Rehabilitating Fan Art

Austrian artist Albert Exergian has created a series modern art posters inspired by (primarily) US television shows, thus elevating fan art from internet fan sites to gallery walls. Fundamentally these prints are no different than the hobby art created by fans around the world, but these pieces are to be taken seriously as the description of the series points out. “CREATED OUT OF A LOVE FOR POSTERS, MODERNISM AND TELEVISION, THERE WASN'T A CLIENT OUT THERE TO COMMISSION SUCH A JOB SO AUSTRIAN DESIGNER ALBERT EXERGIAN WROTE HIS OWN BRIEF AND CREATED THIS SELF INITIATED SERIES OF POSTERS THROWING ALL OF THE ABOVE INSPIRATIONS INTO THE CREATIVE MELTING POT.” (http://www.blanka.co.uk/Art/Exergian/Iconic_TV)

The implication is that a certain class would be uninterested in commissioning such art, but instead of implying this series is low-brow it is imagined as innovative. The artist takes a symbol of each show and creates a graphic and modern representation of popular television programs. These pieces should be valued as they are not products of hysterical and feminized fans, but these pieces are instead a product of a designer and fan of “modernism and television.” The artist is unique in his love for television. These posters are inherently “masculine” as they are not easily accessible, they are removed from the market (as they have not been commissioned), they are auratic, and there is an implied labor occurring outside of the home. Traditional fan art instead is devalued in it’s feminization as it is widely available and accessible, unproductive, emotional, and an implied hobby-like labor occurring in the home. Exergian’s labor is productive as it’s use of modern graphic design can enter a high-art sphere and available for purchase, whereas traditional fan art is inherently unproductive as it will remain monetarily valueless and a product of low-culture.

The Failure of Emotional Branding?

Because I am doing the sponsorship for this coming week, I have re-watched The Persuaders a couple of times and I found the case study on Song Airlines particularly thought provoking. Throughout the documentary, Song Airlines has been praised for evoking emotional appeal to potential customers. Using Andy Spade's words, the most important attribute of the airline was not its service, its product nor its benefits, but instead, it was the emotions and ethos that Song Airlines attempted to create. The documentary could not stress more on the shifting importance of emotions over product attributes over the years. It is true that customers nowadays want more than just information and functionality of the products. They want something deeper, and more substantial, something that can make them part of the experience. Adidas, for instance, has followed Song in creating an online virtual community where its sneaker fans can participate, rather than just owning a pair of the collectibles. This Adidas augmented reality campaign is still under construction, but the teaser already shows a lot of emotions, that we as consumers do not know what the commercial is selling anymore. It is definitely correct that consumers pay more attention to their emotional attachment/ detachment they have towards certain brands.



The Persuaders was made back in 2004. By 2006, Song Airline completely failed and eventually closed down. If emotional branding is that important to consumers nowadays, what made Song fail? I have come to conclusion that:

1) Consumers are still directed by price. Low price doesn't necessarily appeal to general public anymore. In fact, low prices often signal low quality, thus consumers are unsure of the quality of the brand.
2) Traditional media may not be the most effective way to convey messages anymore. But while Song is creating buzz by opening concept store in Boston, it is also important that this "buzz" is well managed. Because information is spread so quickly, poorly managed buzz could create inconsistency of image.
3) And of course, it just happened that Song launched in an economic downturn.

It is certain that emotional connection is and will still be essential to marketing and branding, but there are certain trends in consumer behavior that marketers have to pay close attention to. After all, emotional appeal is not the one size fit all solution to all the marketing crises.

More Men Marrying Wealthier Women

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/19/us/19marriage.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/07/fashion/07campus.html?scp=3&sq=more%20women%20in%20college%20than%20men&st=cse

This first article is about how there is an increasing trend of couples where the wife makes more money than the husband. However, I found the most interesting quote of the article to be, "We’ve known for some time that men need marriage more than women from the standpoint of physical and mental well-being...” from Stephanie Coontz, a college professor. Her assertion goes against all of the essays we have read regarding post-feminism and specifically the TV show Sex and the City. Of course it's not surprising that such a statement would come from a woman, and it is very unclear where the evidence for this comes from. Mainstream culture and media would suggest that it is actually the opposite. Perhaps such a statement is meant to be empowering for women, but it appears completely unfounded. On the other hand, perhaps her statement is true and it is the media which has worked to appease the anxieties of men by showing the opposite.

The second article discusses the recent trend in colleges of women outnumbering men. The article focuses on how the imbalance affects the dating scene and barely makes mention of the fact that such statistics show the progress women have made in education. Nor does it mention that even though women are topping men in education, the job market is still incredibly skewed male. While the article does point out many problems women have in college when trying to find a relationship that lasts more than one night, it fails to offer suggestions to change the situation and there is absolutely zero critique of the way in which college men treat college women. Thus it is not surprising that this article was written by a man, who most likely does not find any problems with the situation.

Both articles negatively spin what should be positive advancement for women. Because neither article offers a solution, both imply women must accept the situation. Furthermore, both articles imply that this female predicament is no one's fault but their own. I highly doubt that is the case.

South Park and Drawn Together

Here's the episode guide for the South Park episode that mocks Super Nanny - if you want to just watch the Super Nanny part, scroll down. But the episode also mocks Nanny 911 and other similar shows.

http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/1007

Here's the Drawn Together episode all about Super Nanny

http://www.hulu.com/watch/56815/drawn-together-super-nanny

Alters and the Mann family in Supernanny.

Reading Diane F. Alter's article on Class and Taste in the Simpsons, and Eva Illouz's Emotions, Imagination and Consumption, I can conclude that firstly, emotion is, instead of desire, a better way to measure or examine the sociology of consumption. Thus, emotion provides a better way for sociologists to investigate the pattern of consumption, in other words, how our tastes are formed. Secondly, taste is largely altered by class distinction. Thirdly, gender differences and gender roles also have a lot to do with our value to different cultures.

I think these few points are relatively easy to grasp, but I found Alter's article really interesting in a way that the families she interviews have emphasized a lot on the importance of being middle class, even though they might not be on an economical, and financial point of view. This reminds me of the Mann Family from Supernanny. The Mann's is clearly a middle class family, from the way they dress, the car they drive, the house they live in, to their leisure activities (going to the beach), we can obviously call them a middle class bourgeois. Yet, the mother still remains traditionally the home maker of the household. This family, in this sense, looks very similar to the Hartman family Diane Alters interviewed. (the dad is the primary breadwinner, and the mom works part time but mainly does all the housework) I don't know if it was the working class values that make the kids behave the way they did, but it is quite obvious that Supernanny is trying to reinforce some middle class quality to the family. By getting the dad involved in teaching the kids, for example, she certainly has broken the gender stereotypes traditionally portrayed in working class family. By successfully taming the children, especially the eldest child, it looks like Supernanny does not only bring harmony to the family again, she also leads the Mann's to a higher class privilege.

Tourism

Before discussing something particularly interesting to me in Illouz's article, I want to say that I really enjoyed reading it because it was a. so well grounded with simple examples at points where the language is mildly ambiguous, b. very cogently written, and c. it is a very clear nuancing of older ideas that does not "call them out" as being wrong, but very appropriately recognizes that these ideas may be latent in other critiques/analyses of consumer culture, but ought to be made explicit - simultaneously recognizing this article is a point of departure/expansion, rather than the end all be all of articles on emotion and consumerism.

So, I'm not sure if we're going to talk about this later, but I want to talk a little bit about the tourism that is mentioned in the article. I think the points made about LA Gang Tours are really interesting, so I'm going to work in a slightly different direction - towards the particularly hyperreal tourism that goes on. Of course, disaster tourism is itself in many ways hyperreal by constructing a safe space of experience while looking at disaster, but I'm more interested in the particularly hyperreal tourist attractions. Which of course brings up Disneyland.

Mainstreet USA kind of defines hyperreality; it is a sign for the idealized America of the 1950s that never really existed. Not to mention the rest of the park - and Disney even went a step further by making it so for most people, once they visited the park, it was already nostalgic since they already knew the park because of the TV show The Wonderful World of Disney. Here's the opening:

This is really interesting to me from a consumer level because it means not only is there nostalgia present in the literal presentation of Mainstreet USA (which at the time must have been very surreal - an attraction that is already nostalgic for itself), but there is also some feeling of nostalgia/etc for the show/watching the show. Further, we know it is unreal, yet it still evokes a sense of nostalgia for the past. I think Baudrillard's point about the function of Disneyland is really salient in this particular case - "Disneyland is presented as imaginary in order to make us believe that the rest is real, when in fact all of Los Angeles and the America surrounding it are no longer real, but of the order of the hyperreal and of simulation." In the context of LA Gang Tours in particular, this makes a lot of sense - the tours seem more real because Disneyland is less than an hour away, and those tours are NOT the idealized America (well, maybe they are in some sense) that Disneyland marks. Indeed, our nostalgia/emotions towards the rest of our consumer society are in some way taken out of the realm of fictional emotion because of places like Disneyland. I think this works further on the level of other advertising (like for toothpaste), where our emotions that are derived from consumer habits (like going to the mall and whatever else) seem more real because they do not flow directly/they do not copy exactly the model presented by advertisements.

Zoo-ifying South Central

Los Angeles is known for tour bus excursions that intrude on the star-studded neighborhoods in West Los Angeles, but not as known are the tour busses that schlep curious tourists into the gang and poverty stricken South Central Los Angeles. I was recently reading the LA Times when I came across a story about LA Gang Tours, a company that proudly touts that it will reveal to tourists “the history and origin of high-profile gang areas and the top crime-scene locations.” The company was created by a former gang member who has made a pact of sorts with local gang members to not disturb the tour, and he in turn will hand out micro-loans and find jobs for gang members. I do not know why this concept surprised me, in fact it makes just as much sense as the tours on the other side of town.

The most rudimentary explanation for this phenomenon can be linked to the glorification of thug life through hip-hop or to the promise that to visit or immerse oneself into these neighborhoods will lead to a transformation or redemption as seen in The Blindside, Southland, or Dangerous Minds (to name a few.) I however would push the explanation further and in line with the arguments of Bell Hooks or Renato Rosaldo. By consuming the “other,” or by seeing the “other” in a state of suffering one is experiencing “nostalgia, often found under imperialism, where people mourn the passing of what they themselves have transformed. Os as a process of yearning for what one has destroyed that is a form of mystification.” (Rosaldo Culture and Truth) To venture into these neighborhoods that are primarily inhabited by Hispanic and African Americans the Anglo American is obscuring actual human suffering through the novelty and kitsch of tourism. Furthermore, by marking the other as primitive, dangerous, and exciting the other becomes fetishized as a reparation to the sterility that is whiteness. There is no attempt to enter these neighborhoods and change them, but instead to temporarily inhabit them and to witness them through the eyes of the other. By establishing a difference between one culture and the other, one is able to feel empowered by their status after experiencing or consuming the other’s.

At the risk of sounding completely awful I do not find that much difference between gang tourism and the videos that celebrities keep posting of themselves visiting Haiti. There is an overwhelming desire to consume human misery. Misery may not be “cool,” but to be there first person to experience it is. Celebrities post videos of their recent voyages to Haiti, while German tourists can brag about experience the LA thug life. By observing or consuming raw human suffering you become an authority or at least a witness. Celebrities do not have to post the videos of themselves doing charitable work, but it is imperative that they prove their authority. By proving you were there or experienced it first hand you are placing yourself in history and raising your own cultural value.