Tattoos and the Commodification of Self

It is perhaps ironic that we just finished a class discussion on tattoos as a means to “mark” one’s identity both physically and metaphorically. This discussion took place in the broader discussion regarding fashion and identity. Tattooing is an art form. Tattooing is a fashion statement. Getting a tattoo is a significant act imbued with all sorts of meaning. It’s not cheap either. I brought up a point that I think was difficult at that time to digest: the idea that young people mark their bodies because they do not feel they are likely to leave a mark on this world. The tattoo is permanently yours, no one can take it away from you, and it is something you’ll likely die with (although we acknowledge the possibility of laser removal). When I said that young people feel they will not likely make a mark on this world, one student was able to clarify better than I what this might mean: she referred to a friend at a large university who was known only by his student number. Yes, we live with growing anonymity in this postmodern world where identity is shape shifting on what seems a constant basis: who I am in class is not who I am at my internship, etc. etc.

Tattooing is a way of temporarily fixing identity, of grounding it in something that is physical – you can look at it, although often times we hide tattoos from others, and it is meaningful; quite meaningful we learned as people get tattoos to mark moments in time (travel abroad), as a statement of belief, in memory of someone lost, among other reasons. Of course, once you have one tattoo, you have to get another one, because that is the only way one can create “difference” and in that individuality. The more anonymity grips us, the more we grope for difference. The New York Times (2/18/09) reports on the phenomenon of renting one’s body as a commercial billboard, in this case with a temporary henna tattoo advertising Air New Zealand. This strikes me as interesting, first because I’ve read about this in the past. Indeed a few years ago I read of a woman who offered to rent her bulging pregnant belly to an advertiser. And another young man offered to rent his forehead for a commercial message.

This commodification of the body seems to me to represent the final blow to the tattoo trend, LA Ink notwithstanding. Here I mean to reflect another point that came out of our discussion: that tattooing isn’t as popular with Gen Y as it was with members of Gen X. Trends are like that, eventually they all get flushed through the system. But that doesn’t mean that this current generation of teens and young adults has found an antidote for social instability, of which I think the recent tattoo trend is emblematic. Rather, there may be greater significance to renting out one’s body to an advertiser: it may mean that the commodified body is one that is totally devoid of personal meaning. It may be the ultimate statement of anonymity. To give one’s self up to a corporation renders the body meaningless (George Orwell, where are you when we need you!). When I think of this state of affairs it saddens me until I realize that culture is dynamic, and another trend will ultimately replace this one. What the next generation of youngsters will move on to is anybody’s guess. But how they will deal with a society that increasingly treats them as a number and not a person is another matter entirely.

Celebrity apologia: Springsteen, A-Rod, Phelps say I’m sorry

Blender Burner: Springsteen: Hard to Be a Saint in the Rock & Roll City @ Yahoo! Video

The fan-celebrity relationship is a complex one, especially so in an age of instant communication: A celebrity driving drunk on Santa Monica Blvd. crashes into another vehicle and the video is quickly available on TMZ.com. The information about celebrities’ comings and goings is the stock and trade of Perez Hilton, whose website for many of my students is the first one they go to upon waking each morning. Celebrity gossip fuels our very being, it would seem. At the same time, such relationships—imaginary as they are—are dynamic; subject to negotiation. That is why marketers are so fearful of celebrity spokespeople to the point that several marketers have opted in recent years to employ the images of dead celebrities, including Steve McQueen, Gene Kelly, Fred Astaire, and Audrey Hepburn, among others, in their advertising campaigns.

This has been a banner week or two for celebrity gossip mongers: Chris Brown allegedly beats up Rihanna, Phelps' photo appears in a British tabloid with lips pressed to a bong, and A-Rod admits using banned substances. And, I don’t want to leave out Bruce Springsteen, champion of the working-class union worker, who apologies for two things: first, for the exclusive deal he made with Wal-Mart to sell a greatest hits CD (Wal-Mart is not known for its union friendly policies); and, many fans who wanted to obtain tickets to his upcoming concert tour were, upon learning that a concert was sold out, were re-directed to a ticket re-seller (use to be called scalper) who offered tickets at a much higher price.

All of this not only gives us pause to think, it requires that we invest a lot of energy in making up our own mind regarding the behavior of these media figures - good or bad, right or wrong. One could suggest that it is time wasted, but I am suggesting that it is through the processing of these kinds of instances they we make sense of our world, where we find common ground with others, and in the process seek terra firma – solid ground upon which to stand our values. That is the way pop culture works and the work we do with it. It requires a lot for us to stay engaged in this system. I guess that’s why my students upon waking go directly to the Perez Hilton web site.

The dictionary defines the word fanatic as someone “marked by excessive enthusiasm and often intense uncritical devotion.”

The question remains: will Chris Brown’s fans abandon him, or will people shun Michael Phelps because of his substance abuse, or will fans stop attending Yankee games because they think A-Rod is a fake? We’ll have to pay attention as fans negotiate their relationship with each of these media figures. As for Springsteen, if you’re a devoted fan, are you really not going to go into a Wal-Mart to purchase the CD if you really want it? John Fiske, the cultural theorist, said that pop culture is contradictory to its core. As the fan-celebrity relationship is part of that complex system, so are we.

Kellogg’s to Michael Phelps: We’re just not that into you!

Michael Phelps brought this on himself; that’s what the blogosphere seems to be suggesting. As one blogger bluntly put it – “he’s an idiot.” It is through such public and private expressions that we make sense of our world, and since we learn about such events through popular culture, this is an opportunity to discuss the role that pop culture—not Michael Phelps—plays in our lives. The public criticism of Michael Phelps centers on his alleged use of an illegal substance while being a role model for young people all over the world. Some defenders of his actions assign them to mere immaturity and they offer forgiveness. Then there are those, like the blogger quoted above, who publicly want to chastise him. There are middle positions that condemn his actions, but want to forgive him because of his youth. That’s the way pop culture works – it gives us one or perhaps several versions of a story and then we measure them against our own beliefs. Of course there has to be salience and above all else relevance in order for this process to ensue. It is through that “measuring” process that we do the work of culture – producing meaning in order to make sense of the world in which we live. In that way pop culture is a sense making mechanism. We sometimes discuss situations like this one with people we actually know through what I would call authentic relationships, and sometimes our conversations extend to social networks, primarily over the Internet, which I would call virtual relationships. But there are internal musings as well – we talk to ourselves about Michael Phelps – a kind of running commentary inside our head; I call this the imaginary social world. It is the combination of the three that extends the nature of what we call reality. There is authentic reality, inauthentic reality, and an imaginary world that mimics both the authentic and inauthentic worlds. We readily acknowledge the former, and we reluctantly admit to the inauthentic, which might be represented by the hundreds of pseudo-friends you have on Facebook. But we rarely admit to the third. It is from the label imaginary social world that this blog gets its title, and it is that world in which I’m most interested, if for no other reason than the fact that action-oriented Western culture holds the imaginary world in disdain. Westerners don’t like to recognize this inner world because it encompasses thought in the form of self-talk, daydreams, and nocturnal dreams. These are aspects of everyday American life in which we are engaged, but go against the grain of being a productive citizen. Nevertheless, we spend an inordinate amount of time in the imaginary social world making sense of our authentic reality.

Digital Media Rights: Who Owns What?

Copyright infringement and pop culture is something we don’t think much about in this day and age of forgery and fakery. The latest issue comes from the use by street artist Shepard Fairey(I first learned about Fairey when he appeared on a recent Colbert Report.) who designed a poster with an image of President Barak Obama “owned” by an Associated Press photographer. The Associated Press says in news articles that it wants to be compensated for the use of the photograph, and it wants to be credited with taking the original photograph on which this Fairey’s artwork is based. In other words, AP is charging copyright infringement. The stylized image of Obama has been described as Warholesque, referring to the late pop artist Andy Warhol. Which made me think of Warhol’s use of those Campbell soup cans in a series of art works he created. Weren’t those soup can images owned by Campbell. Turns out, the answer is yes. Campbell’s did sue Warhol for copyright infringement. However, they garnered so much free publicity from the artistic rendering of the soup can, they eventually dropped the lawsuit.

In this present age of “cut and paste,” it’s becoming more difficult to know where the lines are drawn. In other words, when it comes to intellectual property, we are no longer certain what is legal to reproduce and what is not. Perhaps if Fairey didn’t sell the images he created, there wouldn’t be much ado about this, but because commerce is involved, and I don’t want to underestimate the rights issue here, AP seems to have a legitimate gripe. Whether they will go the Campbell’s route—feasting on the publicity—I don’t know. With digital images so readily available over the Internet, law professors with an interest in copyright are very busy these days. The legal concept of fair use does not grant absolute right to the originator of the intellectual property. The extent of those rights depends on how the original work is utilized, among other things. In the case of the Fairey work, use extends beyond the Obama campaign poster to a book cover, art exhibit, and to a permanent display at the National Portrait Gallery in D.C.

From my initial readings on the issue, I don’t think AP is going to go after Fairey in court; street artists rarely are worth suing. But the point AP is making has to be taken seriously, and should remind us that what seems “free” over the Internet may actually be someone’s property.

I'm Good. You're Good. We're all Good

Okay, so comedic violence is nothing new. Think about the merging of Greek tragedy and Greek comedy. In contemporary society, there is no shortage of it. Although the late communication scholar George Gerbner spent much of his life researching media violence by counting the number of violent acts in television programs, as early as the 1970s he gave into the demand of CBS to eliminate the category of comedic violence from his studies. The network's position was that to include acts of comedic violence with, well, regular violence would drive the number of violent acts exorbitantly high.

Now for the pause that refreshes…an assessment of this year's Super Bowl commercials. In particular, I’m interested in the commercial for Pepsi Max. (I know I take this stuff way too seriously, but some one has to. And, I know my analysis of commercials sucks all the fun out of watching them, but so be it - that's my role in life.) So, what's up with the Pepsi Max spot, titled "I'm Good," that joins the long list of advertisements -- Super Bowl and otherwise -- that attack masculinity?



As you can see for yourself, the spot goes through a series of vignettes: the first one features a guy being hit in the back with a length of wood that is spit out of a planner, in reaction to which he declares "I'm good," meaning he's okay, even though a two-by-four just hit him in the lower back at twenty mph. This is followed by a golfer who in the process of teeing off swings and hits his golfing buddy both with the back and forward stroke of his driver. Then a bowler drops a ball on the head of his bowling buddy, and a passenger stands up through the sunroof of a limousine, declaring "I'm the man..." while being struck by the low abutment of a parking garage the limo is entering. After each of these sequences the object of the "comedic violence" declares to his buds, "I'm good." The last scene depicts several guys doing electric work on a house. One fellow sticks his hand into an outdoor light socket as another switches on the electricity. The guy with his hand in the socket goes flying through the air for about 30 feet until he hits a trailer parked on the property, and upon landing also declares, "I'm good." The voice over at this point boldly states: "Men can take anything, except the taste of diet cola...until now." Of course Pepsi Max is offered as a solution to this problem. The announcer then says that Pepsi Max is the first diet cola for men. Isn't that nice? A diet cola just for men; men who can take anything, that is, except the taste of diet cola. All in good fun, until you focus on the comedic violence.

Researchers have found that social conditions, like the economic recession we are presently experiencing, encourage people to gravitate toward more violent comedy. Why? According to one study:

“because violence makes comedy harder and angrier, although also satisfying viewers’ authoritarian desire to see those in power discipline transgressors.”

This means people enjoy seeing good guys punish bad guys. In the ad for Pepsi, the guys aren’t necessary good or bad, they’re, well, just guys. So where is the pleasure? The ad, in my opinion, is merely an attack on middle-class values, and part of a continuing attack on masculinity that started in the mid-1990s. I’ve been tracking this trend for several years now, having studied commercials in which guys are caught in public with their pants down, guys depicted as werewolves, and guys depicted as cavemen. In my opinion, the sum total of these advertisements suggests advertisers seek to discipline this target audience in a way that nudges them in the direction of the brand, product or service. I don’t think this trend is connected only to our current economic problems, although I think it is rooted in the economic problems men experienced in the early nineties when many lost their jobs and never were able to regain their status as “breadwinners.” So, rather than blaming this current trend on what I hope will be a relatively short-lived economic downturn, I suggest it is part of a longer term effort by advertisers to contain and control masculinity.