The principal lecturer today used subject matter from a book that I read last year, John Berger's "Ways of Seeing", (1972, Published by Penguin, London New York), which was originally derived from a television series from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC). In this series of short films taken in the cultural context of the early 1970s, (after a very rapid period of change in our culture in the Western civilisation, during the 1960s; - which saw events such as the assassination of the President of the United States (John F. Kennedy), through to placing a man on the moon), together with the new found liberalisation of the common man.
John Berger positions himself in these films as a Marxist critique. During that particular time (1970s), the investment in art was almost always made in classical oil paintings. Berger saw that galleries and become "upmarket capitalist banking" stores. Many artists at the time were also reacting to this situation and wanted to create value in alternative forms of art and materials.
In episode four of the series of films "Ways of Seeing" Berger explored the concept of what was called "publicity", which is now known more generally as "advertising". In this discussion, he talks of "glamour" and the continual urge of society to aspire towards 'becoming glamorous'. The celebrity culture and glamour is therefore very closely linked some 40+ years later.
In a contemporary sense, by looking at the "Hello World" news channel, which is an ongoing commentary of celebrity news, - if one perhaps chooses to look at the symbolism and semiotics associated to current celebrity culture, it is still very easy read those unwritten messages of social interaction, class, status, culture and taste. A recent example may be to look at the actress Emma Watson and how she is currently portrayed within the news clips on this channel. She is almost always dressed in white, the accompanying narrative discussion is about the recent linkage with another actor on a romantic scale. All the traditional signs of purity, virginal, and 'marriage ready' symbology seems to have been selected. Whether this is done unwittingly by the news director, or as some serious and well educated choice of selection, is not known. Nevertheless, the affect of the news clips, subliminally creates a message in all the viewer, which manipulates our beliefs and feelings towards an event happening of a romantic and up-market / high class nature.
An alternative example perhaps, may be a recent advert by Dolce Gusto, a coffee machine manufacturer. In their short one and a half minute advert, there are a multitude of symbolic references to suggest sophistication and upper status - middle-class association with the product. The opening sequence is made upon an African mask, (the subject matter at one time associated with Picasso's original reference source material for Cubism); next to this mask is a 'cubist' style artistically created square ornament. Then, a replica model of the ancient and classical Greek Aphrodite's statue, starts to speak with a high society accent and confident voice. The next frame however is taken from an unsophisticated modernist or even post-modernist 'Kitsch' style scupture of a 'half-bust' mouth, with a very broad northern accent, suggesting that she does not understand the context of the conversation. When all these images and symbolism is are combined, together with a reference of "Pop art" mentioned in the narrative, and then just juxtaposes it all with the coffee machine product. This then, together with the final image of a very clean cut twenty-somethings couple, drinking coffee, it is purely intended to create an 'affectation' in the viewer that "You to can be just like us", ...successful, elegant, sophisticated, fashionable and other positive affirmational references to lead the viewer to think "if you to buy the same coffee machine that they are using you will be all those things, just like us".
Coming back to John Berger, he goes on to describe how traditional oil paintings were originally a representation, almost always associated with the elite, and were a reflection what the world that existed at the time around them "in realism".
However during this century, whilst photography has been used to represent the real, it is also much used in publicity and advertising to give the common man a 'picture' of the "the dream". This is an intended 'imaginary future', a Utopia of sorts, conjured up by advertising specialists. It is "like a skin without biography", one commentator once wrote. Advertising is all positioned to suggest that you the viewer will be at the centre of this dream if you buy the product.
The alternative 'dream' then, is also that of escapism, sometimes described in the terms of "distances without horizons". A good example of this would be a reflection of the advertisement, with taglines such as "Aramis is an Attitude". It is interesting that other producers also looking to sell their products to a 'higher class' consumer, uses very similar taglines, for example the watchmaker Patek Philippe uses the quote "Elegance is an Attitude".
Berger puts forward a strong argument and critique about advertising, capitalism, and the notion of have's and have-nots of society.
Barbara Kruger was also a productive artist who also did similar critiques on the same theme. Whilst this work was done in the late 1960s and early 1970s, the contrast of rich & poor, and chasing the dream, is still all around us. For the poor Third World countries, versus the rich Western cultures that conjure up an image of 'reality' and "the dream" has not, in any means, changed sincee Berger's observations of 40+ years earlier. If anything, the gap is still widening...
No comments:
Post a Comment