I [Heart] Soap Commercials

There's this thing that happens to me infrequently.

It's an Ah-HA moment. I named it that because that's what I say internally when such a thing happens (suitable substitutions: Oh . . . God, and Eureka). Sometimes, if I'm alone, I say the internal part aloud. Ah-HA! You can see how this would scare people.

This thing, it's like Buddhist Enlightenment with that signature Luke twist. Rather than feeling, in the Zen sense, like one who has no head, as though one is everything and nothing simultaneously, I just notice something obvious.

It's like fitting a final piece into a particular corner of my perceived reality. It's the piece that brings it all in and lays it all out. The discovery piece. Not like the final piece of a jig-saw puzzle, that's way too pedestrian, you see that coming.

This thing, it always sneaks up, like finding a use for the reverse-Z shaped piece in Tetris. The piece you never can find a place for until that one time it brings the house down.

Like a couple months ago, when I realized Idaho bordered Utah, which is why there's a BYU-Idaho and why Boise has such a large Mormon population--then blogged a thousand words about it. Ah-HA.

This thing, it leaves me feeling like an existential detective. Connected.

Of course, in the process of revealing this connectedness to the world, I realize it's something that everyone else already knows. Suddenly this detective has been playing Tetris on level 0, and the z-shaped piece turned out to just be a straight piece. Then, unlike enlightenment, I usually feel bad and chastise myself. "Of course it borders Utah, ass." That's how I know this isn't for real enlightenment, you're not supposed to feel stupid afterward.

***

All of which is preface to the fact that it happened again this morning.

Clarity. The Ah-HA. Perfect lucidity at the confluence of worlds. For a brief moment in my parent's drizzly shower, the fetters of this life fell away and I touched the infinite. It was soapy.

It began, as everything does, with a nagging problem.

Soap commercials.

For all the diversity in advertising, the embracing of hip-hop culture by big, waspy juggernauts from McDonald's to S.C. Johnson Wax, I've never seen a black man in a soap commercial. Ever.

Not one single African-American male ever. . . I'm pretty sure.

And my memory is excellent for things that don't involve spacially arranging places on a map or long division.

As I began to realize the gravity of this, my face screwed itself up. The back and forth motion of Dove Moisture Bar to left underarm slowed to a halt. I stood like that for a while, then remembered something.

Pretty much everything I know about African-American culture I learned from the Wu-Tang Clan and Dave Chapelle. I lament my ignorance, but those are really the only outlets available in Spokane. The Rza and the Gza are solid day-in, day-out. They're the bread and butter. Dave is streaky, but always comes through in the clutch.

On cue, in the shower, there it was.

The spoof of Trading Spouses. Chapelle, as the displaced black husband, looks right into the camera, "White folks don't use wash cloths."

Meaning black folks do.

There it is, the conundrum and every advertising executive's nightmare.

Let's run it down: Soap company A wants to reach out to everyone. They've already got the aging, white, stinky organ sacks, they need to hit other key demographics. You could spend a lot of money researching buying trends among endless permutations of consumers. When you were done you'd have exactly this: To appeal to everyone between 5 and 45 in one fell swoop, you have to appeal to Hip Hop culture. It's pervasive, it's all encompassing, a Rock the Vote special featuring P Diddy told me so. P. Diddy himself has as much sway with Young Republicans as--erring on the side of caution--Dick Cheney.

You want young white kids to pressure their parents into buying your soap? Put Li'l Flip in a shower with a bar. Tell him to lather up.

Problem: Li'l Flip is black. Washcloths obscure your soap.

Solution: Make Flip groom like a white guy, just for 15 seconds.

New problem: Flip becomes an Uncle Tom and you--the benevolent parent company who just wants to swaddle the world in warm, soapy, affordable hugs--are his master.

To that there is no solution, so you cut your losses and hope everyone buys your soap because that toned and ruddy brown-haired wasp is so enjoying lathering herself.

All of this I assume because, not being a black man myself, I don't know how I'd react to seeing another black man go washclothless. I know how Dave Chapelle would react. Maybe he's not representative.

Am I being stereotypical? Yeah, I'm trying to think like an Ad guy. Advertising is a recognition game. And in a world where people gladly assume the rolls clothing/electronics/lifestyle companies give them--where homogeneity is pervasive and fought for tooth and nail--the difference between stereotype and archetype is trifling. They engender each other. They are, essentially, aspects of the same thing. Yin and yang--which gives me an idea.

New Solution: substitute Flip for an Asian person, Dan the Automator for example.

New Problem: his turntable wouldn't fit in the shower.

Seriously, find a commercial that's marketing to young people. If it has an Asian person, he/she will be behind a turntable with big ass headphones, always.

Every commercial you see is nothing but groups of people-cum-stereotypes representing the archetypal this or that. The archetypal Riot Grrrl. The archetypal chic urban [black] businessman. The archetypal college kid. That's all advertising really is, getting people to identify your product with their kind of people, in the hope that they'll eventually identify it with themselves.

Proof: any McDonald's commercial (excluding Chicken Selects campaign). Skateboards, turntables, fashionhawks, dreadlocks, and, of course, hella Asian kids with hella headphones behind hella turntables--not a McRib in sight. Just hella BMXers doing hella back flips. I'm lovin' it.

We're consumers, that's how we define ourselves. We need you to sell to us, for what else is there? If you can squirm your way into our lives at a definitional level--if you become part of our self worth--then we're yours for life. God knows I will be. When it comes to soap, that's a lot of consuming.

Especially when it's Dove.

Am I being too simplistic? Probably. I have a tendency to oversimplify. But you're not allowed to judge, that was my Ah-HA moment and it felt holy.

Konichiwa Bitches.

Read the full thing here.

Problems with theory and problems in practice

Regarding a prior post, MightyMerk asked a few good questions about why I take such a dim view of capitalism. You can read the whole original post and the ensuing comments here. I'll try to elaborate on my initial responses, beginning:

"Regarding Marx, you just have to tell me what exactly he was ever right about?"

That's a tough question because it's often difficult to separate, in the bath house of public opinion, the ideas of the man from the ideas of his followers. When those followers have a track record of 100 million dead in 8 decades of megalomania, everything that inspired it seems to take on a more sinister pallor.

I am not a Marxist. Strictly speaking, neither was Stalin. Similarly, Marx was not Mao. Remember that even Stalin was not Mao, they were bitter enemies. Communism in the Soviet Union, China and around the world was far from uniform and did not revolve around the Communist Manifesto. Though it was the impetus for these revolutions, the revolutionaries ultimately had very little to do with it. Remember also that Marx did not begin and end with the Communist Manifesto.

Marx was a theorist and philosopher and an economist. Like many and indeed all people who propose something radical in social theory and justice, it was to address a specific problem (Plato's Republic for example) within the society that person lived. If Plato were judged by The Republic alone, he'd have gone the way of Heraclitus, he'd be esoteric cannon-fodder.

That is to say: often, if not always, the proposed solution outstrips the observation. Often, if not always, the person tries too hard to fix everything and fix it at a fundamental level. Marx's communist ideal is very much a utopian (from Greek ou not, no + topos place) yearning. For that reason communism can never be a viable instantiation of Marx's pure social theory. Similarly, there will (hopefully) never be pure capitalism, because of the innate problems Marx sheds light on.

Like Plato's Republic, there's a lot about his new society that could never function. That does not, however, diminish the critique of the existing society Marx puts forth. Aristotle was asked by some Greek ruler (don't remember names) to apply his Philosophy and other, more Platonic concepts into making that ruler's kingdom more perfect. Aristotle was dismissed months later. His solutions didn't work, but that does not mean he didn't identify the right problems. Marx saw the problems, but didn't propose the right solutions--this is something we only now know in hindsight. His observations, however, remain valid and pointed to this day.

***

In the act of reification (a term coined by Georg Lukacs) of capital, money goes from being a bartering tool, a tool of trade between equals, into an end in itself. Remember, it's called capitalism, not, people-using-money-ism. In pure capitalism, people are secondary to the accumulation of capital. Capital becomes an end in itself, able to reproduce itself. It becomes the most important thing in the system, diminishing the very humanity of the people that exist within the system.

People are only as important as the capital they own. Even in our own imperfect capitalistic society, we see this as the functioning imperative. People with money have power in business and politics. Power in business facilitates the propagation and increase of power. Power in politics ensures that the power game will continue to favor those who have power. The "haves" as you call them, will remain haves.

That's fine, if you have it, use it and use it well. But the problem is that most "have-nots" will also remain have-nots. The problem is not economic disparity in itself, though it's tragic and debilitating. The problem is that economic disparity in this country is rigid, and despite the few free floating upper-middle class folks, the glass ceiling is generally impenetrable. There are and always will be exceptions to this rule, which proponents of unfettered capitalism will tout as proof that free markets make free people. However, these case studies are ultimately outliers that don't reflect the general and pervasive trend.

The haves draw their power from the companies they own/control.

For companies in theory, and corporations as part of their existence as a legal entity, workers are only important as a cheap means of producing the thing that produces capital. They are, essentially, overhead.

Workers are usually the "have-nots"

Capitalism cares about nothing else besides creating more capital. Look at corporate law in America, the only people a corporation answers to are its shareholders, the only yardstick for success or failure are profits--the relative income of capital against the loss of capital.

The easiest way to staunch the outgoing flow of capital is to under pay workers. This is much easier than reducing other forms of overhead. The "Lean Manufacturing" technique pioneered by Toyota and currently shit-hot in America is another way, but it's expensive and time-consuming. Then, once you're done "leaning," you can still cut salaries or benefits or work to pass legislation ending overtime compensation. This is called remaining competitive. Within the current American Corporate paradigm, this is exactly what companies should do.

Was remaining competitive, though, done ethically, are the workers living decently, are things in place to keep them living decently? Was regard paid to the people who are essentially driving the power of this company? Or are they being under-compensated?

These are the bleeding heart questions. These are questions that the American government, in its corporate legislation, doesn't care about. These are the things that the most powerful shareholders don't care about because it detracts from fiscal solvency. These are things that CEOs aren't allowed to care about, for it means stifling profit. Intentionally stifling profit is illegal in this country.

Profit is made one of two ways, by selling a good or service for a greater cost than it took to produce it, and by allowing capital to grow by means of investment.

Now, if you sell something for more than it takes to produce it, you are in effect cheating workers out of the value of their work. It is argued that management does work as well and must be taken into account. This is true. Even so, at the end of the day, if the company is cash-positive, someone has been screwed. It might have been the CEO, but it's usually the petty worker.

My note: This is a fundamental and intricate argument of Marx's, one that more or less spans a thousand page book and that I'm really glossing over here, so before you turn your criticism to my poor summary, read Das Kapital.

To which many people retort: "Still, they're being paid and having a job is better than not having one."

The idea here is that if there is more capital around, and people are making more capital, their lives will be enriched by this possession of capital. Interesting theory.

But the creation of new capital through the accumulation of interest creates inflation. Currently in America, the median wage increase is not enough to keep up with inflation. The median wage increase (not to be confused with the average increase, which is much lower). Everyone below that actually has less purchasing power than they did previously.

Merk, you're probably correct in saying, "There are always going to be the 'haves and have-nots." But when the thing that a majority of Americans 'have-not' is access to affordable healthcare, when their children do not have access to even the most basic of education that would give them a better chance of becoming 'haves', then what government is doing is allowing those with power to keep their power and expand their power while having a pool of cheap labor to aid them without any real benefit or loyalty to the people who have made them this capital.

It's a more subtle instantiation of the company store. So, merely making more money does not necessarily equate to having more power, the system is on a curve.

"People are not perfect, and prone to greed and don't like to play nice etc."

That's the most true thing you said. People are radically self-interested. Capital is more self-interested. Human beings at least have the ability to empathize and identify problems, to understand suffering and to change it. Humans have the capability of wanting to level the playing field and the capability to do it.

Now, we can keep with the capitalist ethos and allow the rule of the free market to continually reward the haves and punish the have-nots by keeping from them even the most basic liberties, or we can recognize the short-comings of the system and put in place programs that allow for the elevation of Humankind above the drive of capital.

This includes: Salaries that outstrip inflation at the absolute minimum, equal education for everyone, affordable secondary education (more need and performance-based grants and scholarships), affordable healthcare for everyone, et al.

Now if corporations and other employers would do this voluntarily, then by all means, have at it capitalism. But as long as these systemic structures are in place and as long as corporations are only legally bound to create profit, then all those squirming meat-bags of downsizeable overhead need legal structures in place to protect their rights and offer the chance to wield real power within the system. To do otherwise, to maintain a classist system, is to court revolution. It happened in Russia, China and elsewhere. The revolution eventually failed. That does not mean however that what the people were revolting against was ultimately proved the right and just system, just the more powerful system.

What I advocate is not revolution, it is the avoidance of the oppressive structures which lead to revolution. It is a swallowing of nationalistic pride and an open mind. It is a conscious and dedicated effort to meld the positive aspects of both [several] systems regardless of whether something is considered capitalist, socialist, communist--whatever. It is allowing people to succeed within the system so that they do not have to seek revolution outside the system.

Liberty is not laissez faire, laissez passer. It would be if everyone started at zero. Liberty is a [more] level playing field.

"Attacking Capitalism because it is not perfect is rather a cheap shot in my opinion . . . As far as I am concerned America and capitalism is the best WE HUMANS have had so far."

Simply being the current best doesn't mean it's good enough.

Read the full thing here.

Proportionality

This human wondered the other day why more people like myself weren't speaking out about the election, why we weren't talking.

I can't speak for the people like myself. I can't even really speak for myself. I just don't know.

I feel like I should be angry. I should be hopping goddamned mad. I should feel cheated. Like I should have been mad when my PS2 and 40 DVDs were stolen at a Halloween party two years ago. I should have felt cheated. But I just wasn't and I just didn't. Similarly: I'm just not. I suppose this is apathy.

No. It's not that at all. It's a lack of surprise. I think Bush won this election legitimately, he won it outright, this wasn't a theft of democracy. It's exactly what I should expect to happen on this shitbag planet. Like stolen PS2s. You want it not to happen, but it does. All the time.

What does it really change?

Nothing. Who represents me? Kerry is only slightly less right of center than Bush. Calling the Democratic party "liberal" is like calling salmon red meat. It's pinkish at best. Same with the democrats. They're the most like me of the two parties who have the clout to get people elected. That means nothing.

Idealism is only useful insofar as it can silence cynicism. At the same time, when this idealism fails, as it does and must, the cynicism itself is reinforced. It's like fighting an infection with an inadequate amount of antibiotics. You feel better for a while, but then the bug becomes resistant and harder to beat off.

How thick is the hide of my cynicism now? Post November 2?

I understand something new about myself.

My dim view of capitalism as a paradigm gets brighter with my own increased purchasing power. Give people the opportunity to consume and they forget the unjustness of the system. Give me a TV and everything's fine.

Only now that I'm home and unemployed--low this single month--have I begun to remember those things I cleaved to in college. The impossible rules globalization places on small developing nations. The difference between welfare and healthcare as rights. The dehumanization of treating capital as an end in itself.

Marxism, essentially, but without the bullshit conclusions. Marx as an anthropological observer, not a reformer. As a descriptive [def. #2] chronicler, not a prescriptive ideologue.

And as an observer, I see no end in sight.

What would it take to make Americans believe in the necessity of "healthcare for all"--or social programs in general? Compassion? I don't know, I'm asking.

What would it take for an American--a majority of Americans--to admit that sometimes pulling oneself up by one's bootstraps isn't possible? One's own economic ruination?

Who knows

I think the myth of the infallibility of the puritan work ethic creates hardened people and blind people. It creates more self-interested people and people who resent each other so deeply that the other ultimately loses something of his or her humanity.

People who are very successful are objects to strive towards. Beacons.

People who are not successful are cautionary tales and the spent wreckage of their betters.

People become things, essentially.

And each of these things is exactly where it is because of how hard it worked, no outside influences involved. No playing field is too pitched that a pauper can't become a prince.

Hopefully, as the chasm between the rich and everyone else becomes so pronounced that even the middle class has difficulty surviving, people will start to realize that sometimes you can't pull yourself up by your boot straps. Especially if you can't afford boot straps to begin with.

There we go, back to being really really preachy. Feels good.

Read the full thing here.

Dirty, pretty things

I took this trip with my friends Whitney and Laura. Good kids.

They taught me something about myself. This thing, it's a defining characteristic. I'm accommodating. Absurdly so. I accommodate until there's nothing left to bend to, no opinion of my own to dash nor any desire left to quash.

All of which is a tactful way to say I'm a goddamned push-over. A failure as a self-interested rational agent. Whitney uses words like this, she's a Philosophy major. So does Laura, her thing is History. In their free time they psychoanalyse me. This is their official diagnosis.

They are, of course, correct.

My rebuttal: I desperately need people's outward approval. It reinforces my existence. When I shun this aspect of myself bad things happen.

Like Job before me, Family members die inexplicably when I assert myself. God kills them.

This is not news. I know I'm a goddamned push-over. The thing Whitney and Laura taught me is that what had been my secret shame is blatantly obvious to everyone around me. Realizing this made me suddenly want to rage against it.

We were at the University Village, post-curry, pre-second-macchiatto.

U Village is a big crappy complex of crap made to look like a quaint little township--a compartmentalized monument to self-deceptive capitalism. You can tell this because the majority of people have cars worth more than my education. That is to say: cars which are priceless.

First stop, J.Crew.

J.Crew is nothing to rage against. They have men's clothes, and I generally like those clothes. It's easy enough to pretend I'm considering purchasing those clothes. Pretending to shop J.Crew does not make me a pushover. I'm poor, make-believe is all I can muster. 72% of my wardrobe is already J.Crew. Being a brand-loyal whore is not the same as being a pushover. They have a nice corduroy jacket, but it's green, I want brown. Not a pushover.

Next is Sephora. Cosmetics. My chance to dissent. Though I probably should try some concealer to mask the colony of stress-zits overpopulating my jawline, I go and sit at a tastefully uncomfortable bit of all-weather wrought-iron in this manufactured commons area and wait for my friends to finish spraying themselves with things. To finish consuming. I begin to count the ways I hate this place. I make an alphabet game out of it. A is for Anthropologie. B is for Bed, Bath and Beyond . . .

Before C come the birds. Flying, banking in formation. Migrating. Shitting. Bombarding the sleeve of my jacket. Karma. Retribution. Laura coaxes me into Sephora to use the de-makeup-ing station to de-shit my sleeve.

You can't fight the moonlight.

Next comes A. A is for Anthropologie. Another chance to dissent. But the birds are still circling, so I enter. Anthropologie consistently amazes me. It is like Urban Outfitters on a grander scale. Exquisitely packaged trash. And such variety.

If you're an affluent housewife who digs a stitch of kitsch or if you are a particularly urbane transvestite, Anthropologie is really the only store you'll ever need.

They have clothes for you, of course. They also have Aromatherapy candles. And candles to make love by. Sexy candles. They have clothes for the resulting unplanned pregnancy. Devotional candles by which to pray your man doesn't leave you. Clothes for the human you birth. Furniture for yourself and for that child. Candles to deaden your post-partum stress disorder. Bath oils to make your child smell nice while you're drowning it. The oils also act as a preservative. They make your hands soft.

Purses, wallets, home furnishings. All manner of brick-a-brak.

Books. Candles to read them by.

Greeting cards. Candles to inscribe them by.

Brand-new vintage knobs for the antique chest of drawers you're refinishing. Candles to stain it by.

Better-than-antique chests of drawers that look as though they've been refinished by an amateur. An amateur just like you.

Thoughtful.

Anthropologie.
Consistently Spontaneous for the uniformly eclectic.

Thus, I dissent.

Read the full thing here.