The greatest
challenge to freedom of expression today is so completely attractive, it is
buried beneath our every waking moment and we don’t even notice. Well, most of
the time. Looking at your girlfriend’s legs and seeing a mole spoil its
otherwise perfect canvas might trigger recollections of the last billboard
you’ve seen, where a goddess is draped over fashionable perfume with the
typescript of a budget wedding invitation. It might crop up at night when you’re
thinking about calling that friend who wears the chinos before deciding he’s
too preppy and try-hard. And the next morning, waiting for YouTube to skip past
a tiresome ad of nightclub revelry, you might spot a guy at the back and
wonder: “Is that me?”
Plenty of
people take advertising as the flavour of their mundanity, the shot in the arm
to keep ahead of the latest trends, hobbies and thought schools jostling for
acceptance in our increasingly globalized world. Technology has replaced
jingles and catchphrases with eye-catching events designed to elevate desires
to the same level as art or poetic expression. These images pollute the
cultural mainstream until they are a part of it, self-styled handbooks for how
to get along in whatever society we happen to be in. Of course, this wouldn't
be so bad if some pointers were given to the unattractive, the losers, the
moralists, the down-and-outers who feel that Apple is sucking the dying breath
out of normal conversation. And the sad truth behind the contented,
well-adjusted folk is that they are not happy, not really, because they are
constantly advertising themselves.
How can we
ever relate to each other the same way our grandparents did when modern life
resembles the tiresome insights of the popular kid at school? Do this, do that,
no wait that guy in Morocco is having more fun, Christ should I be worrying
about whether that Japanese girl is legally fit to wear that skirt? On and on,
like klaxons blaring a terrifying ritual, the call of the elite to get off our
arses and do something. Actual
experience is a brochure for the kinds of people we think we are. Your best
mate could be a laugh, but what if they didn’t have the same tastes, the same concepts of what is
normal and what isn’t? No-one is safe – actors, singers, politicians – all
effectively saying “BUY US, WE’RE IN STOCK!”
Fair enough,
advertisement in itself is a form of expression. It is certainly the cleverest.
What makes the whole charade contemptible is an insistence on hubris and
staggering inhumanity. Love has lost its meaning; relationships are
associations, not built on simply being. Sure we can cherry-pick pieces of
cultural detritus and claim fulfillment, but emotional shortcomings could lie
under the surface, and if we don’t address them we just get dressed instead and
carry on. In the words of Don Draper, “What you call ‘love’ was invented by
guys like me to sell nylon.” Imagine that. Untold millions of Don Drapers,
smoking in the dark, wondering where it all went wrong.
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