Sunday, May 18, 2008

Rant from Pictures of Sad Children

This comic pretty emo, but I like this section of it. Think it's all meaningful and poignant. Backstory: The guy with the sheet on his head is a dead guy. The other guy is his subordinate at a call forwarding center.




Posted by at

2 comments:

b_o_x said...

Yeah I can comment on my own fucking post.

This book called The Corrections by Jonathan Frazen has a neat couple of passages I'd like to share, and since this is my second time typing it up, I hope its worth it.

Chip: male English professor at liberal arts college on tenure-track

"To test his student's mastery of the critical perspectives to which he'd introduced them, Chip was showing a video of a six-part ad campaign called, 'You Go, Girl.'
...
"The plot was this: Four women in a small office -- one sweet young African American, one middle-aged technophobic blonde, one tough and savvy beauty named Chelsea, and one radiantly benignant gray-haired Boss -- dish together and banter together and, by and by, struggle together with Chelsea's stunning announcement, at the end of Episode 2, that for nearly a year she's had a lump in her breast that she's too scared to see a doctor about. In Episode 3 the Boss and the sweet young African American dazzle the technophobic blonde by using the W---- Corporation's Global Desktop Version 5.0 to get up-to-the-minute cancer information and to hook Chelsea into support networks and the every best local health care providers. The blonde, who is fast learning to love technology, marvels but objects: 'There's no way Chelsea can afford all this.' To which the angelic boss replies: 'I'm paying every cent of it.' By the middle of Episode 5, however -- and this was the campaign's revolutionary inspiration-- its clear that Chelsea will not survive her breast cancer. Tear-jerking scenes of brave jokes and tight hugs follow. In the final episode the action returns to the office, where the Boss is scanning a snapshot of the departed Chelsea, and the now rabidly technophiliac blonde is expertly utilizing the W---- Corporation's Global Desktop Version 5.0, and around the world, in rapid montage, women of all ages and races are smiling and dabbing away tears at the image of Chelsea on their own Global Desktops. Spectral Chelsea in a digital video clip pleads 'Help us Fight for the Cure.' The episode ends with the information, offered in a sober typeface, that the W----- Corporation has given more than $10,000,000.00 to the American Cancer Society to help it FIght for the Cure...
"[Chip] said, 'In case any of you were visiting in a different planet last fall, let's review what happened with these ads. Remember that Nielsen Media Research took the "revolutionary" step of giving step of giving Episode Six its own weekly rating. The first rating ever given to an ad. And once Nielsen rated it, the campaign was all but guaranteed an enormous audience for its rebroadcast during the November sweeps. Also remember that the Nielsen rating followed a week of print and broadcast news coverage of the "revolutionary" plot twist of Chelsea's death, plus the Internet rumor about Chelsea's being a real person who'd really died. Which, incredibly, several hundred thousand people actually believed. Beat Psychology [the ad company who produced "You Go, Girl!"], remember, having fabricated her medical records and her personal history and psted them on the WEb. So my question for Hilton would be, how "brave" is a it to engineer a surefire publicity coup for your ad campaign?'
"'It was still a risk,' Hilton said. 'I mean, death is a downer. It could have backfired.'
"Again Chip waited for someone, anyone, to take his side of the argument. No one did.
...
"'So, bottom line,' he said, 'we like this campaign. We think these ads are good for the culture and good for the country. Yes?'
...
"'The W----- Corporation,' he said, 'is currently defending three separate lawsuits for antitrust violations. Its revenues last years exceeded the gross domestic product of Italy. And now, to wring dollars out of the one demographic that it doesn't yet dominate, it's running a campaign that exploits a woman's fear of breast cancer and her sympathy with its victims. Yes, Melissa?'
"'Its celebrating women in the workplace,' Melissa said. 'It's raising money for cancer research. It's encouraging us to do our self-examinations and get the help we need. It's helping women feel like we own this technology, like it's not just a guy thing.'
"Ok, good,' Chip said. 'But the question is not whether we care about breast cancer, it's what breast cancer has to do with selling office equipment.'
"Chad took up the cudgels for Melissa. ''That's the whole point of the ad, though. That if you have access to information, it can save your life.'
"'So if Pizza Hut puts a little sign about testicular self-exams by the hot-pepper flakes, it can advertise itself as part of the glorious and courageous fight against cancer?'
"'Why not?' Chad said.
...
"'Well, consider,' he said, 'that "You Go, Girl" would not have been produced if W------ had not had a product to sell. And consider that the goal of the people who work at W------ is to exercise their stock options and retire at thirty-two, and that the goal of the people who own W----- stock...is to build bigger houses and buy bigger SUVs and consume even more of the world's finite resources.'
"'What's wrong with making a living?' Melissa said. 'Why is it inherently evil to make money?'
"'Baudrillard might argue,' Chip said, 'that the evil of a campaign like "You Go, Girl" consists in the detachment of the signifier from the signified. That a woman weeping no longer just signifies sadness. It now also signifies: "Desire office equipment." It signifies: "Our bosses care about us deeply."'
...
"'This whole class,' she said. 'It's just bullshit every week. It's one critic after another wringing their hands about the state of criticism. Nobody can ever quite say what's wrong exactly. But they all know it's evil. They all know "corporate" is a dirty word. And if somebody's having fun or getting rich--disgusting! Evil! And it's always the death of this and the death of that. And people who think they're free aren't "really" free. And people who think they're happy aren't "really" happy. And it's impossible to radically critique society anymore, although what's so radically wrong with society that we need such a radical critique, nobody can say exactly. It is so typical and perfect that you hate those ads!'' she said to Chip...'Here things are getting better and better for women and people of color, and gay men and lesbians, more and more integrated and open, and all you can think about is some stupid, lame problem with signifiers and signifieds. Like, the only way you can make something bad out of an ad that's great for women --which you have to do, because there has to be something wrong with everything-- is to say it's evil to be rich and evil to work for a corporation.'
"Melissa's accusations had cut him to the quick...Criticizing a sick culture, even if the criticism accomplished nothing, had always felt like useful work. But if the supposed sickness wasn't a sickness at all -- if the great Materialist Order of technology and consumer appetite and medical science really was improving the lives of the formerly oppressed; if it was only straight white males like Chip who had a problem with this order-- then there was no longer even the most abstract utility to his criticism. It was all...bullshit" (39-45).

May 18, 2008 at 5:45 PM
b_o_x said...

I do it again...
I DO IT AGAIN!

Because this text only deals with Thai people, it can only barely be universally applied, but at least it has some really good lines like, "globalization has transformed culture into an economic sector."

From the Human Development Report of Thailand 1990 (162-163)

V. SOCIAL AND CULTURAL DIMENSIONS
"Globalization is not only integrating capital, trade and the world.s economies, it is also integrating ideas, norms, cultures and values. It intensifies contacts not only between countries but also between peoples, which have been growing and deepening at a speed that is without parallel in history. To many, exposure to new cultures can be exciting. It can expand their choices, enhance their creativity and enlarge their access to information that is able to empower them. There is no doubt that Thailand has benefitted greatly from such exchanges, especially those that have enabled civil society organizations to strengthen their position, enlarge their capacity to engage in active advocacy, and to share ideas and information with like-minded groups throughout the world. Such exchanges have been a powerful force for the democratization of development and the promotion of social justice.
The exchanges have not, however, been based upon the notion of reciprocity. Globalization has transformed culture into an economic sector. It is, moreover, a sector with an extreme degree of concentration. World trade in goods with a cultural content - printed matters, literature, music, visual arts, cinema, photography, radio and television equipment - reached US$ 200 billion in 1991 and has increased exponentially since then. For the US, the largest single export industry is not aircraft, computers or even automobiles, but entertainment, especially in the form of movies and TV programmes. Hollywood films alone grossed US$ 30 billion world-wide in 1998, while a
single movie - Titanic - grossed over US$ 1.6 billion.
These products go far beyond pure entertainment. They embody values, ideas and messages that are assumed to possess a universal validity and are dedicated to moulding a world in their own image. Like people elsewhere, Thais have been open to these messages and ideas and have shown a great readiness to imitate and adopt new modes of behaviour. Indeed, this capacity for imitation and adaptation may be essential for understanding the speed and extent to which Thailand has been so fully and effectively integrated in the world system. The same readiness finds expression in the often uncritical acceptance of ideas and products that may be antithetical to the values that are deeply rooted in Thai society. In this case, globalization brings not only blessings but also burdens that erode traditional values, weaken local institutions and uproot local communities. It is able to contribute to cultural alienation and the undervaluing or even rejection of social and cultural assets that have been built up over centuries.
The cultural homogenisation promoted by globalization finds its most concrete expression in the overly materialistic and consumer-driven behaviour of the more affluent and urbanized sections of society, the first to be influenced by western lifestyles and values. A powerful industry has grown up that actively promotes these values. There are 180 advertising agencies in Thailand, 20 of which are branches of large international agencies, and 18 joint ventures, that actively promote a global consumer culture that recognizes neither national populations nor national boundaries. They recognize only a segmented market based upon the economic status of consumers. MNCs have found that the distribution of products to different regions of the world under a marketing plan that uses the same message is increasingly effective.
These marketing strategies are greatly facilitated by the rapid growth in the ownership of television - 88 per cent of the urban population and 68 per cent of the rural population had access to colour TVs in 1996 compared with 78 per cent and 39 per cent respectively in 1990 - with television advertising accounting for nearly one-half of all advertising by value, which increased six-fold in nominal terms between 1988 and 1995, from Bt 6.5 billion to Bt 37 billion. The five companies with the largest advertising budgets in the mid-1990s were all foreign MNCs - Lever Brothers, Proctor and Gamble, Nestle, Sony, and Coca-Cola - using marketing strategies that differed little from those used elsewhere. Thais are known from marketing surveys to attach greater importance to the status that may come with foreign products rather than their real value, with around two out of three Thais admitting that their purchasing decisions are directly influenced by advertising.15
The international travel that follows in the wake of globalization and rising incomes has provided increasing numbers of Thais with even greater opportunities to indulge their consumer preferences. In the period 1990-96, the number of Thai tourists doubled from 900,000 to 1.8 million. They typically spend as much on shopping as they do on accommodation, travel and meals combined."

May 18, 2008 at 5:47 PM

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)