Monday, March 9, 2009

7 March 2009: "h8 when memes are mrktng gimmicks"

This post is about tautology. The title itself confronts us with an impossible statement, the equivalent of the statement "x does not equal x." Memes, of course, are marketing gimmicks, the circulation of ideas as products. So what Carles means to tell us through this title is that he "h8s" the use of identities as a specious means of reasoning; he is challenging us to a more elliptical, inductive way of proceeding toward tentative truth.

The post cites a promotional video whose status as promotional video has been effaced, a process which makes its synthetic qualities more blatant -- it become more unmistakable as a command to beholders to behave in accordance with what is depicted. The video's disciplinary function becomes more explicit, more dangerous to resist, as audiences are expected to enthusiastically contract this particular cultural "virus" and conspire in its spread.

As Carles is wont to do, he takes the conundrum represented by the video to its libidinous roots: "Am I supposed to think that this is ‘cool’ or that it is ‘oddly entertaining’? Should part of me want to ‘cum’ with these broads because they are ‘talented and beautiful’?" In the economy of desire, where can these ambiguous performances be interpellated? We risk annihilation if we venture a sincere emotional response to an event that later proves a manipulative contrivance, but if we don't make the venture, we risk a neutered and sterile solipsism. So instead we must stake a positionality using the decayed and corrupted concepts in common parlance -- vague catch-all categories like "talent" and "beauty" that serve as masks to the more fundamental stake of sexual mastery, ""wanting to 'cum'". The orgasmic legitimates and resolves the otherwise undecideable status of the cultural performances that straddle the line of commercial and cultural discourse, resolving them in an intimate and abject responsiveness, unequivocal in its "stickiness". What sticks, of course, are the marketing memes themselves....

No comments:

Post a Comment