This Is My House

About two-thirds down on the page of the Baghdad Musem (http://www.baghdadmuseum.org/) is a snippet of text, an extract from a Mesopotamian text thousands of years old.

It touched me.

I'm also ashamed by it, because it illustrates how little humans have learned in this time about human suffering, and that one of the basic paradoxes about human existence is how prolific inhumanity still is:

Dead men, not potsherds
littered the way.
In the wide streets
where the crowds once gathered and cheered,
the corpses lay scattered.
In the fields where the dancers once danced
the dead were heaped up in piles.......

This is my house:

where food is not eaten,
where drink is not drunk,
where seats are not sat in,
where beds are not made,
where jars lie empty,
and cups are overturned,
where harps no longer vibrate
and tunes no longer sing.

This is my house:

without a husband,
without a child,
without even
me.

Photo by Buddy Stone
(http://www.flickr.com/photos/50087332@N00/444492912/)

Hot & un-bothered

Lars' garden
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr

Why are you reading this?

GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY!!!

How to make the ultimate advertisement

According to the movie, getting married to rich men, having sex with wealthy men and striving to create the nuclear family with a rich man should be at the top of every strong and egocentric woman's agenda.

COMMERCE IN THE CITY:

When the HBO series Sex In The City dropped onto TV-screens 10 years ago, I found Carrie to a sympathetic character who observed and deconstructed with an ironic and critical eye, the blazing singles-meatmarket that is New York. I had no qualms mentioning to people that I watched and enjoyed the show.As the series gained popularity, the focus shifted from snappy and sophisticated glances and observations about the relationships between men and women from a woman's point of view, to become more about the superficial things that made up the mise-en-scene of the series: the shoes, the food, the apartments. In a matter of seasons, the series became a the entire back-catalogue of the Vogue Magazine Empire, and then I am including Conde Nast Traveller and Vogue Living.

What strikes me as most disturbing, is the packaging of the show, which is manipulative and subtle. Women seem too willing to swallow the whole concept as Neo-Feminism and be in denial about the incredible egocentric and patriarchial tone of the show. Even though Samantha, Carrie, Miranda and Charlotte are in charge of their own lives and are, in many senses of the word, strong women, their entire existence is made up in the pursuit of happiness in the form of a man, and the ultimate goal: marrying the perfect man and having the perfect wedding.

The Sex In The Series Movie symbolises what the series has become: an incredible opportunity for companies to showcase their products and to reach consumers on a whole new level; I realised today that this movie is the ultimate marketing tool. Recipe for success is as follows.

How to make the ultimate advertisement:

1. Women are, as many know, the ultimate consumers. When rightly motivated, they can be convinced to develop a level of consumption that is unrivalled in other capitalistic economies.

2. In order to reach a huge female demographic, it is important to not just have one character, but four. These characters must, as fashion and other fashionrelated products, change according to season. In this way, it is possible to differentiate the enormous variety of products that will be showcased and also to use the different characters to target each consumer more effectively. For example, those viewers who sympathise with Carrie, are most likely to buy Manolo Blahnik shoes, buy Belvedere Vodka and Vivienne Westwood clothes.

3. One of the hardest thing about branding, is developing brand loyalty. But, how to by-pass years of efforts in trying to build relationships with possible customers? Why, by having consumers adopt fully and wholly the loyalty and taste of brands of another person they look up to and almost worship; the ultimate way to sell a product is to create a cult following, a hardcore base of fans, because these fans will never question, never doubt any product reccommendation the corresponding character will make merely through the stylised consumption of the products.

4. Build this advertising vessel over ten years, spin it off into a movie, and you end up with an advertising channel that will propogate itself into all eternity in and even generate its own income in the form of DVD-sales and box-office sales.

Think I'm too cynical?

Check this out:
Vanity Fair got two reporters to watch the movie twice and find all the product-placements. Productplacement is for all that don't know or have never noticed, "a type of advertising, in which promotional advertisements placed by marketers using real commercial products and services in media, where the presence of a particular brand is the result of an economic exchange (Wikipedia)." In short: whenever you see a product or service in a movie or TV show, chances are someone paid to have it there. It is a great way for a network or movie-studio to keep costs down and secure Return On Investment.

Designers:
Manolo Blahnik (consistently and constantly)
Vivienne Westwood (more than any other designer, most notably as Carrie’s wedding dress)
Louis Vuitton (lots and lots and lots)
Chanel (at least five times)
Dior
Ferragamo
Roger Vivier
Diane von Furstenberg (a scene was filmed in her New York City store)
Hermès
Christian Loubutin (one very clear shot of bright red soles)
Prada
Escada
Versace
Gucci (several handbags—including a big white “Gucci heart NY” one—and brown glossy shopping bags)
Vera Wang
Oscar de la Renta
Carolina Herrera
Christian Lacroix
Lanvin
Nike
Adidas
Burberry
Tiffany and Co. (Carrie’s wedding gifts)
Swarovski (constantly sparkled on Carrie’s encrusted cell phone; also shined on a clip in Miranda’s hair, Stanford’s wedding tuxedo, and on Charlotte’s daughter’s cupcake purse)
Hello Kitty (décor of choice in Charlotte’s daughter’s room)

Stores & Services:
Henri Bendel
Scoop
Bluefly.com
Duane Reade
Manhattan Mini Storage (boxes and boxes in nearly every scene shot in Carrie’s apartment)
Bag Borrow or Steal (referenced, explained, and punned on repeatedly)
Netflix
U-Haul

Gadgets:
Apple (Carrie’s computer)
iPhone (Samantha’s cell phone—not exactly Carrie’s style)
Blackberry (Miranda’s phone)
Bang & Olufsen (Samantha’s shapely phone in her Mailibu pad)
Dell (Miranda and Big’s computers)
Cuisinart (wedding gift for Carrie)
Sprint (Carrie’s service provider—flashed frequently)

Publications:
Vogue (the real editorial office and staffers, a photo shoot, and the magazine itself)
New York PostPage Six (what better place for an engagement announcement?)
Entertainment Weekly
New York magazine
Marie Claire
The Wall Street Journal (Big’s before-bed read)

Sips and Snacks:
Starbucks (again and again)
Pellegrino (on a table or two)
Skky Vodka (to drown Carrie’s many sorrows)
VitaminWater (first an ad hanging on a wall, then on every seat under the tents for Fashion Week)
Smart Water (the water of choice—all over the place)
Pret a Manger (bagged lunch in the park for two)
Cup of Noodles (New Year’s Eve feast)

From the Pharmacy:
L’Oreal
Garnier
Fructis
Nivea
Jergens
Clean & Clear

Places and Ways to Get There:
New York Public Library (the wedding locale)
Lumi (the site of Charlotte and Big’s confrontation)
Buddakan
The Four Seasons
Mercedes-Benz (Big’s chauffer-driven car)
Lincoln Town Car (Carrie’s wedding limousine)
Christie’s (the girls attended an Ellen Barkin-inspired jewelry auction here)
American Airlines (on an ad in Samantha’s office)

source: http://www.vanityfair.com/ontheweb/blogs/daily/2008/05/sex-and-the-cit.html

SJP's wardrobe divided up. After the movie, countless magazines like Cosmo and Elle will dissect the characters' clothes and suggest other clothes that are similar. In this way, other clothing brands can piggyback off the image of a high-fashion label. Clever.

How much is tragedy worth?

As a communications-professional, I understand newsworthiness.

I live by it every day as I have to relate to gatekeepers all the time . I understand that there are several criteria the press have in place for something to be newsworthy, that being a gatekeeper is a tricky role because one has to balance commercial interest and news.

But this perplexes me:

It shows a part of human nature at its most inhuman, I think, when the majority of us are more interested in what some deranged austrian did to his daughter, than 100.000 casualties in a country that is run by a military junta that has closed off the country to outsiders and consequently are making sure many more will perish.

It also seems that for a newsstory like this to catch on - to get our sympathyjuices flowing - someone from a first-world country has to be involved, on other words: someone from the first-world has to die.

If they do, chances are the rescue effort and the subsequent media coverage will take on epic proportions. If, by chance, several tourists are involved in a tragedy, there is no end to the lengths of our sympathy and capabilities for action. It seems, brutally, that a westerner's life is worth a thousand third-world ones.

In Nettavisen yesterday on the crisis in Burma, was an article named "why does noone read this story?" that questioned why some obviously tabloidised stories were more frequently read, even in the face of enormous disaster, which means even members of the media are asking why this event has only managed to get people to click on the headline, read a few lines and then go walk the dog or go buy an ice cream and not really care.

So, who do we blame? Sadly, I believe that the mere abundance of information avaliable today and the speed of which we are accustomed to it being updated, has a devastatingly inhumanising effect. The respected sociologist Anthony Giddens says that

'[f]ateful moments are times when events come together in such a way that an individual stands, as it were, at a crossroads in his existence; or where a person learns of information with fateful consequences (Giddens 1991, p. 113).'

The way in which this story is unfolding, seems to me that for most of the western world, the rape of an Austrian girl is more powerful, fateful and devastating than the gruelling death of almost 100.000 burmese people.

This illustrates a core fundamental trait in human beings:

'..if you are not like everybody else, then you are abnormal, if you are abnormal , then you are sick. These three categories, not being like everybody else, not being normal and being sick are in fact very different but have been reduced to the same thing (Foucalt 2004, p. 95).'

It also illustrates what people such as the influental scholar Edward Said has been theorising about for over three decades; because of the history of western elightenment, imperialism and subsequently the growth of a western world view which has been adopted globally, westeners are for some reason worth more than "easterners:"

'[s]ince the time of Homer every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric (Said 1978, pp. 25-28).'

Power and discourse are important in this respect, because I think many don't reflect on how they function. According to Foucault, any event can be seen as a a "text." Just as a text has been "authored," any event or situation can be authored, and can subsequently be critically examined in order to reveal the agenda behind it. In this way, any biased event (any event period, really) can become "real" because it is actively produced through discourses of power, in other words the way language is structured around an event by the groupings that are the most influential.

It's a hard pill to swallow, to realise that we can be inhuman sometimes, and therefore I think most people try not to think about it. Therefore, it's important to remember that every time you click a link on a news-website, it is registered, and that means that every person sitting in front of a computer screen has some degree of power over what is represented in front of them. The reason why the letters of a raped austrian girl are more intersting and gets more attention, is the simple fact that people are more inclined to click that link than the one saying a hundred thousand people have been killed, and so the blame really has to placed on each and every one of us.


Bibliography:

Dagbladet.no, 8. may 2008, accessed 09:45

Nettavisen 7. May, accessed 14:50

Giddens, Anthony (1991), Modernity and self-identity. Self and society in the late modern age. Cambridge (Polity Press)

Michel Foucault, (2004) 'Je suis un artificier'. In Roger-Pol Droit (ed.), Michel Foucault, entretiens. Paris: Odile Jacob, p. 95. (Interview conducted in 1975. This passage trans. Clare O'Farrell)

Edward W. Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978)

No go

No go
Originally uploaded by phunkstarr

I see that it has been almost a year since I blogged last. For a second I thought it was because I've read alot, but when I think about it, I really haven't read alot either... no more than usual.

I took a look through my mailbox at at all the times I've taken the time to write something, and it turns out I've been most prolific at times when I've had doubts about the future, for example when I left Australia after three years of study, the oddness of getting used to being home, going back to Australia again and so on.

Is happiness a creativity-killer? It would seem so, especially writing. There's nothing that can feed good literature as much as doubt, insecurity, suffering, anguish and unhappiness.

Generally, when people are capable of writing when they are happy, it's uninteresting gibberish.

But I'm going to try again. It doesn't mean that I'm completely happy, but that I've been working hard to get to a point where I can be.

The Arctic Ronin is officially back.