The Brand As Fetish In The Society of the Spectacle (Part 1)

Warning this is quite a long diary and I hope not too academic,  boring and esoteric. However as we are not in Hillary's cohort, I think it will not be too complicated.

--------------------------------------------------

I presented the following Paper, which will be posted in four parts, at the 1995 International Communication Association conference in Albuquerque. I have decided to revisit it, because it touches on a number of themes that have roiled the blogosphere over the last two months. My concern in this paper was to address what I believed was the failure of Critical Communication Scholarship to attend to the influence and role of talking heads and media paid professionals in the construction and reproduction of the spectacle.

The role of these paid professionals was brought into sharp focus by the recent New York Times article on the Pentagon’s utilization of retired high ranking officers, many of who were employed by defense contractors, to help sell the war in Iraq and the occupation that followed the fall of Saddam. Reading the reactions here at Daily Kos, Talking Points Memo and the Huffington Report, one would think that the New York Times had uncovered a conspiracy, manufactured by the White House, to utilize the objectivity of mainstream news workers to unwittingly sell the war to the American body politic. While such a narrative may be comforting, it misses the point in two ways.

First it ignores the fact that these practices have a long and sordid history, dating back as far as the Vietnam War. While it is true that some journalists referred to the daily briefings in Saigon as the Five-o-Clock Follies, most journalists dutifully reported what was presented as fact. Once reported as such, these stories came to not only frame the issues and concerns raised in press conferences in the United States and Vietnam,  they also provided a narrative structure for the discussions with talking heads and experts on the Sunday Morning news programs and the content of editorials and opinion pieces published in major American newspapers and news magazines.

Second, and more important to represent the use of these talking heads, in cahoots with defense contractors and the administration, as an institutional aberration is false. These Pentagon appointed experts and talking heads were able to move between their role as lobbyists and propagandists with ease because in many instances they were being paid by the same corporation whether they were on the hill or on Meet the Press. One can not talk about the military industrial complex in isolation of the mass media outlets which little better than public relations departments for these corporations. Not only were the first two national radio networks founded by Westinghouse and General Electric, these same companies now own CBS and NBC respectively. Likewise, the fact I can publish this paper on Daily Kos is in itself dependent upon the pioneering work done by Pentagon contractors at DARPANET.

In closing, I need to take note of thee fact that many of the references in this paper reflect the time it was written, 1994 – 1995 and now seem quaint. For example, I refer for the web as the Information Super Highway and there are references to the OJ Simpson trial, the seizure of Congress by the Republicans and Bill Clinton as President. Likewise, when reading it over the next couple of days, if you have the patience to work through it, please bear in mind it wasd originally written for an academic audience. Having said this, I hope some of you give it a little time I am especially interested to read your reactions to the issues raised. Thanks in advance for your time

I will publish the second part tomorrow

--------------------------------------------------------------
The Brand As Fetish In The Society of the Spectacle

Introduction

When you look in the mirror do you see yourself.

Do you see yourself on theTV Screen.

Do you see yourself in the magazine.

When you see yourself, does it make you scream. (1)

The emergence of cultural studies, at the Birmingham School in the 1960s and `70s was partly a response to both the perceived ahistoricity of functionalism and related claims of a deideologized and classless public. Drawing upon Richard Hoggart, E. P. Thompson and Raymond Williams, they reinvigorated the Marxist critique of culture, and explored -– among other things -– how the interconnections between power, history and politics played out in the everyday practices of deviant subcultures, whose participants ceased to be viewed as dysfunctional. Instead they were viewed as `cultural innovators and critics" (2).

For Stan Cohen "much of the new work on British post-war youth cultures is a teasing out of the relationships between...structure, culture and biography as the determinate conditions (`being born into a world not of your own choosing') to which the subculture is one of the possible working-class responses (`making your own history')" (3).

Over the last two decades, with the percolation of the models developed in the Birmingham School through the academy, its critical thrust has largely dissipated. The central theoretical thrust of the school, namely that the present is the consequence of and thus constricted by history, has been stripped out. Under the influence of John Fiske and Larry Grossberg, "making your own history," appears to consist of covering your present in order to escape from history. `Resistance through rituals" is reduced to self-fulfillment through consumption. There is little about those who "tear. .or bleach...[their]...jeans... [as]...a tactic of resistance" (4) that makes them appear to be "folk devils," or could inspire a `moral panic."

At its core, cultural studies has in the present obfuscated distinctions between actions in public and consumption in private. Thus, resistance is equated with reception and the construction of oppositional meaning with shopping. What such claims overlook is first the relationship between consumption and the control of space and second that resistance through consumption is dependent on the freedom to pay. As a consequence, cultural studies has been progressively deideologized and made safe, a fate which befell functionalism in the nineteen fifties.

For cultural studies to avoid this fate, it is necessary to recover its critical content. To do so, requires a serious reconsideration of the praxis of Western Marxism, specifically through a synthesis of the critique of culture developed by Adorno and the critique of the spectacle developed by Debord. In this paper I sketch out what I view as the possibilities of such a synthesis. In exploring this, I weave together a number of inter and intraconnected issues.

First, the form of alienated consumption in the contemporary culture industry, which I label brand fetishism. This -– I argue -- comes to envelop commodity fetishism (5) and is the consequence of the formers' emergence in what I term the early or "Ur" culture industry.

Second, I explore the parallel development of the culture industry and the forms of fetishism just identified. Central to this is a discussion of the culture industry as an arena of consumption, where potential consumers encounter commodities.

Third, I explore the star as the hyper-commodity whose presentation effaces its construction. What is effaced through the star, however, is symbolic–rather than productive-labor. As such, the star, like its earlier material form the commodity as fetish, represents the lowest common denominator between the consumer and his/her desires. However, unlike its earlier form the star is not a commodity which we encounter as a symbolic mirror of ourselves, rather we encounter each other as symbolic mirrors of the star.

I close with a discussion of the types of communication encouraged within the culture industry, where language comes to reflect the brand and whose claims are reinforced through the presence of the star. Underlying this discussion, is the fact that what Fiske et al. view as an arena of resistance is in reality an arena "where life itself becomes a show...contemplated by an audience...forced to be passive." (6)

The Emergence of the Brand as Fetish

For Adorno and Horkheimer, the effect of the culture industry on communication was to strip it of any meaningful interaction, reducing it to a condition where language becomes an advertisement for talking. Under such conditions, communicative interaction is reduced to "light [communication]... It is the social bad conscience of serious [communication]" (7). As a consequence there emerges a "striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm...the false identity of the general with the particular. Under monopoly all. ..[communication] . . .is identical...[resulting in a]. ..circle of manipulation and retroactive need in which the unity of the system grows ever stronger "(8).

For the Situationists, the effect of the culture industry on communication was both debilitating and pervasive. It results in a communicative interaction reduced to its lowest common denominator and isolated "from its context, its past, its intentions and its consequence. It is thus completely illogical. Since no one may contradict it, it has the right to contradict itself' (9). Simultaneously, historical consciousness retreats into "a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics and untenable reasoning" (10). This opens the way for it to recover its own recent past and repackage it anew.

The death and funeral of Richard Nixon provide an example of how the spectacle engorges itself on its own constructions. Nixon was the prototype of the spectacular politician whose political life was played out through the spectacle. If only for his services to the spectacle, it was to be expected that it would come to his funeral not to bury but to praise him. As Debord notes in Comments on the Society of the Spectacle "individual reputations have become malleable and alterable at will... Historical evidence which the spectacle does not need to know ceases to be evidence".(11)

Given the fact that Nixon's stardom and biography was the product of the culture industry, it comes as no surprise that -- like other political and cultural stars -- his reputation was "malleable and alterable at will."

Amongst other things, the culture industry provides the celebrity with a new identity. The celebrity is both a simulation and a cultural commodity. He/she serves to duplicate the consumers "desire[s] and pleasure[s]"--transforming them--"into fictions,...promising `happiness'—the happiness of being a consumer" (12). The celebrity participates in the construction of "a whole attitude to life" for the consumer and tells him/her "how to live better, how to dress fashionably, in short how to exist." (13)

As a cultural commodity, the celebrity appears in the context of and in competition with, other cultural commodities. This is as true for politicians as for any other individual invested with celebrity status by the spectacle. Thus, Bill Clinton's news conferences have to compete with both other political infomercials and a range of other cultural commodities—including videos, sports events, concerts and the O. J. Simpson trial. Likewise, to catch the public's attention and hopefully get their vote, the politician has to appeal to the widest number of political consumers through advertising. These appeals do not occur in a vacuum. Instead the politician uses the language and tools of advertising to compete with cars, beer, cosmetics and dog food.

Given Marx's observation that under capitalism we encounter products of human labor as commodities, in the society of the spectacle we encounter a similar form in the cultural commodity. As with any commodity, the cultural commodity's mode of production is effaced by the culture industry. What is effaced however, is not the labor involved in its physical construction, instead it is the labor involved in its symbolic construction. This includes the work of advertising agencies, public relations firms amongst many others.(14)

As a product of human labor, the cultural commodity seems to resemble and reflect the fetishized commodity, whose language it speaks and whose form it has replaced. Like the fetishized commodity, the cultural commodity effaces its past through its reconstruction in the present. In the culture industry, however, the objects exchange value is displaced by our associations with its brand name, label or logo. As long as the jeans are labeled Levi's, or the bag Gucci, it does not matter who makes it, or where. As a consequence, the culture industry has facilitated the emergence of a new and dominant form of alienation: brand fetishism. Who cares if it has no butter in it when it appears to taste like butter. Then we "Can't believe it's not butter."

Brand fetishism emerges within and becomes the dominant text of the 'Society of the Spectacle'. This does not mean though, that the consumer no longer encounters the commodity as a fetish. Nor does it mean that the commodities mode of production is not dependent on the selling of labor power. What it implies is that the mode of reification outlined by Marx is now a secondary form, superseded by a primary reification constructed around the objects' image and related associations.

Under conditions of commodity fetishism, the consumer was alienated from her/his nature as the producer of objects. Under conditions of brand fetishism the consumer is also alienated from her/his nature as the manipulator of symbols. Though we still encounter commodities as "social things," the meanings attached to them and the needs they appear to fulfill are constructed for us through advertising, which:

 

Sell[s] ideas based on the unique manner in which the consumer is to "perceive" the product... by associating it with...lifestyle and/or sex appeal... Ideas...which consumers can more easily relate...[to]...because of their association with a... frame of reference...which consumers identify themselves. (15)

Footnotes

 

1. X Ray Spex. "Identity." Germ Free Adolescent. London: EMI Records 1978.

2. Stan Cohen. Folk Devils and Moral Panics. New York: St. Matins Press (1980), iv.
   

3. ibid., v.
   

4. John Fiske. Understanding Popular Culture. Boston: Unwin Hyman (1989), 29.
   

5. See Karl Marx "The Fetshism of the Commodity and its Secret." In Capital, vol. 1 New York: Vintage Books (1977), 163 - 177.
   

6. Point Blank! "The Changing of the Guard: New Developments in the Spectacle." In Point Blank! - Contributions towards a Situationist Revolution 1 (1972), 16.
   

7. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception." In Dialectic of Enlightenment, New York: Continuum (1989), 135.
   

8. ibid., 121.
   

9. Guy Debord. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. London: Verso (1990), 28.
   

10. ibid., 16.
    

11. ibid., 18.
    

12. Henri Lefebvre. Everyday Life in the Modern World. London: Allen Lane (1971), 105.
    

13. ibid., 107.
    

14. See Howard Becker. Art Worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press (1982).
    

15. Robert Goldman. Reading Ads Socially. London Routledge (1992), 44.