December 7, 2012 · 10:44 PM

Walgreens Commercial Normalizes the Objectification of Women Using a Young Boy and Christmas

Briefly:

There’s a commercial running for Walgreens Pharmacy, claiming it’s a great place to find gifts for the holidays. Leaving this insane claim and any deep analysis of commodification aside, I’d like to talk about what the commercial does visually to make the objectification of women seem cute and normal. The commercial centers around a young elementary school boy who is giving gifts to various female classmates, all awe-struck by his shopping prowess. The young ladies man then turns his gift-giving attention to his teacher–at the same time that the camera turns its attention to her rear end as she writes something on the board. The boy gives her the gift, and she walks away. Cut to a shot of him smiling in the direction that she walked away, causing us, the viewer, to surmise that he is watching her walk away. Like a sleaze. We are meant to think he’s getting a good look at her ass.

And the commercial frames this as funny-cute. As normal. It implies that this boy has the right to do this because he bought her a gift. It ignores, or makes light of, the inappropriate of this in several ways:

1. On an age level, by attributing sexual motives to a prepubescent boy

2. On a gender equality level, by reducing a woman to her sexualized body part that is ogled

3. On a power and ownership level, where the buyer/gift-giver is accorded rights to transgress social decorum

Ugh. Just, ugh. All of this is what is wrong with our culture. That all of this gross sexism and scary commercialism is wrapped in a pretty, innocent bow of holiday generosity.

My ass.

4 Comments

Filed under Beginning of the Body, Commodification, Contemporary, Deconstructing Commercials, Gender Trouble, Uncategorized

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

September 28, 2012 · 8:52 AM

My Politeness is Not for Sale, and You Couldn’t Afford it, Anyway!: A Customer Service Rant

Customer service is one of the worst social interactions many of us engage in because it’s almost always a sham. And we know it. Knowing how fake the interaction is makes it that much more difficult (for me) to participate in sincerely.* 

In a customer service social interaction, politeness is for sale. Along with the (implied) purchase of a consumer good or a service is a built-in benefit of pleasantness on the part of the service professional. It’s a simple commodity-exchange relationship, but (in the U.S. especially) we expect to sugar-coat that with a false sense of cheer. In a normal social interaction, one not so directly contingent on the exchange of money, politeness is something that is almost earned: if one person in the interaction is polite, the other is more likely to be polite as well. But they are not obligated to be–no one is obligated to be. In contrast, during a customer service interaction, the promised payment of money obligates only the service professional to be polite. That person’s demeanor is being manipulated by money.

MY POLITENESS IS NOT FOR SALE! It SHOULD NOT be for sale! That drains politeness of much of its value, and maybe this is why society is becoming more rude in general. If we’ve commodified everything (see Strasser 2003), turning much of our dealings with strangers into fake social interactions that only obligate one party to be polite, and both parties know this politeness is fake because it’s being bought, then why should anyone value politeness in and of itself? Niceness becomes a perpetual sham, and no one will know how to feel it or genuinely be polite, anymore. A stretch, okay, but I see kids running around acting entitled to everything without even having to act polite or gracious, nevermind actually feel those things. And their parents let them! Is our consumer culture, which hinges on various commodity-exchange relationships like customer service interactions, ultimately to blame for this general slide into rudeness? Look me in the eye when we’re talking and put that goddamn phone away!

My main point is that customer service social interactions make me angry because they are so fake, and because they put a price–albeit unquantified–on the manner in which the service professional engages with a fellow member of society. Except, of course, the service professional is not the consumer’s equal, because the consumer has been taught to feel entitled to the service professional’s robotic smile and fake politeness. The service professional is a slave to capitalism’s social consequences. Their behavior is devoid of free will and instead dictated by the possibility of acquiring capital from the customer.

I say it’s time we called shenanigans, and started treating people well no matter what. Alternately, if you’re a service professional and a customer is rude to you, you should be able–even expected–to be rude in kind if the spirit moves you, because why should you have to take it just because the customer is the one with the money? It’s likely not going into your pocket, anyway, but that of the company you work for. And I feel it’s more important that we teach each other the value of engaging nicely with everyone regardless of their social position within a customer service interaction. Regardless of who holds the money, and where it might be spent.

————————————————————–

*This is why my smart, rude customers will complain about my sarcastic attitude. They don’t appreciate that I’m multitasking by trying to teach them a lesson in how to behave and being metapragmatic by commenting on the fakeness of our social interaction even as we are engaging in it. So I guess they’re really not that smart–or they’d rather focus on how rude I’m being because they think they’re entitled to my smile in spite of their disrespectful attitudes because they’re ostensibly paying to be there. Which is bullshit. My attitude is contingent on yours, not how much money you make in a year, who you are, or how much you’re dropping on this visit to our store. Asshole.

2 Comments

Filed under Commodification, Contemporary

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,

September 5, 2012 · 8:06 PM

Thrift vs Patriotism: The Nationalistic Debate over Olympians’ Clothing

The Olympics may be over, but cultural critique is forever.

Before the start of the Olympic Games in London, there was a bit of a controversy state-side over the uniforms that the U.S. team was going to be wearing to the Opening Ceremonies. Apparently they were made in China. Shocking. The mass media had a field day with this, and politicians weighed in, everyone up in arms about the fact that the uniforms should be made in the United States.

Meanwhile, back in America, this is still a capitalist country that participates in a global marketplace. Of course the uniforms are going to be made in China: it’s cheaper! This made me wonder if, had the uniforms been made in the United States, there would have been a controversy about the expense of outfitting our athletes for the Games. Because you know they would have been pretty darn spendy.

What we have here are coexisting, competing yet related sets of values, ideologies even: the virtue of thrift vs. the virtue of patriotism. At this historical-cultural moment in the United States, the virtue of thrift is tied closely to the recession discourse and the “Jobs” trope people have been hammering for the past year(s). On the other hand, the virtue of patriotism [read: anti-China-ism] mandates that we buy U.S. made goods. This virtue is tied to the Jobs trope and the recession, as well. That hypothetical backlash would have been about excessive spending and anti-American consumer practices that “steal jobs” from hard-working stiffs. So basically, in this climate of competing ideologies, consumers can’t win. They will always be doing something antithetical to mainstream American discourse, which draws upon currently-held beliefs. (Those traitors!) This transcends to the larger scale as well, where Olympic officials can’t win, either. There is no right choice, because either one offends a deep-seated and currently harped-on ideology in America.

So you see, there’s no winning. Or rather, there is a winner, at least rhetorically, and that winner is America. (It’s also the loser, based on my argument, but the discourse will always position itself as drawing attention to how America should be winning. Maybe the real winner is capitalism.) This whole controversy–or rather, both of these controversies, the real and the hypothetical–is wrapped in the always-justifying “virtue” of Nationalism, which is really what the Olympic Games are all about.*

And the coverage of the Games, before, during, and after, is all about drumming up the controversies and human-interest stories that can be squeezed out of the sweaty towels of the competitors and turned into profit. There will always be hand wringing and finger-pointing. Newscasters gotta eat, too. Yay, capitalism!

————————————–

*Side-note: In grad school during my Transnational Ritual class, I made the mistake of pointing out that the Olympic Games totally mirrors the hegemonic system of nationalism around which the world is currently organized, man. In response, my professor basically called me childish for not just accepting this as the status quo. (He had a hard-on for the Olympics because it was his “field-site,” and he couldn’t really take any analysis of it that he hadn’t thought of himself, especially not a kommie-Gramscian one. …and I may have aided in his dressing-down of me by sporting pig-tails at the time. But this does not alter the fact that he was still an asshole.)

4 Comments

Filed under Contemporary, Media

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

July 10, 2012 · 10:29 AM

Shifting Aesthetic Sensibilities and the Resultant Discontinuity in “Historical” Representation: Nit-picking at one scene in “Hugo”

[SPOILERS]

Ali G is in this movie. Just kidding, that’s not the spoiler. Okay, onto the rant:

Among other things, Hugo is a love letter to Georges Melies and his work, signed smugly by Martin Scorsese. Its subject is ostensibly historical, but it was made for a modern audience.  Some might say the mission of the film was to fill a gap in the imagined knowledge of the modern movie-goer: Hugo, in part, tries to educate the ignorant masses about the Fathers (and Mothers) of the movies.

Motion pictures are presented as a form of magical realism in Hugo–an art form whose beginnings have/had been tragically forgotten and in dire need of pedantic revival. Toward the middle of the film, we are treated to a history-lesson and picture show, featuring (surprise!) some of the older the actors in Hugo. This scene reveals a living Mother of Cinema: the woman in the scene watching the movie is in the movie! (Cue emotional music meant to evoke nostalgia.) See, she’s right there, in the close-up! Crazy! But wait…something’s missing. When you’re trying to educate the masses, authenticity only goes so far. Apparently you have to make concessions for their delicate aesthetic sensibilities.

The actress playing the old-timey actress is from the present day, playing for present-day eyes and modern (American) gendered aesthetic sensibilities. We flash back and forth to what is supposed to be the same woman, but the long-shots, when the archival footage is being shown, and the close-ups, when the present-day actress is inserted, a consistent image is not maintained. There is a glaring omission in the modern recreation of the early-day film: and that omission is underarm hair. It seems it wouldn’t do to go for full authenticity, however briefly. Body hair on a woman is a no-no these days, especially for those in the public eye. And even if authenticity is discounted as a value that this film was striving for, surely there’s something to be said for visual continuity!

To be fair, the style of the movie was on the fantastical side, and historical accuracy didn’t seem to be as high of a priority as effecting a certain aesthetic mood. But for a movie so drunk on its infatuation with the infancy of cinema, so eager to put the secrets of early cinematic magic on display, it sure dropped the ball on inserting its characters into this historical world. This flub, to my mind, rather undermines Hugo‘s reverent tone. And it would not have been difficult to fix: there are few things easier than not removing the hair from one’s body. So the blatant discontinuity in this one scene seems, well, unnecessary.

Upon seeing it, this scene almost made me laugh out loud in the theatre. Oh, come on! I thought with glee. This is too much–of course the actress doesn’t want to commit to the natural look that would have been the norm back when this old film was made; to the look of her real-life historical counterpart. No, she wants to look pretty to present-day eyes, or the director or other people in charge didn’t want the side-tracking public backlash that might come if the authenticity and continuity had been preserved. Who knows exactly why modern-day gendered aesthetics triumphed over the mission of Hugo to bring early day cinema out of the shadows and give it its due…again. (I won’t get into the how the story of the movie is mirrored by the movie itself, is a layer of the same mission: educating a new generation of movie-going masses on the origins of this entertainment form. Suffice it to say that it’s meta and fractal and kind of awesome in a self-congratulatory way.) But back to the erasure of female body hair: how hilariously amazing…and disappointingly expected.

2 Comments

Filed under Gender Trouble, Nostalgia, Television and Movies

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

June 17, 2012 · 6:54 PM

Mobile Gentrification

If you live in LA, you’ve witnessed the recent rise and domination of the food truck. I’m no expert on the history of food trucks, but I am aware that they didn’t start here. That Portland is screaming, disaffectedly, that they had them first. Except their food trucks had the good sense to stay put in a vacant lot and let the hipsters come to them. I also remember when food trucks were one color (industrial white), had blue-tinted skylight-vents, and were called “roach coaches.” Just to add another subtle layer of racism.

Now we’re witnessing what I’m pretty sure is the gentrification of the mobile lunch cart. All the trucks are painted with logos and designs and have acquired the quirky-yet-palatable aesthetic of half-yuppie, half-hipster. White people love these things and flock to them in droves. The prices are sometimes prohibitive. The food is fancy. Gone are the days when you could just get a sandwich or a taco and those with first dibs usually worked at a car wash. (Exaggeration, but still. The vehicles of yore were often spotted at such establishments.) Now the choices of food truck are so numerous as to make one nauseous, thus undermining their whole business model.

What this trend has done is spread gentrification to a cultural space that one might not think was possible: the truck. A space that transcends space, occupying many. Nothing is safe from this upwardly mobile force. It seeks and destroys all things lower-income and non-model-minority. It lives to please the rich, white hegemonic taste and spreads wherever it can. Colonization is not just for neighborhoods, anymore. Now the gentrification comes to you. It goes everywhere. And it’s edible. It’s the gentrification of food; of the cultural forms that carried it.

This theory is still in the germinating phase, but I stand by it.

1 Comment

Filed under Contemporary

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , ,