FICTIVE ADVERTISING - Conversion of periodical literature to product message delivery systems.
FICTIVE
ADVERTISING CREDITS:
Conceived by Paul Clay
Created by Paul Clay and Jamie Leo
Fashions: Paul Clay
Styling: Star Studio Productions
Photo: Jo Lance www.jolancephoto.com
Make-up: Yukiko Takagi and Cadilac
Model: Annalyce
Special
thanks:
Abraham Lubelski, Kazue Soma, and everyone at NY ARTS MAGAZINE.
Fictive Advertising Statement: Business/Economics, Symbol Systems/Myths and Dreams.
"The major media are large corporations, owned by and inter linked with even larger conglomerates. Like other corporations, they sell a product to a market. The market is advertisers - that is, other businesses. The product is audiences for the elite media, relatively privileged audiences. So we have major corporations selling wealthy and privileged audiences to other businesses. Not surprisingly the picture of the world presented reflects the narrow and biased interests of the sellers, the buyers, and the product." - Noam Chomsky.
Culture jammers have been making fake ads for a while now. They usually involve hacking of a specific ad or campaign. "Subvertising." Part of the hack is usually to attack a particular brand. With fashion "subvertisements" the most common ones are Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger. Though this is powerful and effective, in some sense it's like what Naomi Klein, author of "No Logo," says about attacking corporations. A specific Multinational works as a handle to grab on to or rally against in order to get a point across, but the real problem which needs addressing is the hugely complex structure of global capital and trade agreement formation.
The problem is twofold. Part of the issue is the economics, and part of the issue is the meaning or symbol system. John de Graaf, Thomas Naylor, David Wann in their well thought out book "Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic" describe consumerism as "a painful, contagious, socially-transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more." Yet people aren't stupid, so what is going on?
Advertising is an important part of the puzzle. Its relation to the larger issue of global economic exploitation needs to be better understood. In one way it is just giant corporations trying to poison our thoughts so that we consume endlessly more product. Yet a simple economic analysis of advertising does not get at the whole of the problem. Equally important is its fundamental relation to meaning in our culture. Advertising is amazing. Advertising is beautiful. Advertising uses what we care about, the deep seated and fundamental beliefs and longings in our culture. We have to see that advertising, for better or worse, is carrying a huge part of our cultural canon right now.
In the 1980's people finally admitted to themselves that the point of businesses is not to provide products or services. The point is to make money. Because money, not service, is the ultimate goal, a bad product or service is just as effective as a good one if it makes money for the corporation. Provision of product or service is tangential to business. The two may happen to be in confluence at times but there is no guarantee or even need for them to be. It's quite possible that the less of a product you have and the less you pay workers to produce it the more profit you garner. Similarly, advertising is not about a product or service, but rather about getting as many people as possible to consume. It is not the product which is sold but the sense of a lack in the potential consumer. A combination of a dream and a sense that it is as yet unfulfilled - and that consuming will consummate the new hope or dream. This is the heart of the second part of the problem, the symbol system.
