, Procter & Gamble,
Disney (ABC): Boeing, Northwest Airlines, Clorox, Estee Lauder, FedEx, Gillette,
Halliburton, Kmart, McKesson, Staples, Yahoo,
Viacom (CBS): American Express, Consolidated Edison, Oracle, Lafarge North America
Gannett: AP, Lockheed-Martin, Continental Airlines, Goldman Sachs, Prudential, Target,
Pepsi,
AOL-Time Warner (CNN): Citigroup, Estee Lauder, Colgate-Palmolive, Hilton

Viral hoax marketing terror stunt

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Klaxoncow’s comment posted on the above YouTube video:

You’re clearly not a bomb expert.

Just to clue you in: Bombs are traditionally not covered in LEDs which trace out the shape of a cartoon moon person giving you the middle finger.

Generally, as terrorists don’t want their bomb plots foiled, they tend not to decorate their bombs in bright lights advertising their presence and then leave them lying around for weeks.

And…

Advertising Age:

It was also a great study in the use of persuasive language. Boston authorities were quick to call the event “a terrorist hoax”‘ while others called it a “prank.” In our own industry we struggled with what to call this. It was referred to as a “viral campaign” by some. PRWeek referred to it as a “publicity stunt.” BrandWeek called it a “marketing stunt.” The Hollywood Reporter referred to them as “ad lights.” Bruce Schneir, a security expert and writer on contemporary security issues summed up the incident as a “‘Non-Terrorist’ Embarrassment in Boston.”

Meanwhile, a New York Magazine cover story subhead declares: “Understanding the Greatest Generation Gap Since Rock and Roll“

Writing about the ‘Aqua Teen Hunger Force’ fiasco in Boston, the above commentary comes from an AdAge column by Noelle Weaver. I think she hits upon the importance of language to frame an event or situation, but also how crucial cultural perspective is in determining whether someone gets a joke or not. This has been my biggest concern regarding homeland security practices. It’s one thing to do a data sweep of any pattern, name or key word, it’s a whole other thing to get its context. In terms of perception, environment is everything. No doubt that in a climate of fear anything can be interpreted as an enemy attack. This is why propaganda depends more on context than actual content. Unfortunately, when everything that is anomalous is identified as an act of terrorism, in a diverse society the entire population is threatened with criminalization. And when marketers are accused of terror plots, how do you think artists are going to be treated?

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War of (media) worlds

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This video by Kansas State University’s Mike Wesch explains so much better than text as to why new media are in many ways vastly superior modes of production and communication, which begs the question: how is an education system based on 19th Century modes of thinking going to deal with this emerging reality? More importantly, how will society grapple with this interlinked, intertextual, networked form of exchange? To quote McLuhan:

The United States of 2020 will achieve a distinct psychological shift from a dependence on visual, uniform, homogeneous thinking, of a left-hemisphere variety, to a multi-faceted configurational mentality which we have attempted to define as audile-tactile, right-hemisphere thinking. In other words, instead of being captured by point-to-point linear attitudes,… most Americans will be able to tolerate many different thought systems at once, some based on antagonistic ethnic
heritages.

(From Global Village- a book I HIGHLY recommend!)

The last phrase, “antagonistic ethnic heritages,” might seem a bit antiquated, but I believe McLuhan means that some cultures have different learned perceptual modes that are circular, and therefor may seem “backwards” to Westerners, but are in fact better capable of interfacing the multidimensional realm that new media are moving in. McLuhan has also stated that wars can be the result of clashing paradigms, not just of the opposing society, but as a means of controlling the internal society’s evolving dynamic. In other words, the war in Iraq could be as much about asserting a dominant mode of perception and control locally as it is about dominating a foreign territory.

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LonelyTube

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This portrait, “YouTuber,” reflects a mix between the impulse of early actuality films when the form was still novel, and Warhol’s screen tests, which are motion portraits of fame. This video, of course, is an incomplete picture because there is a lot of other stuff going on at YouTube, mainly sharing media detritus and ephemera of interest to niche audiences. For example, as an old school punk, I’ve been fascinated by the veritable oral history that YouTube has facilitated as many have posted old home movies and videos from the scene and in the commentaries people impart and contest stories from the past.

Media critics tend to focus on the superficiality of people talking about boring stuff going on in their lives, but remember back in the day when we wrote letters with pen and ink? I’d venture that the majority of human communication is mundane and self-centered. That it’s amplified by YouTube challenges our notion that media should be special or interesting. What is happening is the de-specialization and de-professionalization of media. Not surprisingly many ads these days are appropriating the rough aesthetic of homemade blogging sites. Perhaps we are witnessing the composting of media glamor. This was Warhol‘s prediction, but perhaps he didn’t imagine it coming in the multisensory, networked environment that McLuhan foresaw.

This video also reminds me of when the national zine movement peaked in the early ’90s. Various citizens of earth documented their lives in little photocopied journals and traded them through a vast postal network. At the time I had a small independent distribution company and saw hundreds of these cross my desk, mostly awful. Although I was and remain a firm believer in DIY media, I recall that at the time my sentiment was that even though anyone could produce media, not everybody should. Still what strikes me about this compilation of self-made video portraits is something very human and basic, which is a desire to connect with others. Forget the narcissistic aspect of it, even self-centeredness comes from a need to be loved. I don’t feel it’s right that many critics (from both the right and left) judge people who ultimately crave the same thing that we all do; we just sometimes get too caught up in our theories and ideologies to remember how simple the desire really is. I find it quite beautiful that YouTube can be an outlet for that expression, no matter how trivial it may appear.

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Media masks

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Stevie

newsobserver.com | His sister in danger, 4-year-old plays hero.

A few weeks ago this story caught my attention. It’s about a four-year-old boy named Stevie Long who foiled a robbery by dressing as a Power Ranger and scarring of the attackers in his home with a plastic sword. It got me thinking about some of the criticisms people have made about media. Jerry Mander, for one, who authored the Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, had his anti-TV epiphany when he saw his children during a family outing in the woods role-playing characters from Star Trek. I did a lot of that too (I was Spock, of course). And so have humans for thousands of years. They may not have dressed up to pretend they were in the band Kiss or play Vulcans in an imaginary spaceship, but they wore masks, dressed as animals and performed rituals from the stories of their cultures and ancestors.

Now, I still think it is unwise to challenge people with guns, but there is nothing inherently bad about taking on a power animal or superhero for inspiration. These days a lot of kids (and adults too!) are creating avatars to live extended lives that match a more fantastic vision of who they are and could be. Are they playing virtual characters? Absolutely not! There is nothing unreal about playing out a fantasy in cyberspace. It’s just a different location; netspace is not a false reality, it’s a very real place. People who claim that role-playing is inauthentic should question when they are truly authentic in their own lives. We are always playing roles and performing. Don’t believe me? Check in with yourself the next time you have a meeting with a banker, professor, potential employer, a new landlord or your parents. Who are you playing then?

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Product placement planet

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As the New York Times recently reported, companies are creating their own films, TV networks and “webasodes” under the rubric of “branded content.” The fact that I am writing about it is a tribute to the “marketability” of the concept. People ignore ads, so this is part of the commercial backlash to wire your eyes and ears. Until the novelty wears off, keep a look out for the ridiculous and sublime. With news of Anheuser-Busch’s soon-to-come BudTV (or should we call it “MisogynyTVforTeens”?), I’m loath to predict “reality” TV shows that in a real alternate reality would be called things like “Hangover Island,” “STD Survivor,” or “DWI Date Rape.” OK, so I’m a little off color here. But extreme times call for excessive parody.

Call it product placement planet in which all things brand are reality. This is the future of marketing, and the future is now. Don’t be surprised, though, because “brand channels” are the ultimate logical progression of a commercialized media system. After all, isn’t every advertisement also a compact, self-evident, self-contained ideological lesson plan on the merits and wonders of the commodities system?

One example that is worthy of a closer look (thank you media gods!) is instantdef.com, Snickers’ version of one of these self-contained brand universes proliferating the Web. I’ve been meaning to blog about this for a while, so I’m sure it’s value as a viral meme has already been sapped as it has ebbed and flowed through the sea of marketing cool. But here goes. If you are an educator, I recommend this site as one of those great “teachable moments” that appears more often than not these days. Continue reading →

A wolf in doves clothes?

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Click here to view video.

You have to hand it to the commodities system for being so effective at absorbing dissent. But also credit the media literacy movement for making the misrepresentation of beauty in commercial media a contentious issue. For over a year now Dove has been running its “Real Beauty” campaign, the above video being its latest salvo. But this needs to fall under the “buyer beware” category. When an advertisement uses deconstruction as its sales technique, it’s a sign that the industry is getting increasingly sophisticated in its ability to deflect criticism.

Advertisers are well aware of our skepticism regarding the claims of commercials. It’s a tribute to our evolving critical engagement skills, but also an indication of the shallowness of commercialized culture. There is no dampening the human spirit when it comes to intuitively comprehending manipulation and false spiritual assertions, and advertisers are constantly searching for ways to circumvent and counter our innate resistance to such deceit. Continue reading →

The Prestige: an alternate time that is our own

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The Prestige

Be forewarned, a movie about magic employs the principle technique of enchantment: misdirection. Thus any film claiming to be about magic has as its subtext the fact of the film itself, which is a carefully constructed illusion, just as any Hollywood motion picture about spectacle is ultimately self-referential (such as Gladiator being a veiled commentary on the studio system). Curiously, this year there have been two films that deal with fabricating reality, locating their narrative in Victorian-era 19th Century: The Illusionist and The Prestige. Both situate themselves at the early stages of media spectacle, a time when phantasmagoria—the predecessor of modern film—was a popular form of pubic performance that utilized the proverbial smoke and mirrors. That there would be a cultural curiosity about this nascent period of magic, performance and spectacle is not coincidental. As we are facing ourselves in a fully engaged mirror of mediation, we are innately curious about the origins of our societal identity crises as we encounter our interdependent relationship with media.

Of the two films, The Prestige is particularly relevant. The foreground of The Prestige is a war between two rival professional magicians. The background is the enmity between two magicians of a different sort: Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, the inventors of our modern electrical system. The film’s subplot concerning the life and work of Tesla (played by the quintessential space cadet, David Bowie, no less) alludes to the ambivalence the society had with new technology at the advent of electricity. One of the most repressed figures of modern history, Tesla, we may recall, invented/discovered alternating-current (AC) electricity, which competed with direct-current (DC) electricity championed by Edison. As the cliché goes, history is written by its winners, and it’s no wonder that Edison, a brazen self-promoter and showman, engaged in a number of public spectacles and dirty tricks to discredit his nemesis, Tesla. Edison publicly electrocuted stray animals to shock people into believing in the dangers of AC (one scene in The Prestige alludes to such a public war). Not coincidentally, Edison was one of the earliest innovators and promoters of moving image technology, something that eluded Tesla who preferred to experiment privately with this radical, newly harnessed energy. But even Tesla was known to be a bit of a show-off. When his studio was in New York he was known to entertain celebrity visitors like Mark Twain‘s entourage and dazzled them by conducting high voltage electricity through his body that produced an eerie aura, and used wireless florescent light tubes (one of his many inventions) that were powered as if by magic. Witnesses reported also seeing Tesla hold “balls of lightening.” Continue reading →

Truth in advertising

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Barcode-Forhead

Click to enlarge image

A Spanish journalist researching a book emailed me some questions about advertising, and this is how I responded:

1) Does advertising work at a subconscious or conscious level?

Both, but mostly subconscious (in general I don’t like to separate the two). First it stimulates the nervous system to trigger an emotional response. Ads seek to bypass the rational mind through the use of symbols that generate quick, emotional reactions. They appeal entirely to the irrational. I like to think of advertising as corporations dreaming your mind. (See Blink and Everything Bad is Good for You.)

2) Does the ad seek to identify with the consumer or is it the opposite way round?

Ads are there to build mindshare. They usually have nothing to do with the product, but rather with the corporate brand and its logo. This is to boost the value of the brand’s stock value. The ad tries to wink and flatter the consumer by pretending to identify with his or her needs. This is especially evident with commercials targeting young people who are skeptical of advertising; the narrator uses a droll, cynical voice to say, “yeah, we know this bullshit, and you know its bullshit, but buy our product anyway.” This is because ads are there to solve a problem: to sell you something you don’t need. Logically, if you needed something, it wouldn’t be necessary for an ad to tell you about it. You would look for it on your own. (See How to Get A Head in Advertising.)

Ads also are used to create culture. For example, Nike’s innovative marketing strategy was designed to build the idea of “sport,” and to associate its brand with that concept. Other brands, such as Levis, devise ads to be cultural experiences so that you associate the brand with a certain lifestyle.

3) Are there different classifications of people that ad men/women target for certain products?

Absolutely. It’s called demographics, and in many cases advertisers are like anthropologists. They do ethnographic studies and psychological profiling. In the case of cool hunting, marketers have cultural spies who search for cultural trends that can be quickly turned around and regurgitated as useless, disposable, obsolete products. (See The Merchants of Cool.)

4) What do you think is the future of advertising?

Product placement; peer-to-peer marketing; customized algorithms that track your interests from Web surfing and consumer patterns (kind of like the retinal scanning seen in Spielberg’s Minority Report); targeted psychotropic mind blasts (as depicted in Altered Carbon); infant marketing through covert educational materials and PBS (see Branded and Born to Buy); corporate sponsorship of school curriculum; increasing presence of screens in public environments; ads distributed through phones; fake ads disguised as graffiti and culture jams; increasing privatization of public goods and services by naming stadiums, freeways and national parks (see Snow Crash).

Existential “in”-action figures Lost in thought

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CharlieIt has been said that if you think you are watching a show about a bunch of plane crash survivors, you are watching the wrong show. The show in question, of course, is Lost. The surprise breakout on ABC is most definitely not your average program, and the one thing that keeps me interested is my view that Lost’s island is a metaphor for the mediated reality we find ourselves in. The island’s environment, inhabited by ghosts and “the others,” is like a dream space in which objects produce their own space, similar to the acoustic-like, all encompassing ecology of media where we currently live. The plane is our civilization, crashed, destroyed, in pieces. The survivors must learn to cope with their new environment, just as we have to adjust to ours.

My thoughts on Lost is spurned by the announcement by McFarlane Toys that it will be creating action figures based on the series. As you you can see from the prototype of “Charlie,” these will most likely be the most boring action figures ever, “action” being the misnomer of the century. With Sharpie in hand, looks like Charlie is the 21 Century equivalent of Rodan’s “The Thinker.” Most funny about the press release is the promise that we can own a piece of the show’s “mythology,” as if an ennui could be molded in plastic.

SPAWN.COM >> TOYS >> MOVIES >> LOST:

McFarlane Toys’ Lost Series 1 captures six fan-favorite characters from the series’ first season. Each 6-inch Lost figure comes with a detailed base and photographic backdrop, capturing an episode-specific moment in the character’s story. In addition, each package includes a detailed prop reproduction central to the character’s story, enabling fans to “own” a piece of the show’s mythology.


“Lost – The Complete First Season” (Buena Vista Home Entertainment)


“Lost – The Complete Second Season” (Touchstone / Disney)

Are we not men?

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X-Men
Few films are as gratifying as X-Men: The Last Stand. The effects are seamless, plot complex, emotions driven and social issues nuanced and prescient. The movie as dream is utterly captivating, and since most will focus on the entertaining aspect of the film, I just want to point out a few social aspects worth noting.

The mutants are humans merging with nature; as ciphers for us, they are hybrids. Typically in sci-fi, hybrids are part machine. In the case of X-Men, the characters are elemental or animalistic. In a sense they are the earth force re-balancing the human realm, which at first resists the mutants and insists on instituting a policy of “curing them” (made possible by a genetically engineered serum). Unlike typical sci-fi, the conflict is not mediated by technology, but rather by biology (and bio-science). As the struggle ensues between the mutant factions, the battle goes mano-a-mano, albeit the group that harnesses the perfect balance between the forces of nature and human prevails.

As an example of “sustainable media,” the X-Men strikes an equilibrium between cinema’s tendency to obliterate nature through the spectacle of destruction (both in the act of making the film and symbolically), and to bridge the natural world through its fusion of electricity (a biological force) and communication. It eliminates the false barrier we make between the environment and media, for in our world, media is the environment, yet it has a hybrid quality like the mutants. Though few are willing to admit it, we in the high-tech world are cyborgs, but in a good sense. Our fusion with technology is not into a false world, but into one of complexity and hybridity. There are dangers, of course, due to the unsustainable paradigm of our collective operating system. Yet we also have an opportunity to leverage interdependence. As operators, each one of us has the ability to input new data into the system as it self-organizes. As Buckminster Fuller once said, on Spaceship Earth there are no passengers, only pilots. Just as the new beings in Xavier’s Academy for Gifted Youngsters learn to harvest their abilities for the collective good, so too can we not reject our powers, but embrace them for the evolutionary challenges that await us.

Note: the title of this post is not only lifted from my beloved Devo, but also from a chapter in an excellent book on film and ecology:


“EcoMedia (Contemporary Cinema 1)” (Sean Cubitt)


“Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!” (Devo)


“Devo – The Complete Truth About De-Evolution” (Rhino / Wea)

Warnography: DIY frontline Iraq war videos and the explosion of on-line video

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Iraq video stillI guess the Marine training that equates a hard-on with a deadly weapon translates well to the optical unconsciousness. At FreeVideoBlog soldiers are posting their combat footage (and in other cases doing things as mundane as doing BMX bike tricks in the middle of a vacant desert). Some of the clips are straightforward sad, with titles as simple as the great American lament, “Iraq Sucks.” Others though, are adrenalin-fueled, quickly cut montages of door knockdowns, home invasions, and assaults on Faluja. Overdubbed voices celebrate the “once in a lifetime opportunity” to attack a city full of insurgents. One video is just a guy “getting some” as he fires his machinegun from a helicopter; hell knows where those bullets are landing. Continue reading →

Postironic punk superstarlet

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tiataquilaOK, the phenomena of Tila Tequila caught my eye (literally), giving me pause about the nexus of celebrity culture and social networks. Her bio reads like a manifesto of post-irony, the sad, commodified afterlife of punk’s impact on capitalism.

As you can see in the comments below from her MySpace page, she bemoans the shallowness of American media and celebrity culture while at the same time celebrating her punk-rock DIY ability to became a starlet sex symbol, as if that somehow makes the cause noble. It doesn’t really matter to me, the point I wanted to make is that this is the first time I’ve ever heard of the punk ethic of DIY (do-it-yourself) being described as a tool for getting famous. This smacks a little of the self-importance of Suicide Girls, which if you haven’t heard, is an “alternative” lifestyle erotica site (again, no judgments, I’m just observing the strange, circuitous path that punk has taken from rebellion culture to commodified rebellion). She’s now one of these readymade multitask artists: cover girl, recording artists, and who knows, movies to follow. Curiously, in her bio she said she grew up in a Buddhist temple. May she have happiness, may she live in peace, may she be free from suffering! (And I mean it, this is not post-irony!) And yes, I got suckered into it too.

From www.myspace.com/TilaTequila:

“Never more than now has celebrity been celebrated so unbrokenly, no unabashedly, and so much without merit. Being famous now has become it’s own reward. Consider American Idol, and ridiculous and addictive shows that somehow instantly translate stardom into celebrity. Tila Tequila has used simple, and some might agree Punk DIY ethics to create her stardom, one fan at a time. Not only is she the hottest property in MySpace, which means she’s one of the hottest women in the world, but she’s almost finished her debut album, and on the crest of an ever rising wave.”