Branding Irony
Aug. 22nd, 2009 07:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anansi133Sometimes it feels enormously helpful to remember where words come from. In this case, the word "branding", verb, commonly used with corporate logos.
Serously, it wasn't that long ago when "to brand" meant putting a hot piece of metal on the skin of a cow, to permantly mark ownership.
If we had a better language for ownership ideas, this wouldn't seem like such a leap: It still means the same thing now as it did then: it's still the attempt to mark ownership. Only these days, it's the inside of the property's minds that's being marked, and the mark is never as permanent as those with the irons would like.
And the cumulative effect from all this branding, is that the cattle belong, collectively, to a fairly large group of icon-wielding cowboys. If your feet belong to Nike, and your mouth belongs to starbucks and diet pepsi, and your ass belongs to levis... they aren't in competition with each other, it's not a wishbone. You're just centrally located in a state space engineered for the colonized.
Yet the process can never be complete, so there's always pressure to burn more brands deeper into our minds.
Even in the struggle to push back, we grasp for icons of our own, to represent the uncolonized state. When Adbusters sells a branded sneaker, is it beating them at their own game, or is it falling prey to the same issue? The flags, clubs, logos of the struggle- they themselves can become fetish items, to be abused in their own way.
I think my version of the revolution cannot have such shorthand- we fight for what we fight for, and we agree to disagree on the little things, and work out what's really important as it comes up.... but to postpone such internal struggle for the sake of a unified appearance, that's inviting tyranny later.
In my less flawed world that I imagine, we'd still have logos and branding, but they would be something for the young, the simple, and those in a hurry. Everyone with enough time and attention would choose the unbranded version whenever possible, and that would be most of what we trade for.
Serously, it wasn't that long ago when "to brand" meant putting a hot piece of metal on the skin of a cow, to permantly mark ownership.
If we had a better language for ownership ideas, this wouldn't seem like such a leap: It still means the same thing now as it did then: it's still the attempt to mark ownership. Only these days, it's the inside of the property's minds that's being marked, and the mark is never as permanent as those with the irons would like.
And the cumulative effect from all this branding, is that the cattle belong, collectively, to a fairly large group of icon-wielding cowboys. If your feet belong to Nike, and your mouth belongs to starbucks and diet pepsi, and your ass belongs to levis... they aren't in competition with each other, it's not a wishbone. You're just centrally located in a state space engineered for the colonized.
Yet the process can never be complete, so there's always pressure to burn more brands deeper into our minds.
Even in the struggle to push back, we grasp for icons of our own, to represent the uncolonized state. When Adbusters sells a branded sneaker, is it beating them at their own game, or is it falling prey to the same issue? The flags, clubs, logos of the struggle- they themselves can become fetish items, to be abused in their own way.
I think my version of the revolution cannot have such shorthand- we fight for what we fight for, and we agree to disagree on the little things, and work out what's really important as it comes up.... but to postpone such internal struggle for the sake of a unified appearance, that's inviting tyranny later.
In my less flawed world that I imagine, we'd still have logos and branding, but they would be something for the young, the simple, and those in a hurry. Everyone with enough time and attention would choose the unbranded version whenever possible, and that would be most of what we trade for.
