iNEEDLE

Another allied enterprise

2009-05-14T14:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks Alice Marwick for directing me
to Maybe You Shouldn't Buy That.

Slum chic

2009-05-03T13:24:00.000-07:00

Fashion, as we have seen any number of times knows no bounds, shows no shame - see my previous iNeedle post Is this the most tasteless fashion shoot ever? And just when I thought the answer must surely be no, along comes America's Next Top Model's recent Carmen Miranda fashion shoot in a São Paulo favela - which, we are reliably informed by the deeply informed Mr Jay, “are neighborhoods that were originally built by the poor.” To which La Tyra herself later adds, they're “kind of like the hood”. Basically, what we're shown here is stylishly-lit snippets of grinding global poverty as a backdrop for the frivolous excesses of the rich world. Haute couture, low taste. (The clip is about eight minutes long but you get the picture within one.)

Curing the luxury sickness

2009-04-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

I just came across this short piece by Tanya Gold reprinted in the Guardian Weekly's My Two Cents column - "How I was cured of a taste for luxury".

I will never stay in a luxury hotel again. It's been crawling up on me, this disgust with the world of self-flushing toilets, floors so shiny you can squeeze your spots in them, and tall, thin people wearing Ralph Lauren. (The clothes, not the person).
I am middle-class, and I was born in suburbia, so it was natural that I would embrace the deluxe lifestyle, as soon as I got credit. It's the inadequacy. I was too fat for fashion, so I used to wear Claridge's instead. I used to sit in the bar, sipping a Diet Coke, wondering if I would ever make it into Tatler. But so slowly that nausea set in.
Expensive hotels are designed for rich people to feel loved. You pay, and they wrap you in a bathrobe that says, "You are not a psychopath, and we care about you." But actually, if you look deeper, if you open your eyes from your soporific, luxurious slumber, you will realise that the people who are waiting on you hate your guts. With good reason.
The staff of these hotels are usually educated people from poor countries who spend all day waiting on people who are much stupider - and nastier - than them. As a result, they - entirely naturally - become bitter and are turned into status police. Their job is to assess if you belong there or not.
Aged 25, I sat down to dinner in a five-star hotel on Park Lane. The bread waiter came over. That was his title. Bread waiter. I asked for two rolls but he only threw one down. Then he went to the other side of the room, and stared at me, and when I had finished the roll, he came and threw another one in my face. This was hate with rolls. This was annihilation. Then the wine waiter came. "Did you enjoy your bread, madam?" he asked. They had actually discussed it.
This hate has followed me around the luxury hotels of Europe. In Paris, I asked for a skirt to be ironed. (The hotel was too posh to have ironing boards in cupboards. I had no choice. I was only following orders.) The maid came to return it. I answered the door in my bathrobe. She guessed I was in flagrante delicto - I looked purple and slightly angry - and she said, "Enjoy yourself, madam." She didn't mean it. She meant, "Kill yourself, madam." And then I realised. These people hate us. It was not a luxury hotel in Paris. It was more like North Korea. My stupid lover was spending €700 a night so we could stay in North Korea and be hated by maids with ironing boards.
Claridge's actually hires people to stand at the entrance and stare at you. It is a bit like the Mexican border. Go and out stare at them, and call it sport. If your clothes are cheap, and your expression is desperate, they are emboldened and they snarl. "Don't come in here," their eyes speak. "Get out, loser. We can smell that you are from Wimbledon. You stink of cheap Chinese takeaway and despair." If you are wearing Ralph Lauren and tax evade for fun, however, they bow until their noses touch the floor.
I just came back from a week in Dubai. Dubai is an enormous, glossy, heartless reinterpretation of Little Chef and it broke me. I stayed in a palace that felt like a live-action copy of Elle magazine. The man who carried my bags had a law degree. The beautiful waitresses had changed their given names to stripper names - Candy, Sandy, Mandy - because they were pronouncable by rich idiots. When two Filipino men came to clean my bath, I was ashamed. When they bowed I wanted to slap myself in the face.
And I remembered that the happiest I have been on holidays in recent years is when I stayed in a five-quid-a-night hostel in Jerusalem with a big hole in the wall covered by a rug. Because I actually went out and I saw Jerusalem. When you stay in a luxury hotel, the luxury is the destination. You are essentially visiting a bathroom. You don't see anything except the luxury. And the luxury is the same wherever you go. In this, five-star hotels are like McDonald's - everywhere the product is identical.
People don't go to deluxe hotels because they want to see the world. They go to them because they don't want to see the world. All they see are the smiling faces of their slaves and things that sort of resemble the pictures they drooled over in It's All Yours magazine. And they get a self-flushing toilet. (You don't even have to look at your own waste. You don't even have to look at your own soul.) Luxury holidays are not only morally indefensible and psychologically sick, they are boring. It isn't travel. It's narcissism with towels - and I think I have finally outgrown it.

Them and us - tourists and tourees

2009-03-13T10:01:00.000-07:00

Poor rich?

2009-03-11T18:19:00.000-07:00

"The richest people in the world have gotten poorer, just like the rest of us. This year the world's billionaires have an average net worth of $3 billion, down 23% in 12 months. The world now has 793 billionaires, down from 1,125 a year ago." (Source: Forbes Magazine)

Social immobility in (not so) Great Britain

2009-01-11T21:15:00.000-08:00

This item of non-news from today's London Times (12 Jan 2009):

"A child’s chances of success still depend largely on the background and earnings of his or her parents despite the billions poured into education in recent years, according to an independent report today. The Social Mobility Commission, reporting the day before a long-awaited white paper on the subject, finds that social class accounts for much of the gap in attainment between higher and lower achievers. It is evident from the early years that the gap widens as children get older. Increased spending on education has disproportionately favoured the middle classes, the report says. Last year only 35 per cent of the poorest pupils obtained five or more good-grade GCSEs, compared with 63 per cent of better off children. While the proportion of poorer children getting degrees has risen by just 3 per cent, the increase among those from wealthier backgrounds is 26 per cent."

Black as the "new" white?

2008-12-29T11:47:00.000-08:00

Oh, the short-term memory of global capital! In a strange (if not, perverse) twist, it seems that blackness is to be exploited, to be resignified, as the latest marker of super-elite status. In the blink of an avaricious eye, centuries of negative cultural framing and demonizing appear to be eclipsed - forgotten. And by an industry which otherwise so consistently privileges and promotes "whiteness" as the idealized signification of luxury and prestige (see Thurlow & Jaworski, 2009, p. 10-11; also Richard Dyer's well-know critique of "white").

Is this, I wonder, where the voracious culture industries are headed in their search for even newer capitals under the Obama-nation? A shameless aestheticization and commodification of blackness? Is this what they think social justice looks like? In the same way, perhaps, that HIV/AIDs is commercialized by (Product) Red's "call to action"? Or in the way that Bumble & Bumble have recently co-opted the language of political action for their latest range of hair styling products? Strike a blow for global health: shop with a red Amex card!

Anyway, speaking of credit cards, and on the theme of blackness, here are just two recent examples of what I mean.

Visa's latest gimmick is the "carbon graphite" Black Card . We are told that this is "not just another piece of plastic" but rather "the world's most prestigous" credit card which promises "limited membership, 24-hour concierge service, exclusive rewards program, luxury gifts". (Thanks, Jamie Moshin, for bringing this to my attention.) The whole idea of the "concierge" is such a telling one - especially given the racialized and classed histories of the waiters and the waited-upon. Having said which, some things don't change; true to the racialized histories of class inequality, this card is, we are reassured, "not for everyone".

Visa's online sales pitch: "For those who demand only the best of what life has to offer, the exclusive Visa Black Card is for you. The Black Card is not just another piece of plastic. Made with carbon graphite, it is the ultimate buying tool.The Black Card is not for everyone. In fact, it is available to only 1% of U.S. Residents to ensure the highest caliber of personal service is provided to every Cardmember."

There's also a copy of this commercial on YouTube - along with its husky, female voice-over. (So, a gendered production too. Of course.)

Then there's this unconscious (unconscionable?) little cultural production, an advertising campaign for Cunard's Queen Mary II, Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Victoria cruises:

What historically myopic - no doubt, White - person thought this one up? Did no-one at the high-paying ad agency notice the tasteless irony in their sloganized "Somewhere between contintents you feel something stirring and realize it's your soul"? Over the last few years, I have gathered together a pretty sizeable collection of luxury tourism adverts (most of them here online). Be rest assured, however, this one from Cunard is the only one - the only one - which features people of colour as the luxury travellers as opposed to the servants. In fact, one of the biggest deceits in many luxury tourism ads is that even the servants are White - as in this one here:

Yeh, right?! So, the White body too becomes resignified as an up-to-the-minute marker of prestige. The service is so luxurious, we are told, even the servants are White! The human geographies of cruise liners tell a very different story - these ships are what Ross Klein calls "sweatshops at sea" staffed almost entirely by the global poor. (See his book Cruise Ship Blues or his latest book Cruise Ship Squeeze: The New Pirates of the Seven Seas).

Oh, and if the online marketing for Visa's Black Card is to be believed, even the concierge's teeth are nice and white - that would be the same concierge service that is "designed to improve quality of life" and enables members "to focus on what is truly important" - er, like luxury shopping and stock-market trading?

A class act: The lines that divide

2008-12-10T13:25:00.001-08:00

Back in the summer, I ran a special undergraduate course called Class Acts: Intercultural Communication and Social Inequality. Students spent most of the four-week, intensive course working in groups on a public messaging statement or campaign about the nature of local, national and/or global inequality. Their remit was to create something which would make people sit up and listen - people who "suffer" from so called "compassion fatigue" or who think class doesn't really matter/exist. Here's just one of the projects - the one put together by Quesha, Catherine and Teresa.

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: global inequality)

Two of my favourite students (yes, we do have them), Tiffany and Miracle, helped to prepare these materials for display. I'll be posting some of the other students' work shortly.

Praying for time

2008-12-08T22:15:00.000-08:00

It's been too long since my last post - a lot of life, a fair bit of love and a shitload of work. There's a backlog of iNeedle thoughts which need posting, though - not least of which, ones prompted by the economic non-crisis which so many people are evidently enjoying right now. "Do I buy a big yacht or a huge yacht?" In the meantime, however, here's a gentle place-holder. It's been a while since I posted some music - and I'm sure not everyone might share my taste in George Michael. Whatever. He's one of my youthful and not-so-youthful idols. I just had reason to remember his lyrical critique in Praying for Time from the Listen Without Prejudice album.

Praying For Time

These are the days of the open hand
They will not be the last
Look around now
These are the days of the beggars and the choosers

This is the year of the hungry man
Whose place is in the past
Hand in hand with ignorance
And legitimate excuses

The rich declare themselves poor
And most of us are not sure
If we have too much
But we’ll take our chances
Because God’s stopped keeping score
I guess somewhere along the way
He must have let us all out to play
Turned his back and all Gods children
Crept out the back door

And its hard to love, there’s so much tohate
Hanging on to hope
When there is no hope to speak of
And the wounded skies above say it’s much, much too late
Well maybe we should all be praying for time

These are the days of the empty hand
Oh you hold on to what you can
And charity is a coat you wear twice a year

This is the year of the guilty man
Your television takes a stand
And you find that what was over there is over here

So you scream from behind your door
Say what’s mine is mine and not yours
I may have too much but I’ll take my chances
Because God’s stopped keeping score
And you cling to the things they sold you
Did you cover your eyes when they told you
That he can’t come back
Because he has no children to come back for

Its hard to love there’s so much to hate
Hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of
And the wounded skies above say its much too late
So maybe we should all be praying for time

Sleeping in Ethiopia

2008-10-02T16:35:00.000-07:00

The background: In Ethiopa the average household income is US$180 a year (source: UNICEF). The foreground: In Addis Ababa, the cheapest available rooms at the Hilton and the Sheraton cost US$275 and US300 a night.

From the Hilton: Welcome to this spacious 33m²/355sq.ft room with a balcony offering a mountain, garden or city view. The bright and airy room, decorated with original artwork, has 1 king bed and a desk. Special touches may include daily newspaper, mineral water, chocolates, flowers and fruit.

From the Sheraton: Discover what luxury really means. We offer 293 deluxe guest rooms. For added convenience, each room features a private safe and 24-hour room service.

Fax Machine
Air-Conditioned Room
In-Room Safe
Private Balcony
24-Hour Room Service
Hairdryer
DVD/CD Player
Maid Service
Data Port
Room with Sitting Area
Butler Service
Desk
Room Service
Wake-up Service

Back to the background: Elsewhere in Addis Ababa ...

Is this the most tasteless fashion shoot ever?

2008-10-01T22:14:00.000-07:00

That's the question a Guardian journalist asked recently following Vogue India's not so hip and trendy use of the poorest of the global poor for a not so funky photo shoot for luxury fashion accessories. It's a story which has, thankfully, been taken up pretty widely in the blogosphere and the traditional print media (as with this NYT article). In the picture above, for example, the baby's wearing a $100 Fendi bib.

Here's how the NYT reports Vogue India editor Priya Tanna’s response to the widespread criticism she has received for this shameless/shameful move:

“Lighten up,” she said in a telephone interview. Vogue is about realizing the “power of fashion” she said, and the shoot was saying that “fashion is no longer a rich man’s privilege. Anyone can carry it off and make it look beautiful,” she said. “You have to remember with fashion, you can’t take it that seriously,” Ms. Tanna said. “We weren’t trying to make a political statement or save the world,” she said.

She got that right. Mostly. The magazine's quite apparently doing absolutely nothing to save anybody. It's decision to promote luxury goods this way is, however, a major political statement about things (and people) falling apart. A world in which it's the brand that's more valuable, more important than the people. Hermès not humans.

The life hereafter

2008-09-15T12:50:00.000-07:00

This (thanks to Adam) reminds me of my earlier "Ex oribus dei" post. So much for the "eye of the needle"!

A fucked-up follow-up

2008-08-22T15:35:00.000-07:00

I wanted to write "no comment" and leave the image to speak for itself, but I just not that capable of restraint. I mean, are you kidding me?! How perverse is this ad?! On any number of levels.

"Believe." So, this is what belief has come to? This is the extent of our moral or spiritual aspirations nowadays? Le dieu c'est moi.

"Believe your expectations can actually be exceeded." So, our culture of expectation is now a taken for granted? That's the new baseline.

"You can shower at 43,000 feet. ... The future has arrived." You got that right. Well, maybe it's more a question of the future hurtling towards us - even faster than before. And it's not looking quite as pretty as a moss-coloured tank top.

I came across the ad this morning while I was at home flicking through the latest issue of Travel & Leisure magazine (research data, I swear) and, unusually, listening to KUOW's Weekday programme hosted by the altogether inarticulate Steve Scher - known in our house as Steve Slur. The main guest this morning was Paul Ehrlich, author of "The Dominant Animal: Human Evolution and the Environment" in which he paints a pretty damning picture of our future without water. And this comes only a week or so after I had screened The Possibility of Hope for my students - a powerful documentary in which John Gray, Fabrizio Eva and Saskia Sassen have, respectively, this to say:

"The most fundamental reality at the present time is that the human species has overshot the capacity of the planet to sustain it, both in terms of human numbers, and in terms of the impact of these human beings on the planet."

"Human mobility is uncontrollable unless you act on the main cause of mobility, especially in our days. I think the main cause is inequality – inequality of opportunities, not only socioeconomic conditions."

"... global warming delivers its goods, which is a lot more water in a lot of parts of poor countries, which means that people will have to leave. We can call this a kind of environmental-driven migration."

Water is undoubtedly going to feature large in our future. But not in the way first-class passengers on Emirates would have it.

Water, water, everywhere...

2008-08-10T21:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since my last post, but, hey, it's not like the gulf between super-rich and super-poor just got smaller. No sooner have my feet touched the ground in Seattle...

Emirates now offering first-class passengers showers (see pic for demo). The grimy details of this latest display of filthy rich were to be found all over the media. In fact, it was the media's fascination and delight with this story which was almost more disturbing than the showers themselves. There were stories in the British Mail, the Guardian, the Times, the LA Times, and so on. And the blogosphere's taken it up big time - ranging from the critical to the celebratory. Everyone appears to be taken with this newsworthy snippet of technological innovation and luxury lifestyle consumption.

Water, water, every where,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, every where,
Nor any drop to drink.

The very deep did rot : O Christ!
That ever this should be!
Yea, slimy things did crawl with legs
Upon the slimy sea.

The new/old world order

2008-05-19T11:57:00.000-07:00

Just when I think the promotion of super-elite status can't get any more ridiculous, any more superlative, any more unashamedly narcissistic, I find this advert in the latest issue of Condé Nast Traveler magazine. In addition to the synthetic personalization of the tag line (see also "your needs always come first"), here we find an explicitly racialized and gendered ordering of the world: our European Neocolonial Man in first class, the East Asian woman in steerage. There he is with all the "personal space, individual privacy and attention" he desires. And there she is, clearly very happy with her lot in life - maybe even writing a poem or a diary entry about it all.

Super-elite airline crashes and burns

2008-04-28T10:19:00.000-07:00

It's all happening today. Perhaps there are some limits to the excesses of the super-elite luxury market?

I've just learned (thanks to Adam) that eos - the all-business-class airline - filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy yesterday (source Times Online). What an ignominious demise for an airline that touted itself "uncrowned" and "uncompromising". "Unairline" was, it seems, something of a portentious labelling for this now non-airline. Here below is the open letter they posted on their website (or click on the link above). I can't help but wonder what poor old Adam Komack, the airline's Chief Lifestyle Officer, is going to be doing now - how will he ever find another job in this day and age?

Oh, and speaking of the possible limits of the limitless, while reading about eos on the TimesOnline website, I discovered that the luxury doesn't really cease after all: eos goes down, but The Times flies. Here's their new ezine called, wait for it, LUXX. Clever, huh? This is the kind of "article" they produce:

Now that's more like it. I guess Adam Komack's sent his CV in already.

Luxury discourse, luxury drivel

2008-04-28T07:52:00.000-07:00

It's a truffle. This small, turd-like lump of chocolate apparently finds itself at the epicentre of the luxury lifestyle. Here's a case in point.

My graduate colleague Kris Mroczek pointed this one out to me - she knows I'm always looking for choice examples of the insanities of luxury discourse. It comes from Katrina Markoff, the "founder" of Vosges Haut-Chocolat - how much hard-to-pronounce French can you pack into one name?

"Some people just see a fancy, expensive chocolate, but once you read the story behind it, it has a strong, renegade, save-the-world voice. ... I always made sure the craftsmanship of my product was super high-end: I used regal colors, created luxurious textures, gathered unique flavors from all over the world, gave it a chic feminine vibe, and mixed it all in with my cause."

Come on! It's chocolate, for god's sake!

It's a description which takes up the luxury discourse in a big way - a language of utterly semioticized, aestheticized nonsense. What/when is "super high-end"? Or, for that matter, "regal"? "luxurious textures"? "unique flavors"? "chic feminine vibe"? It's drivel - both the slavering kind and the twaddle kind.

No, but seriously. Who knew saving the world (from what? itself? chocolatiers?) would be as easy as consuming the Green Truffle Collection which, we are informed, is:

A collection inspired by the spices, teas, fruits and flowers indigenous to Asia, including cardamom, pandan leaf, macha green tea, and Japanese cherry blossoms. Available in the Spring while supplies last.

The natural (sic) consequence of arch-consumer lifestyle marketing? I know it's lavatorial of me, but we also know where that "exotic truffle" ends up. And, it has to be said, looking remarkably like it did at the start. Or maybe that wasn't the start after all? Hmmm... maybe I'll pass when that antique, filigree truffle salver comes round again.

Source: Ladies Who Launch - Entrepreneurship and Creativity as a Lifestyle (whatever that means).

Elitism

2008-04-27T12:49:00.001-07:00

This card is one of a series of "demotivators" produced by Despair Inc. I bought a set of these particular cards ages ago because I liked the elitism play, but I also love Despair Inc.'s overall parody of trite corporate culture - here's how they put it themselves:

Psychology tells us that motivation- true, lasting motivation- can only come from within. Common sense tells us it can't be manufactured or productized. So how is it that a multi-billion dollar industry thrives through the sale of motivational commodities and services? Because, in our world of instant gratification, people desperately want to believe that there are simple solutions to complex problems. And when desperation has disposable income, market opportunities abound.
AT DESPAIR, INC., we believe motivational products create unrealistic expectations, raising hopes only to dash them. That's why we created our soul-crushingly depressing Demotivators® designs, so you can skip the delusions that motivational products induce and head straight for the disappointments that follow!

That there is something decidedly circumlocutious (to put it nicely) about Despair Inc "productizing" their critique says a lot about the nature of post-industrial capital. We really are monkeys chasing our own tails.

Poverty for profit

2008-04-05T13:26:00.000-07:00

This advertising image, pulled from an in-flight magazine or some other tourist literature in July last year, has left me flawed. I may be naive - in fact, I know I am - but what kind of world are we living in where it's somehow appropriate, somehow desirable to produce such a text? Here's a clean, serene, ordered scene of a solitary, boiler-suited, South Asian (I can't be sure) worker hand-painting the median line of a freeway in the middle of an arid, sun-burnt desert. How does this come to be - to be used as - a marker of good taste, of progress? I suppose it's the inevitable consequence of arch capitalism's intensely flexible, highly semioticized economies. In the process, what gets concealed are the squalid conditions of labour - its material, financial, social and emotional realities; its political, economic and ideological circumstances. Only the "nice bits", the "savoury bits" are selected in a representation of global inequality that is so highly stylized, so perfectly sanitized as to appear aesthetically pleasing and morally defensible. Here's we have a "material" labourer putting the finishing touches to a road (a road to nowhere?) in the service of "immaterial labour" (Hardt & Negri, 2000) targetted by the advertizers as: project finance, insurance, reinsurance, corporate and private banking, assest management and Islamic finance. We have hard labour semioticized and commodified for the soft economies of information and finance. As such, the advert is what Adam Jaworski and I would regard as another quintessentially "banal enactment of globalization" (Thurlow & Jaworski, 2009). In this instance, and to borrow a phrase from the anthropologist Ed Bruner, we have a perfect manifestation of "poverty for profit".

In a nutshell

2008-04-02T17:46:00.000-07:00

"Today nearly all of humanity is to some degree absorbed within or subordinated to the networks of capitalist exploitation. We now see an ever more extreme separation of a small minority that controls enormous wealth from the multitudes that live in poverty at the limits of powerlessness."

Michael Hardt & Antonio Negri. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. (p. 43)

Ex oribus dei: Obscene wealth a mortal sin

2008-03-10T10:38:00.000-07:00

Not a source I normally pay much attention to or trust, the Vatican has just pronounced that the accumulation of wealth - "obscene wealth" - is to be considered a modern-day mortal sin. (Like gluttony, greed and sloth hadn't already got this covered.) Call me peevish, but I can't help thinking that this is a perverse combination of too little too late and the pot calling the kettle black. (See this 1965 Time Magazine article about the Vatican's own wealth accumulation.) Not that the Roman Catholic church is particularly predisposed to reflect on its own worst practice. Another of the updated mortal sins is paedophilia but, according to a BBC report, the spokesperson who announced the new sins "brushed off cases of sexual violence against minors committed by priests as 'exaggerations by the mass media aimed at discrediting the Church'". But I digress...

More Neocolonial Man

2008-02-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

I just came across this in my ever expanding pile of luxury tourism ads - the materials I'm writing about with my colleagues Irina Gendelman and Adam Jawoski (see here). It's yet another Romanticized image of Neocolonial Man (see Global elites post). What makes this instance all the more peculiar is its unapologetic celebration/exploitation of St Kitts' original colonial occupation: "Discover why the Europeans fought over our island for more than 200 years ...".

And while I'm at it, how's this for a snapshot of Neocolonial Man in his comfort zone:

The elite/luxury semioscape

2008-02-19T22:08:00.000-08:00

One way I occasionally like to test the consumerist zietgeist is to run searches on major commercial image banks like Getty Images - responsible for more and more of the visual material we find in magazines, newspapers and advertisements. Here are two iNeedle-inspired words to try: luxury and elite (the links should work). What's interesting to see is the inevitable blending of traditional and contemporary markers of elite status - from top hats to infinity pools. What's more interesting to see is just how narrow the repertoire is - it starts to repeat itself very quickly. But what's most interesting is to see how Getty tellingly chooses to cross-reference key search terms with other semantically and ideologically loaded associations. For example, in the case of "elite", the immediate sub-categories suggested are glamour, elegance, relaxation, luxury and - here's where it gets interesting - happiness. And so what one ends up with is, first of all, a glimpse of what my colleague Giorgia Aiello and I have labelled the global semioscape: the transnational circulation of symbols, sign systems and other meaning-making practices. (And these seemingly innocuous symbolic flows evidently have material consequence - see my Indescribable deprivations post.) What one really ends up with, however, is the perpetuation of a mythology of elite status and luxury lifestyle which is not only visually narrow but also culturally and ideologically circumscribed. And perhaps, even, morally circumspect?

The pleasureable performance of "have"

2008-02-13T09:37:00.001-08:00

"The less appetizing the vagabond’s fate, the more savoury are the tourist’s peregrinations. " (Zygmunt Bauman, 1998, p. 98)

What a perfect comment on a profound reality this cartoon is: the "haves" want constantly to be reminded (not necessarily shown) what the "have nots" have not. Any pleasure to be had from privilege must, it seems, be always predicated on the knowledge that others are not privileged. While I'm sure reasons of security would be furnished if you asked, it is this principle which undoubtedly explains those flimsy curtains pulled haphazardly across the aisle to separate first-class passengers from business-class passengers from economy-class passengers. On newer Airbus-designed planes, these class dividers are nowadays made with see-through fabric. Anything more substantial, anything less opaque would be detrimental to the pleasurable performance of privilege. I promise this is motivated not only by my souring, shrivelled grapes, but I've often felt that the clinking of glassware and the tinkling of cutlery which comes from beyond the curtain is a deliberate ploy to achieve the same effect.

Bauman, Zygmunt. (1998). Globalization: The Human Consquences. Cambridge: Polity Press.

Luxury advertising: The envy of glamour

2008-02-08T15:14:00.000-08:00

"The state of being envied is what constitutes glamour. And [advertising] is the process of manufacturing glamour. … [advertising] is always about the future buyer. It offers him an image of himself made glamorous by the product or opportunity it is trying to sell. The image then makes him envious of himself as he might be. Yet what makes this self-which-he-might-be enviable? The envy of other. [Advertising] is about social relations, not objects. Its promise is not of pleasure, but of happiness: happiness as judged from the outside by others. The happiness of being envied is glamour. … Being envied is a solitary form of reassurance. It depends precisely upon not sharing your experience with those who envy you. You are observed with interest but you do not observe with interest - if you do, you will become less enviable."

An observation from Paul Berger's (1972, p. 131) book Ways of Seeing (London: BBC & Penguin Books).