I was a teenage cargo cultist!
Sep. 6th, 2009 12:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusI'm not one of the "typomaniacs the world over... outraged by Ikea's decision to switch from Futura to Verdana". Sure, there might be some small symbolism in switching from a Bauhaus-designed font to a Microsoft-designed one (from collegiate to corporate, from European to American, from classic to not-so-classic), but really, who cares? It's just a font. And it's just Ikea.
One thing did jump out of the Guardian's picture story about the font fuss, though. This Volkswagen advertisement from 1978 had a particularly personal resonance for me.
Now, this is a combination of being an exile and being almost 50, but this advert, which appeared when I was 18, speaks to me of a society I was quite enthusiastically a part of. At 18 I was a materialistic little nerd, pestering my dad to buy me a Mazda 323 hatchback just because they looked cool. (He didn't, but instead let me have the use of an old Trafalgar-blue Wolseley 1300 owned by his company; I plied back and forth between Edinburgh and Aberdeen in the banger, listening to a tape of David Bowie's Lodger album. Eventually the Wolseley was stolen, and I never again had the use of a car.)
Over the next five years I was to be radically challenged and changed by stuff I checked out of the university library: Erich Fromm's To Have or to Be, Franz Kafka, Ivan Illich, Marx, Adorno, Barthes. Even Slits and New Age Steppers records shook me up and taught me not to become a materialistic idiot. I re-oriented myself completely; I remember telling my brother I was seeking a "low-calorie lifestyle" which entailed getting by with just-enough: just enough money, just enough food, just enough accommodation. After these bare minimums were met, the only thing that mattered was being creative. Making things, but not things which just went into the system of commodities. Things which, in some way, undermined it, and tried to signpost other possible ways of living.
So when I look at the 1978 VW ad, I connect with what was, in a sense, the last time I was a good little consumer, and a "well-adjusted citizen". I recognise all the car models outlined, and know their names: the Diane, the Polo, the 5. I recognise the much more anti-capitalist Britain the ad's copy conjurs, a Britain in which you weren't allowed to mention brand names on the BBC, or cite consumer magazine endorsements in your press ads. Which magazine had just started, and it was Britain's first consumer testing magazine. We were still one year away from the Thatcher victory which would usher in thirty years of neo-liberalism, and which would seal my status as an internal exile, a refusenik, a subversive.
The teenage me, the me-who-does-not-yet-say-no, the me who loves and recognises and wants all the cars in the VW ad -- even to the extent of doodling their outlines endlessly in his school exercise book -- will be revived soon. At Haus der Kulturen der Welt on September 16th I'll sing the songs that teenager wrote in a thematic context -- archives and world music -- which suggests that he's a member of some kind of vanished tribe, an adherent in a Cargo Cult.
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Emailing this week with Steve Harvey, my friend who lives in Athens, I asked him whether living in that "exotic" environment all year round ever palls. Steve said no. What's exotic for him now is Britain, its windswept industrial greyness. "Even the shapes of the trees and houses in the street I was brought up in, though unchanged, now appear somewhat alien, lost, in danger of coming loose finally from my childhood perception of them."
That's very much how I feel looking at the VW ad. The cars look shabby and backward -- cars in general look shabby and backward to me now, something we have to get beyond, the way the German town of Vauban has. And yet I also remember my positivity and excitement about consumer culture -- what it felt like to be a teenage cargo cultist.
One thing did jump out of the Guardian's picture story about the font fuss, though. This Volkswagen advertisement from 1978 had a particularly personal resonance for me.Now, this is a combination of being an exile and being almost 50, but this advert, which appeared when I was 18, speaks to me of a society I was quite enthusiastically a part of. At 18 I was a materialistic little nerd, pestering my dad to buy me a Mazda 323 hatchback just because they looked cool. (He didn't, but instead let me have the use of an old Trafalgar-blue Wolseley 1300 owned by his company; I plied back and forth between Edinburgh and Aberdeen in the banger, listening to a tape of David Bowie's Lodger album. Eventually the Wolseley was stolen, and I never again had the use of a car.)
Over the next five years I was to be radically challenged and changed by stuff I checked out of the university library: Erich Fromm's To Have or to Be, Franz Kafka, Ivan Illich, Marx, Adorno, Barthes. Even Slits and New Age Steppers records shook me up and taught me not to become a materialistic idiot. I re-oriented myself completely; I remember telling my brother I was seeking a "low-calorie lifestyle" which entailed getting by with just-enough: just enough money, just enough food, just enough accommodation. After these bare minimums were met, the only thing that mattered was being creative. Making things, but not things which just went into the system of commodities. Things which, in some way, undermined it, and tried to signpost other possible ways of living.
So when I look at the 1978 VW ad, I connect with what was, in a sense, the last time I was a good little consumer, and a "well-adjusted citizen". I recognise all the car models outlined, and know their names: the Diane, the Polo, the 5. I recognise the much more anti-capitalist Britain the ad's copy conjurs, a Britain in which you weren't allowed to mention brand names on the BBC, or cite consumer magazine endorsements in your press ads. Which magazine had just started, and it was Britain's first consumer testing magazine. We were still one year away from the Thatcher victory which would usher in thirty years of neo-liberalism, and which would seal my status as an internal exile, a refusenik, a subversive.The teenage me, the me-who-does-not-yet-say-no, the me who loves and recognises and wants all the cars in the VW ad -- even to the extent of doodling their outlines endlessly in his school exercise book -- will be revived soon. At Haus der Kulturen der Welt on September 16th I'll sing the songs that teenager wrote in a thematic context -- archives and world music -- which suggests that he's a member of some kind of vanished tribe, an adherent in a Cargo Cult.
[Error: unknown template video]
Emailing this week with Steve Harvey, my friend who lives in Athens, I asked him whether living in that "exotic" environment all year round ever palls. Steve said no. What's exotic for him now is Britain, its windswept industrial greyness. "Even the shapes of the trees and houses in the street I was brought up in, though unchanged, now appear somewhat alien, lost, in danger of coming loose finally from my childhood perception of them."
That's very much how I feel looking at the VW ad. The cars look shabby and backward -- cars in general look shabby and backward to me now, something we have to get beyond, the way the German town of Vauban has. And yet I also remember my positivity and excitement about consumer culture -- what it felt like to be a teenage cargo cultist.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 11:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 11:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 12:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 01:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 02:02 pm (UTC)Surely no more than anyone who doesn't consume endlessly. Hasn't your consumerism just been of a different flavour. Same beast, different.. toe? Technology, instruments, recording equipment, music, books, clothes. Of the latter your consumption is quite high - you are rarely in the same outfit twice. Hardly a monk, a Kibbutz-dweller, a new ager in a teepee.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 02:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 02:16 pm (UTC)I've read a lot of the Frankfurt school and others on these ideas, but surprisingly it has been only the second time I have seen the choice laid out so plainly. The first was the Melvin Van Peebles documentary - How to Eat Your Watermelon in White Company (and Enjoy It).
Thanks again
Joshua
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 03:44 pm (UTC)or
five times per gay...
the first line, expresses the idea that although you were in sexual contact with the gay, you were using him(her?) only for masturbatory purposes,
the second implies a more voyeuristic approach...
Guessing from your hyperactive over-sexualized nature tending towards fetishised repitition on variations of a single subject, paired with your bookish, shy and cowrardly nature... I'm guessing its "five times per gay"
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 04:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 05:08 pm (UTC)Nevertheless, you're right, however these trips are made, they release carbon. I'd urge you to raise this on all sorts of blogs, not just the blogs of people who raise post-materialism as a concern of theirs. If you only raise it as a sort of charge of hypocrisy, you risk turning an important issue (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/06/global-warming-natural-disasters-conference) into a trivial ad hominem.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 06:09 pm (UTC)Possible tangent, which coincidentally was on my mind earlier: the Comic Strip's early 80s parodies of Enid Blyton, which seem to hint that being culturally pro-American and pro-welfare-state fit naturally with each other and are positions on the same side. The very *idea* that that could be the case belongs to a very specific moment in history: people who grew up when those who fogeyishly moaned about both consumerism *and* the post-war state, mistakenly thinking that because both were newish phenomena they must come from the same source and be somehow allied, were still powerful enough to be worth kicking against - which they still were, *just*, in 1978 (iirc most of the Comic Strip are a few years older than you, so they could definitely remember). Now that we know where the biggest and strongest forces eating away at the welfare state have come from, such an equation appears almost obscene.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 06:40 pm (UTC)This is a joke -- if only you knew! I must spend less than €100 a year on clothes. Most of my clothes are secondhand, or come from the market stalls near my house and cost €3 or €4. I like to think I "make a little go a long way" and have "more dash than cash", though!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 08:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-06 08:27 pm (UTC)-DobraDen
absorbing and American Patchwork
Date: 2009-09-06 09:47 pm (UTC)I've made a habit of googleing my way to Click Opera and have being doing that for years without ever actually bookmarking or tagging the website (or ever de-anon-ing myself).
And when I google it I always bump into your old iMomus website. I'm wondering if you ever plan on getting that old beast running again and whatever happened to American Patchwork?
Also (slightly more on topic), you do seem to absorb the atmosphere of where you're living quite a bit. For example, as eccentric as your wardrobe is, it did sort of rhyme with the average New York hipster mode of dress at that time. Just as your current wardrobe and views do rhyme quite well with what I know of Berlin at the moment. Although, incidentally, the goatee/doughnut + colorful loose-fitting pants from the New York days do make you look exactly like a German euro-hippie.
Re: absorbing and American Patchwork
Date: 2009-09-06 10:26 pm (UTC)You mean this, right? My "Appalachian folkster in New York" look!
Yes, I do sometimes think of reviving the website. I have half a mind to end Click Opera on December 31st and revert to my old monthly website essays, with their careful graphics and colour schemes, and their total lack of comment facilities. But that would be a bit like talking to myself, wouldn't it? Wouldn't it? (Anyone out there?)
Re: absorbing and American Patchwork
Date: 2009-09-07 02:11 am (UTC)You're going to stop click opera? why? what are you going to do w your time? Are you sensing that manic 24/7 blogging is at the apex of its relevence? whats next?
Re: absorbing and American Patchwork
Date: 2009-09-07 02:40 am (UTC)I liked your style choices when you lived in New York. They were fresh.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-07 02:44 am (UTC)Re: absorbing and American Patchwork
Date: 2009-09-07 06:16 am (UTC)You should do that. Comment sections are a distraction and energy drain. Just look at the Guardian website. Destroy my ability to say this!
Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 06:56 am (UTC)I’m probably too late to enter this discussion, but “anti-advertised-materialism” can be the kind of cliché I don’t appreciate: the kind that perpetuates a status quo of spirit over matter. How unrealistic can you get?
Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 08:04 am (UTC)Some of the time this is what advertising attempts (the rest of the time it's trying to tell you something is cheap, or effective, or prestigious, or whatever). But even when it succeeds in making you believe the product is beautiful, advertising doesn't increase the actual aesthetic value, just the perception of it. And it isn't snowflakes and sunsets being aestheticized here, but (usually) shoddy industrial products made in ugly factories then christened "Snowflake" ice cream and "Sunset" shampoo.
On the other hand, I'm prepared to believe that nature advertises too; I'm prepared to believe that flowers are advertising aimed at bees (ulterior motive pollen distribution), apples advertising aimed at animals (seed distribution), and so on. A beautiful human face is, in a sense, an advert for the DNA the person carries, too. But these are all better products than a car.
Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 08:23 am (UTC)I re-read your Fromm piece, and see that you cite him noting that “ownership” used to be about taking care of things you own… that’s the sort of “good materialism” I had in mind. But RE: Fromm’s book title and thesis, “To Have or to Be,” this relates to (and I’m going to be a bit new-age here) the Zodiac’s first two signs; the egoistic Aries, and the possessive Taurus… I note this just to say that there are 10 other stages for this ancient psychological paradigm; and each stage has both positive and negative traits.
Naomi Klein’s “No Logo” makes the case well that putting advertising frosting on a shit-capitalist cake is offensive; here I’d agree—but just because you don’t agree with mass-consumer aesthetics, doesn’t mean that ads are not making “Rembrandt” toothpaste into an art object. I’m not sure how Warhol’s art fits in here, but it seems to me that advertising is often built into products too… not just a false façade. I’m not sure where promotion ends and the product begins.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-07 10:32 am (UTC)Thought you might be interested.
Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 11:12 am (UTC)Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 11:40 am (UTC)Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 12:02 pm (UTC)Wow! That does put a new spin on the Marxian concept of reification (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(Marxism))!
Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 12:31 pm (UTC)To diverge, this sounds like metaphor to me… I’m at a failure to understand, at least in words, what “undistorted consciousness” might be:
http://tr.im/truthlie
Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 12:47 pm (UTC)I would say reification works the same way it works when we judge whether we're fit to drive: we know certain types of unalienated labour in which the relations between people appear clear, and then we compare them with alienated labour in which the relations between people take on characteristics more suited to the relations between objects. At that point we say "This doesn't feel right."
Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 12:52 pm (UTC)Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 01:44 pm (UTC)Questioning absolute truth can put one on a more pragmatic notion of how to apply the concept of “truth.” Yes, consciousness can be more or less distorted, probably less so, ironically to Descartes’ “cogito,” by how un-private, and public one’s claims are. But… to throw a curveball here… Fame doesn’t make you a more real person! (Or more in touch with “real truth”). The same with famous memes: they are not necessarily the famous memes of a (probably) more “accurate” or “enlightened” future. Yes, craft-arts have been fractured; but I’ll stand by my initial question/claim: advertising increases the aesthetic value of material products and services (although this can go consumer-crazy, as with “designer” water, and trying to construct consumer identities through branding).
Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 02:06 pm (UTC)I could live with that if you rephrased it: "For me, advertising increases the aesthetic value of material products and services." It generally doesn't for me.
Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 02:16 pm (UTC)http://tr.im/dramaturgy
Re: absorbing and American Patchwork
Date: 2009-09-07 02:46 pm (UTC)The red raincoat is gorgeous btw and makes me feel guilty for making you out to be some Brooklyn hipster (you are obviously superior in many, many ways).
As much as I like commenting from time to time (and as much as I enjoy the intelligent comments here - respectful nod to Lord Whimsy), I do think it would be for the best to retire the damn thing and to go back to the original iMomus.
After all...
http://www.wired.com/beyond_the_beyond/2009/09/dead-media-beat-when-blogging-becomes-meaningless/
Re: absorbing and American Patchwork
Date: 2009-09-07 04:43 pm (UTC)Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 05:03 pm (UTC)Really enjoyed your back-and-forth about ads adding value. I def agree w you. In the specific and broader sense of the idea...
Re: Ads + Material = Art
Date: 2009-09-07 05:53 pm (UTC)'but really, who cares? It's just a font'?
Date: 2009-09-07 10:49 pm (UTC)nxl