Tag Archive for 'consumption'

Spend, spend, spend! It’s your patriotic duty… or something

Published
by
Mark
1 week, 4 days ago
in Disasters, Economics, Markets, Sociology and USA
. 90 Comments

The stock market has lost 51% of its value since its peak, a decline we’re told now exceeds the destruction of value seen in 1987. On the ABC News tonight, Alan Kohler grimly pointed to an index (tradeable, I think, but don’t quote me on that) of future sentiment which is apparently dire, and which apparently depressed that reified hive mind “the markets” even further. On Lateline Business, a British fellow in a very smart three piece pin stripe suit bemoaned the fact that all rationality in terms of valuation had departed from equities market, and what was left was “pure human sentiment” which apparently “isn’t pretty”. I think John Maynard Keynes might have had something to say about all that.

The stock market’s fall may also have had something to do with evidence of a growing deflation in consumer prices in America, or so opinionators opined. Well, I guess we don’t have the “inflation dragon” to kick around anymore.

And we’ve had another outpouring of deficit aversion, bipartisanship at last (!), in response to Glenn Steven’s expression of the belief that the government had a responsibility to “borrow to invest”.

And, yet, we’ve had a piece of prime silliness - to put alongside all these other signs of the times - in Crikey’s editorial:

There’s not a lot politicians can do. The Government handing money to low income earners who’ll have virtually no choice but to spend it makes sense, but there’s only a limited number of times a $10b heart-starter can be administered to the economy. Even the Opposition has been doing its bit lately, prefacing virtually every statement on the economy with the mantra that Australia is best-placed to weather these difficulties.

And there’s not much businesses can do without demand. It’s actually up to us consumers to realise Australia’s economic fate is in our hands, and act accordingly.

Righteo. Continue reading ‘Spend, spend, spend! It’s your patriotic duty… or something’

Bianca and Big Brother body politics

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 1 week ago
in Advertising, Australiana, Consumerism, Culture, Ethics, Fashion, Media, Politics, Sexuality, Sociology and Women
. 446 Comments

As a bit of a segue from my link to Eye on Big Brother’s last post, I was thinking a bit about Bianca and her body image issues, something I’ve discussed before. At one stage during Big Brother 2008, the narrative centred on Bianca’s breasts - her worries about her own body shape, her ambivalence about breast reduction surgery, and her displacement of her own troubled embodiment into criticism of Brigette and Rebecca and the other surgically enhanced FHM wannabes the show loved to cast over the last few years. She also had a bit of an awareness of how the womens’ bodies on the show functioned as signifiers of potential celebrity, and as objects to be scrutinised and traded among the men on the show - and implicitly the male viewers, though she didn’t really thematise this as such. Partly what was going on here was her own self-image and character work as “the smart chick”, but it’s also, when you reflect on it, I think, a classic example of how “society” is conceived in popular culture. I mentioned Rebecca Wilson’s comments on all the boob talk:

I think it was on the very first Big Brother Big Mouth this year that Rebecca Wilson asked whether it was normal for teenage and twenty-something women to talk so much about their breasts. She said that she couldn’t recall such discussions occurring when she was in her twenties.

Continue reading ‘Bianca and Big Brother body politics’

Disability and body image and reality tv

Published
by
Kim
4 months, 2 weeks ago
in Activism, Advertising, Consumerism, Culture, Disability, Ethics, Europe, Feminism, Film, TV, Video etc, International, Life, Media, Photography, Sexuality, Sociology and Women
. 128 Comments

I’m not sure if it’s in the BBC’s charter, but the venerable public broadcaster is allegedly trying to reach out to people with disabilities, and to increase social awareness of disability issues. Through such charming initiatives as their online Paris Hilton like trash celeb persona - “Disability Bitch”:

“Hi, I’m Disability Bitch. I’m disabled and I love it. Everyone should be disabled. Everyone should be like me.

“I own an extensive collection of colour-coordinated wigs and an even more extensive collection of colour-coordinated mobility aids, all of which complement my natural beauty…

Whatevs, darl. But there’s more. She’s not an all purpose disability bitch, but part of a reality tv franchise. In pursuit of its social inclusion agenda, the BBC is running a reality tv show - “Britain’s Missing Top Model” - the premise of which is that chicks missing limbs or in chairs can also be teh hotness and get to be in glossy fashion mags. It’s “Stylish, sassy, chic … disabled?”… The idea, I guess, is supposed to be that disability is no barrier to objectification. Continue reading ‘Disability and body image and reality tv’

Trolling, not just for the intertubes any more

Published
by
Kim
5 months, 1 week ago
in Books, Writers & Writing, Consumerism, Culture, Ethics, Media, Politics, Sociology and The Web
. 16 Comments

Jason Wilson picks up on the Burchell attack piece on bloggers I wrote about earlier today, and asks some pertinent questions. He also points to comments at Public Opinion:

He’s just trolling on an op-ed page.

Posted by: dj | June 23, 2008 10:33 AM

“He’s just trolling on an op-ed page.”

True. Baiting bloggers is the new tactic for attention seekers.

Posted by: Lyn | June 23, 2008 10:45 AM

Coincidentally, there’s a new post by danah boyd at apophenia about the diffusion of troll-like behaviour outside the intertubes:

Continue reading ‘Trolling, not just for the intertubes any more’

“Bianca hates Pretty Anglo Inc”

Published
by
Kim
5 months, 3 weeks ago
in Advertising and Consumerism
. 11 Comments

I love it! Best line of the season so far from Eye on Big Brother, who in a fascinating post, dissects what’s wrong with this year’s show - the rather ikky (in many ways) Terri has jumped to favouritism because she’s actually a - person. Not one of the identikit templates the producers have served up to the advertisers - the “FHM blonde”, the “funny dude”, the “good looking blokey bloke who works out”, the “brainy skinny guy”, the “overweight girl”, the “rural character” etc. What we’re witnessing, he argues, is commercial tv, reality style, eating itself because it’s too commercial for its own good.

Continue reading ‘“Bianca hates Pretty Anglo Inc”’

Privacy rights in Child Protection investigations: the need for the mass media to disguise identifying features on the minors in the Henson images

Published
by
tigtog
6 months ago
in Art, Consumerism, Ethics, Law, Media, Parenting, Photography and Politics
. 59 Comments

crossposted

Author Note: The original title of this post was “Do the right thing, Mainstream Media: disguise the faces of the minors in your reproductions of the Henson images NOW”, deliberately imperative because I wanted it to grab attention in people’s feed readers and hopefully provoke an immediate reaction. That has happened, the faces are now being pixellated in the mass media (not that I’m claiming that this is a direct result of this post), so I’m changing the title to something that sounds a bit more like “me” speaking.

* * *
The Age has an article quoting the mother of the girl whose image is the most widely disseminated with respect to the investigation of complaints against artist Bill Henson’s nude studies of adolescents. The mother defends Henson against claims that he did anything unethical, and mentions in a statement given to The Age via an intermediary that he has been a friend of the family for over 10 years, that her daughter has “a keen interest in the arts” and that the whole family were well acquainted with Henson’s work before the photo-shoot.

The Age claims to have discovered that the pictures were taken last year, and that the girl is still 13 years of age. That contradicts earlier reports that the images were several years old, which would have made the girl perhaps now 16 or 18, i.e. possibly made her no longer a minor. If The Age is correct, then she is still very much under-age, and I’m pretty sure that that creates a problem for the media who have disseminated Henson’s images of her online and in the press, or at least it certainly should.

I only yesterday realised that the censored images of Henson’s work readily available online mostly lack one key ingredient that we usually see when images of minors are at the heart of a news cycle about alleged sexual exploitation/abuse - there has been no black bar or pixellation over the face to disguise the minor’s identity.

Why the hell not? Continue reading ‘Privacy rights in Child Protection investigations: the need for the mass media to disguise identifying features on the minors in the Henson images’

Questions on the Bill Henson “sexualisation of children” debate

Published
by
Kim
6 months, 1 week ago
in Art, Consumerism, Culture, Ethics, Masculinity, Media, Parenting, Photography, Politics, Sexuality and Women
. 251 Comments

Image by Bill Henson - sourced from DailyServing.com

I’ve made my interpretation of Bill Henson’s images of adolescents clear in a previous post, and I want to talk here about some of the issues raised by and about the “debate” on Henson’s photography and the subsequent charges laid against him and the Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery owners.

The first point to make is that whatever the “debate” is now about, it’s not about Henson’s images as such. They literally disappeared from view on Thursday afternoon, and the interpretation of the image that’s attracted the most angst has been heavily slanted by its reproduction in numerous tabloid media outlets, with black bars over the subject’s breasts which have made it a sexualised image no matter what Henson’s (or the subject’s) intentions or its original context might have suggested. For what it’s worth, you can see the photo here at Junk for Code. The interpretive context for this image has been shifted, and violently reinscribed as the invisible or altered focus of a media circus where the battle lines have been drawn between “the arts community” (some of whose spokespeople have been doing the debate and themselves no favours, incidentally) and “society” - as represented in part by agents of vigilance such as Hetty Johnson and in part by the instigators of the talkback outrage, the Miranda Devines of this world. As soon as they get up and running, you’ve got zero chance in the so-called public sphere of making any sort of nuanced point, as nuance is immediately equated with “condoning pedophilia” or whatever heights of absurdity we’ve reached.

Continue reading ‘Questions on the Bill Henson “sexualisation of children” debate’

Class and Big Brother 2008

Published
by
Kim
6 months, 2 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Film, TV, Video etc, Politics, Relationships, Sociology and Women
. 107 Comments

You can’t talk about Big Brother without talking about class, it seems. Over at Troppo, Ken Parish, who should be familiar with the BB concept of the grenade lob, lobs one in comments:

Far from being careful, I’ll throw petrol on the fire. I think the phenomenon of people who should have more taste and intelligence professing to like BB is just a pretentious affectation, like ending a post with “just sayin’”. Then again, all these shows (including Ladettes to Ladies and the assorted Gordon Ramsey shows) have a certain macabre fascination, sort of like not being able to resist looking at a particularly gruesome car smash as you drive past.

The really vexing thing is that these shows are also a calculated cost-saving gambit by the free-to-air channels. It doesn’t cost all that much to make them because they don’t have to pay the actors. A truly principled lefty would boycott them (although, as Jen pointed out last night, you can make a similar point about the employment effects of blogging on professional journalists).

I don’t know about the logic of boycotting tv shows for political reasons - I suspect it’s only ever invoked in this sort of context, and one could counter with the fact that a lot of writers and other “creatives” get employed by these mega shows (which are actually far more expensive to produce, but also more lucrative, than a lot of the cut-price free to air drama that’s around). And Corey Delaney is Worth(ington) 10 grand a show apparently. Though there’d be an interesting angle in thinking about how “creatives”, anyway, are self-exploiting - freed of career paths, permanent employment, and all those other things that go with not being a contract for hire and an entrepreneurial micro-business. And the lack of reflexivity that comes with seeing one’s endeavours as a big quest for that one big break has uncanny parallels with the show’s refusal of any solidarity to its Housemates. But, whatever, Ken probably thinks I’m displaying an “affectation” - while I think that the BB hatin’ *and actually I don’t enjoy this season, I just find it interesting* is a classic “that’s for the Bogans” Distinction. Proper people, of course, go to the theatre, dahling.

In a way, though, it was ironic that John Howard was a BB hater, because the Inmates couldn’t be more aspirational and individualistic. Some might even drive utes, and you can bet they’re big alcopop drinkers. I’m sure Brendan probably feels their pain. (And I’m sure that he’d probably jump at the chance to be an intruder. Might be useful training for all those frontbench wars.) But class is at issue within the House too, as another excellent post from Eye on Big Brother shows. Continue reading ‘Class and Big Brother 2008′

Mysterons: the sequel

Published
by
Kim
7 months, 2 weeks ago
in Consumerism, History, Life and Music
. 17 Comments

Here’s an update to my previous post.

The new Portishead single:

Scott LeMee’s suggestions for naming the decade we live through…

“Did you smile a lot or laugh a lot yesterday?”

Published
by
dk.au
7 months, 2 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Economics, Levity and Life
. 5 Comments

Guy with ponytail/mullet has the low down on why it’s fantastic if you were asked this.

(via Joshua Gans)

Of plutocrats and Blingocrats

Published
by
Kim
7 months, 3 weeks ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Media, Politics and Sociology
. 21 Comments

Tony Blair hosts Oasis at a Number Ten reception. Sarko’s popularity slips as he jetsets around the Mediterranean in aviators. Carla Bruni wows the Brits and earns instant Jackie/Audrey cred. Hillary Clinton reveals that she and Bill have earned over a hundred mill since leaving office. Blair cops criticism for holidaying with Cliff Richard. A tv mogul becomes Italian PM. Peter Costello wines about his sacrificed earning power. Tony Abbott cries poor. Pollies queue up for photocalls with that Irish dude who saved the world and his sunnies. Kevin Rudd has Cate Blanchett and Hugh Jackman round to tea. Prince Phillip conspires. Vladimir Putin poses for topless military pr0n. Peter Garrett is a Minister. Oprah endorses Obama.

Snapshots of a decade or more of Blingocracy.

So what’s with the phenomenon of the Blingocracy that The Times tracks?

Continue reading ‘Of plutocrats and Blingocrats’

Mysterons

Published
by
Kim
8 months ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Economics, History, Life, Media, Music, Philosophy and Politics
. 8 Comments

Alles vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis.

[”Everything temporal is but a likeness.”]

- Goethe

I was gonna call this post “All for nothing” as a play on the title of the article I’m riffing off, and to join the rapidly growing blogosphere fad of song titling posts (well slowly growing on a bit of this blog) but with Portishead instead of Dylan. But then I discovered the actual title of the song in question.

I was actually thinking about this today when I read Scott McLemee’s piece in Inside Higher Ed - this decade has no name. The “Naughties” never caught on (and for good reason probably). The 2000s is ambiguous. That, I reckon, has done something odd to our time-sense. Maybe there’ve been more periodisations like post-s11, but I, for one at any rate, had hardly realised the decade was coming to an end despite the 08 thing.

What’s interesting about McLemee’s take is that he argues there may be no recognisable Zeigeist in a cultural sense for these times, and when you think about it, in an age where the medium is not the message but the culture is the commodity, the absence of a brand is puzzling. Continue reading ‘Mysterons’

Creeping pinkification: “the persistent feminization of unisex commodities”

Published
by
tigtog
8 months ago
in Consumerism, Fashion, Feminism, Life, Media and Women
. 167 Comments

In breaking news, marketing drones continue to lack imagination, sticking to the apparently conventional wisdom that if you want women to buy things that both men and women tend to use and want, just run up a version in pink and do a fluffy/flowery/frilly ad campaign. Butterflies are good. In June last year (in an essay provoked by the launch of a special shopping flight from London to Paris named Fly Pink) the Guardian’s Vicky Frost summed up the extension of pinkification from childhood to adult women as follows:

It is now possible for women to experience their entire day in pink. You can work out with a pink yoga mat and weights; adorn your windscreen wipers with pink wiper wings; cook dinner on a pink George Foreman grill and style your hair with hot-pink hair straighteners. You can even see off would-be attackers with a powder-pink Taser gun.

My response to the whole Fly Pink concept was this photo-essay, Puking Up Pink. Documentations of the pink consumer ghetto on feminist blogs abound, especially the Pink Alley in toy departments, but it is the continued extension of pinkified marketing into the adult world which is being most keenly examined. Twisty anayses the latest version she’s found: women’s vodka.

vodka_girly
Continue reading ‘Creeping pinkification: “the persistent feminization of unisex commodities”’

Beyond the pale

Published
by
Kim
8 months, 1 week ago
in Consumerism, Culture, Ethics, Feminism, Government, Media, Parenting, Sexuality, The Web and Women
. 141 Comments

I’m normally a bit sceptical about some of the claims about the sexualisation of teenage girls and women, because I think that sometimes such discussions play into the hands of those who’d want to circumscribe or erase the possibility of a positive and autonomous definition and articulation of female sexuality in favour of either puritanism and/or the reinscription of traditional gender roles, because I like to lean towards the libertarian side of the sex wars, and because we just have too many moral panics. Nuance often gets lost. And the insta-loud condemnation thing often works against any examination of complexities or reflection on issues. But there’s not a lot of nuance in this really vile “Bimbo avatars” site targeted at teen girls. [I decline to link directly to the site.]

One word: Ewwwwww.

Via Laurel Papworth, whose post you can read for all the sickening detail.

Getting away from this repulsive website, it may be of interest to note that Andrew Bartlett advises that there is currently a Senate Inquiry into the Sexualisation of Children. Andrew’s blogged about it here.

Firing up the Trrrrrraade Practices Act … could get interesting

Published
by
dk.au
10 months, 1 week ago
in Advertising, Consumerism, Environment, Law, Levity and Media
. 9 Comments

While the merits of bringing the externalities of our more ancient sins into an economic frame are up for debate, the marketability of voluntarily offsetting certain modern excesses is becoming increasingly clear. Enter GM Holden, importers of Saab. Last year’s ‘Grrrrreen’ campaign which ran in newspapers, magazines and billboards comprised of statements like ‘Every Saab is green, Carbon emissions neutral across the entire Saab range’. And it has now attracted the ire of the ACCC, to the surprise of Holden - if the first comment at this prdisasters.com post is any indication.

Now I’m no lawyer (just a lowly social science postgrad) but from where I sit the ACCC’s claim - not to mention the scope of its issues paper - is quite profound in its implications. Continue reading ‘Firing up the Trrrrrraade Practices Act … could get interesting’