On Tommy and Naomi Kline

I'm not especially fond of Naomi Kline's pedantic hyperleftist take on consumerism and alt-culture in No Logo, particularly given the degree to which this trendy culture-jamming took over in the late 90s/early 2000s—when everyone with a passing interest in politics gorged on Michael Moore and Adbusters like it was seriously blowing their minds!, oh dear—but she obviously has some things to say about consumer culture and the mass marketing of Cool that are relevant to our discussions of Heathers and, to a lesser extent, The Faculty.

In his post on The Faculty earlier today, So Sayeth The Watcher expounds upon the film's Tommy ad tie-in, noting the irony in a film about the pressures of conformity and the desire for individuality cashing in on product placement and character testimonials. Although I get that this move is amusing, I'm not sure it's as revelatory as people seem to make it out to be. As I observed in class—and which, granted, The Watcher concedes—marketing and product placement is standard operating procedure in Major Hollywood productions, regardless of themes or content (er, unless it's, like, Schindler's List or something). But where I most adamantly disagree with the Watcher is in suggestion that since it's "cool to sell out" (according to Naomi Kline), The Faculty's audiences obviously associate the protagonists' jeans-hawking with rebellion and individuality and hipness. We need, first of all, to distinguish between the youth culture Naomi Kline is writing about in that particular section of No Logo, teens coming of age in the late 80s and early 90s, or "the MTV generation", or whatever, with "today"'s teenagers, whose savvyness for marketing and product placement is slightly different, and maybe a little more sophisticated, than the kids of the generation prior. As Joe has noted numerous times in class, generations of kids and cool come in small cycles or waves, cycles are which are far more transient than the broader generations we associate with major time periods (baby boomers, Generation X, etc); the kids in the primary buying demographic during the hip hop boom of the late 80s or big brand revivalism of the very early 90s are importantly not the same major-demo kids of 1998, when The Faculty was released, nor are even close to the same demographic as the kids today, whose heightened involvement with social networking and myriad other technologies distinguish them hugely from previous niche markets.

Let's break this down a little, then:

THE LATE 80s/EARLY 90s KIDS:
Kline talks at length about the way kids were marketed to in the period immediately following the last recession, when big business realized that tweens and teens had buying power and a willingness to shell out big bucks for "cool" products. The focus from a marketing standpoint was to associate brands with the notion of cool, or to generally get kids to think whatever you're selling is a cool thing. We might call this the "naive" marketing stage: simple associations, like celebrity endorsements (a "cool" teen star wearing your product, for example) are effective on children and teenagers primarily because these teenagers do not have any previous experience with this kind of aggressive marketing strategy—straightforward ads appeal to their basic need to be told what is and is not cool.

IMMEDIATELY SUBSEQUENT TO THIS PERIOD:
Kline doesn't really get into this, but anybody interested in marketing strategies and the culture of cool in the early 90s would be advised to check out David Foster Wallace's essay E Unibus Pluram: Television And U.S. Fiction, which talks about the introduction of irony into television programming of the late 80s/early 90s, and how that affects audiences and vice versa. He cites an example of a popular and successful Pepsi ad wherein a guy driving a Pepsi truck stops by a beach of kids, and then sips his can of Pepsi loudly over a speaker system which projects across the area. The kids hear him drinking the Pepsi and rush over in swarms to buy one, before the slogan—"The choice of a new generation!"—is placed atop the scene. The ad is a sly parody of advertising strategies which presume that audiences will want to buy the product simply by seeing or hearing it, the irony being that the slogan, the "choice", clashes with the very idea of mass marketing and advertising and consumption. Like The Watcher notes, it's that old cliche: buy our product to be unique, just like everybody else. But not only is this a revelation and irony that was obvious in 1990, it's one that the ad companies themselves are so aware of being cliche that they work it into their own advertisements: the kids are no longer naive enough to just fall for ads and think something is cool; they now require the irony and sarcasm of new, smarter advertising to appeal to their more discerning sensibilities.

WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE FACULTY'S AD TIE-IN
I said it before, and I maintain it: People aren't totally stupid. Joe's right to say that many people fall for ads—right, that's why they still advertise stuff—but advertisers are smart enough to know that basic appeals to authority and figures of cool aren't enough to move units to kids who've grown up with exactly the kinds of naive advertising mentality we're here criticizing. Everybody's leery of the greasy used car salesman, the fake celebrity endorsement pitch, the voice over describing more side-effects than the product's meant to cure—these things have been drilled into our head so much for so long that to do one seriously and honestly would be unthinkable. Advertisers know that these things aren't effective, so for the last twenty years they've been making ads with that knowledge already worked in. You think Tommy Jeans and The Faculty aren't aware of the irony that their advertisement clashes with the theme of the film? Or that we're going to be aware of that? Guess what: It's not a revelation; it's part of the point. The ad in question involves a parody of movie-making, where the frustrated director repeatedly tells the actors to change until they reach a fever pitch of frustration—"Give me TOMMY JEANS!", he shouts, and suddenly everybody's cool and happy again. The ad is hip, it's nonchalant, it's meant to give you a "candid" look at the making of a movie, except it's obviously scripted and staged in advance—and we're obviously meant to know that going in.

Uh, so, anyway: I think you've got to give these advertisers more credit. This is, like, their job.

NOW THEN:
It's all about irony and disinterest. Kids are bored and dejected, they're hip and they don't care, and the only advertising that appeals to them is the advertising which seems "above" it. Designer clothes are more niche than before, with more "any-clothes-whatever" being the in thing. That's why you get this:

Instead of, like, tact and stuff. American Apparel ads are the great meta-ads of our generation, profiling sexy, skanky and totally disaffected youth in (some of) their clothing, but infused with enough pomo irony and self-awareness to prevent obvious mocking or parody. "Trite", you might say, "totally obvious". But then they say: "Well, yes, but it's not just an ordinary-looking hipster with no top on, it's a self-reflexive hipster with no top on—it's, um, subversive". And doesn't she look cool.

POINT BEING:
It's way too obvious to decide that "Selling Out = Really COOL!" and "Kids = Total Suckers", because this a far more complex system than that. And also: Naomi Kline breeds thoughtless pedantry.

OH, AND HEATHERS, I GUESS:
I'd never seen Heathers before but I liked it quite a lot. The hardlined "social satire" aspects were all well and good, its criticisms of social hierarchies and hegemonic power in high schools perfectly fair, but what I was most surprised by was the flippancy with which the movie treated the death of the students. I was expecting the narrative to go through the redundant motions of realism, excusing the murders in some totally contrived coverup way, but subordinating narrative realism to satire and humor was a good move.

More on this later, probably.