media_studies

It's a little too late for me to be writing a full-blown essay on this tonight. But I was just flipping through a photo essay from the Washington Post titled: Recession in the Rust Belt and became disturbed by what seems to be a poverty aesthetic.

Update: This morning Emily West, a prof at U Mass, posted this Slate article on Levi's new "Go Forth" ad campaign and it's use of iconic Walt Whitman verse, and dramatic imagery such as; "children playing in run-down neighborhoods, an embattled business executive surrounded by an angry mob, and young people frolicking in blue jeans", to produce a feeling of "squalor and anxiety" paired with what you might call a pioneer spirit.

After setting the ominous tone, the spot goes on to portray youth in distressed jeans, carrying heroic signage. Slate's Seth Stevenson proposes that the ad "acts as a galvanizing call to generational action: Times may be tough, but we've been here before, and America's youth will not be broken." Yes, and the first action will be Googling Walt Whitman, the second, paying full price for a pair of 501s.

You know what I hate?

I hate when marketers take things I love with all my being, and make them look ridiculous, vapid, and stereotypical.

Take chocolate and sex.

There are other sweet treats, but none are such a miraculous mixture of sweet, bitter, sharp and spicy as a decent chocolate bar (especially the chili/peppercorn variety). And as for consensual physical pleasures, I am including all sorts of activities here: massage, sexy dancing, making out in the park, holding hands for the first time - the whole spectrum. Like chocolate, sex is wonderful in its variety.

Even though I am clearly a demographic goldmine, I can't stand the campaign for Fling chocolate bars. The "naughty but not that naughty" chocolate bar made especially for women:

"It is a delicate truffle,sitting on a subtle crisp layer enrobed in shimmering chocolate that looks as glamourous as the women it speaks to. It tastes indulgent but it keeps its figure, at under 85 calories per finger. Sneak out to a movie. Go curly. Lick the wrapper. Shake things up! Nobody's looking."

Yet another one: Feminism in the Web era: It ain't pretty. This one, by Judith Timson, is a little less virulent - at least.

But it's still wrong.

At the outset Timson ponders the bigger issues that may lie behind an increased trend towards extreme violence (and especially in the context of intimate relationships) perpetrated by young women:

Lost Generation

Note: watch video before reading rant

Lost Generation actually refers to a group of American writers who lived in Paris after the First World War. These writers were looking for a more cosmopolitan and cultured way of life, seeing America as being market-driven, vapid, without a soul etc.. The Lost Generation were a set of oddly passionate, romantic and intellectual wordsmiths, who picked up stakes and moved somewhere they could drink wine in the morning and let the cat do the babysitting.

So, this new (lost) generation, who are *?* are either apathetic money-driven isolates, or principled to an astounding degree, and wholeheartedly believe in the values of marriage, and family. It's a schizophrenic juxtaposition to be sure, and suggests that whoever is doing the believing here is going through a pretty major ideological crisis.

The nice thing about the Lost Generation, (and perhaps this is only available as an analysis after all the books have been published, the memoirs written and the movie-adaptions made) is that they were people who struggled with their identity as what many continentals considered upstart Americans, and their desire to live creative, non-conforming lives. Their apparent apathy (at least apathy in the puritanical up at 7 to get to work sense) and refusal to commit to values they disliked was not laziness, it was protest, their passion was not a public global thing, it was a private desire to create a lifestyle and ethics that were not available to them at home. In fact the Lost Generation were America's first born and raised Bohemians, and that makes them kind of wonderful.