While I was stowed away in the Blue Ridge Mountains, a load of questions built up on the comments section (thank you everyone) which I neglected to answer so here goes.
Q. How much of your/our desire for brands is to do with Adorno-esque brainwashing of the masses as opposed to matters of taste? If there was a simple, elegant non-branded solution to how to dress, would that resolve some of your dilemmas? Put it another way, are you too aesthetically sensitive for an unbranded life? And if so, will you be or less happy after the burning?
Ekow Eshun.
A. I think it is through pure laziness that I have come to rely on brands to express myself. The sinking feeling I get from making a purchase has always told me that it was a nonsense, but I was too weak and lazy to do anything other than follow the crowd. I remember my Mother telling me that she used to make all her own clothes. That was only forty years ago, but it seems like the dark ages. At this moment in time, the future proposition of a brand-free life feels like a miserable place that I will have to endure and make more comfortable over time. But then I felt that about giving up alcohol, and though I'm less effervescent in the boozer at closing time these days, the world did not end.
Q. Your addiction to brands merely demonstrates a distinct lack of imagination when it comes to dressing, I reckon. Since when were the only two options either own brand Wal-Mart MOR fashion (or equivalent) and fucking Nike Dunk Wank Tops??
Anna Marie Crowhurst
A. You are of course right. There is a world of choice, and it is up to me to make it. That question really stung when I first read it, the Nike Dunk reference being quite hurtful. Not because you accuse me of trainer freak-dom, but because I would never wear Nike Dunk. I'm more of an Adidas Abdul Jabarr man myself.
Q. Picking up Mr Eshun's points on aesthetic sensitivity, brands and clothes, there is an underlying personal dilemma concerning status here; by stripping off the signifiers of one's own wealth and taste, can one reconcile one's self worth with a tasteless demeanor? Of course, I manage it all the time.
Matthew De Abaitua
A. Unless your are an incredibly self-aware type of person like Mr. De Abaitua here, we all surely believe we have good taste (also good drivers, good sense of humour). Rather than put our own taste to the test by using our own creativity, we throw money at brands to do the job for us, as if to say, "if I had the time or the inclination, this is how I would do it myself". One trip to an expensive store like Gucci proves the point about money and taste however. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing the leathery old millionaire's wives milling around Sloane Street, dressed head to toe in extravagant finery, but looking absolutely dreadful for it. What an admission of failure; for all the money and the opportunity serious money can bring, the best they can do with it is to buy back their self esteem via a £6,000 Hermes handbag. Still, we all live to our means, do we not?
13 Comments:
I've been reading you're blog, for what its worth its becoming a bit 'wordy'. Please don't make it an exclusive, up its own arse rant about brands, there's enough off that shit already. Just keep it funny, that's what you do best... Please don't enter into a battle with the Ecko Eshuans of the world, to see who knows the biggest words and obscure references...
Write it for people like me, someone who has an interest in popular culture, but not the arseholes that make a living from winging about it...
yeah
bring back the jokes!
"I'm Ekow Eshun, look at me I've read Adorno!" Oh Foucault-off...
Without brands, there would be no media. At least, no such thing as a media career. So loathing of brands from those quarters is also a kind of self-loathing. Without brands, it would be all pamphlets and Grub Street. Conversely, it is the delusions of creativity that brand workers are prone to make that their dominance of the media so distressing; their bullying repetition too. All their fucking money must also be taken into consideration
This post has been removed by a blog administrator.
How come people are so keen to knock Ekow, but not leave their name? Afraid you might get banned from noncing around the ICA bar?
Anyhow, I've not read Adorno so I have no idea what you're all going on about.
So, on my library list for next week: Adorno and World's 100 Funniest Jokes.
I wish I was witty enough to make a memorable play-on-words with Adorno and adore and adorn. If by just metioning the possibility I've coaxed the reader into a humorous moment, then my work here today is done.
The thing I dislike most about intellectuals is that I understand just enough to make me realise how little I know.
Forgot Adorno. Read Barthes' Mythologies.
Forget Adorno. Read Barthes' Mythologies.
Do you remember the Tesco TV advert with the soviet theme? It got me thinking what a huge company like that was attempting to acheive by adopting elements of USSR style imagery.
Then it occured to me, that's just it, it's a completely empty statement. It's what Jameson calls "the eclipse, finaly of all depth" in late caspitalism.
Corporations may be promoted as having values and opinions but really, all they are concerned with is the bottom line (Ronald Mcdonald doesn't give a shit about your children).
As globalisation spreads advertising across the face of the planet, we become less concerned values, politics and ethics and we become increasingly preocupied with neat little statements that, superficially, may appear deep buta are actually deeply superficial.
Advertising is making us shallow.
Neil
sorry its taken so long to reply... I've been fending off angry emails from bloggers who think i'm thye corporate devil in disguise.
The Jameson quote is interesting. Where did you find it??
Frederic Jamieson "Periodising The 60s" (1984)
Also check out "Postmodernism or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism" (1991)
Love the Blog. Looking forward to the book. Dont let them get you down.
matchmaker service
Post a Comment
Links to this post:
Create a Link
<< Home