I picked up a copy of Communication Arts at my library's free magazine exchange. It's an advertising trade mag and the images and artwork are nothing short of fantastic. Lots of great creativity going on there...
...but it's advertising.
Blue Gal, of course, "subscribes" to the vision of Adbusters and Common Dreams, etc.:
Advertising is bad...Bill Hicks recommended advertising people should just kill themselves...But we all are influenced by it every day. Especially in trying to feel pharma-fabulous, and especially in terms of our American kids, who are the most advertised-to people in the entire world.
Internet users were very quick to culture jam when it came to "helping" Chevy Tahoe create ads that highlighted how polluting they are. But how quickly they suck it up with a straw to create their own Converse sneaker on-line. Products conceived as "cool" to the internet are still products, people. Related article here.
Plenty of times I've heard myself say "that's a great ad." Is there anything wrong with that? The reason it's good art is so that I will remember and hopefully buy. Is the lesson merely to see its influence while appreciating its art? Feel free to discuss, and bring into the conversation political advertising and the blogosphere as well.
IN JUST HOW FAST CAN THE WORLD CHANGE DEPT.: Surfing around found this article on "imagining the day when the WSJ print edition folds." Whoa. But there are days we all wish just the editorial page would fold, and not into pornogami, either.
Taking the weekend off, kids. Have a good one. xoxo
Advertising pays the bills for artistic pursuits and also for a lot of crapola. People "consume" art, too. And like food, a lot of it is junk.
ReplyDeleteThose of us who try to live consciously need to try to do just that with whatever we consume: food, advertising, stuff.
That's as deep as you'll get with me, dearie. Don't tempt me again.
Oh Andy, gawd forbid I should tempt you to go deep...
ReplyDeleteKill yourself, kill yourself, kill yourself now.
ReplyDeleteIt's a double-edged sword, Blue Gal. I believe we're in a period of late capitalism where the lines between art and advertising have
blurred.
Everything is so niche marketed these days, which just puts us in smaller and smaller boxes. If you could make a magazine, TV program, or movie for left-handed people with black hair and only three teeth and could make money with it, it would exist.
That's one of the drawbacks of living in a capitalist system. It's one of the things I really dislike about a system which caters to the rapid, ravenously selfish desires of humanity. But, knowing nothing else that works, I suppose I have to deal with it.
Andy Warhol was an obnoxiously clever person. He proposed that the medium is the art. What is art? Art is a green coke bottle. Art is a brillo pad. Art is a silk screen Marilyn Monroe.
Art is a reality TV show? I draw the line there.
I just can't help but think that the world is becoming a combination of Porky's and Let's Make a Deal.
Thus this current paradigm of post-modernism has been ushered in.
But Warhol ushered in the era of the novice/amateur, which is a large part of the problem. Prior to that, we had the era of the auteur...the era of the skilled craftsman.
I really favor the latter better because I don't have a lot of faith in the common person to be able to determine art from non-art.
And I really don't know where we go from here. One of the tenants of late capitalism is that the only form of humor that survives is parody and satire. With no new ground capable of being broken, all we can do is mock and cleverly skewer what currently exists.
And it would make sense then that The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are as popular as they are.
I think of this Peter Cook skit from Beyond The Fringe, in which he takes the persona of a very boring, monotonous working class man. E.L. Wisty is his name, I believe.
ReplyDeleteHe has written an exceptionally boring book about coal mining, but his publisher instructs him to include the sex element, as it is the only antidote to relieve these troubled times in which we live.
So, he inserts, randomly, a subplot about 3 nude women who dance about.
And the book is a success.
The way capitalism has progressed is itself a totally rapid form of escapism, in my view.
Don't worry about tomorrow, just look at the jiggling boobies. And some enterprising soul possessed by Satan realized you can probably sell a lot more advertising that way.
And you do, but is that a good thing?
Does the concept of Pandora's Box come into play?
Ooooh, the rhetorical question market! That's a HUGE market! Look at our research!
Ooooh! The checking to see if anyone has commented on his post market!
ReplyDeleteThat's a huge market!
Look at our research!
Re: pornogami
ReplyDeleteDoesn't the paper get all soppy when you squeeze lube on it?
Feeling the hate 4 bill o reilly ( just seen the stuff on the right).Adverts? The one thing i can't figure out is why the best place to see them, the cinema is the one place where you can't get away from them? Pippa
ReplyDeleteA brave, self-sacrificing band of liberals have found a way to defeat conservatives: have sex with them in exchange for their votes. Village Voice has more. F*ck the vote!
ReplyDelete