16 June 2009: "Is Calvin Klein the new Am Appy?"

This post is about scopophilia. In her seminal essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema," Laura Mulvey elaborates Freud's idea of the gaze as an erotogeneous organ, which generates for itself a zone of sexual excitation. Modern visual media allow that organ to orient itself narcissistically, so that it need not involve another on terms of equal subjectivity or admit any compromise of the pleasure sought. This means that visual pleasure, in Freudian terms, is regressive and infantile, a mode of eluding the reality principle. Mulvey supposes that the visual pleasure afforded in modern media is made male as a consequence of patriarchal control of the means of production; this results in a naturalization of a male gaze, and all the attendent protections against various male anxieties built into it.

In positing the typical male response to a particularly sexual advertisement, Carles narrates that gaze into an analytical object available for our scrutiny.

I couldn’t help but notice this huge Calvin Klein ad with 4 ppl in some sort of ‘orgy.’ It seems hot, and sexual. It reminds me of the feeling of when my ‘penis becomes erect’ while I am wearing jeans. I think that is what ‘advertising’/'marketing’ is all about–”SEX SELLS.”
Seems intense to have a 4some with a 3-to-1 boy-girl ratio. I would hope that I could be the one ‘doing the penetration.’ Then there is the bro who ‘awkwardly walks over and tries to position himself to ‘get a blowjie.’ Then there is ‘extra bro’ who is on the floor ‘tugging off’, hopefully getting his chance to ‘be inside’ of the girl eventually. Have yall ever had 3somes? Is it awkward when 1 of your bros is involved? Have u ever ‘crossed swords’?

Embedded in this account are a host of male anxieties, all ultimately locatable in the fear that the woman's subjectivity will demand recognition, thus negating male subjectivity in the zero-sum game of patriarchy and phallocentric selfhood. As Mulvey notes, "Women in representation can signify castration, and activate voyeuristic or fetishistic mechanisms to circumvent this threat." In the advertising image, the threat is doubled by the introduction of sexual competition, negated by various fantasies of sharing conquests. This is supplanted by the fear that autonomy is compromised by manipulative marketing that deludes us into acting against ourselves -- the vulnerability of sexuality becomes a strictly economic vulnerability -- this serves both as a defense and an instigator of further anxiety. Carles follows psychoanalytic tradition here in presupposing that money is generally regarded as a simpler problem to solve than raw desire itself, unmediated. Man under capitalism has become efficient at recycling libido as greed, which is much easier to gratify instrumentally. Hence the effective of the ad itself that Carles analyzes; it evokes sexual anxiety that can be allayed by transforming lust into greed.

Carles contrasts this with a less successful ad, which neglects the fertile potential of scopophila and replaces the images with the icon, the emblem.

Not sure if this flag is ’still sexual.’ Sorta wish it was a picture of a real broad, or something, maybe with her areolas exposed. Not sure if this is the kind of flag that I would want to ‘put on the moon.’ Can’t believe they have an official flag.

As Carles recognizes, the tendency for advertising for companies as they mature in the business cycle is to move in the direction of ersatz jingoism for a nonexistent corporation-as-nation. The personal-sexual motive assumed in customers is replaced by a more generalized motive of allegiance and obedience; the sexual desire for a object represented in the ads is supplanted by the masochistic desire for subservience. It shifts the consumer's register of concern from the personal to the political, from conquering one's own urges to conquering territory abroad (the moon). This prepares a labile populace ready to serve totalitarian schemes of international or interplanetary Anschluss.

Carles's apparently innocent juxtaposition of these questions -- "Do u think it is natural to ‘get aroused’ when u see a sexie ad? Have u ever ‘made love’ 2 more than 1 person at the same time?" -- of course serves a deadly serious purpose. The question: Is unthinking fidelity to a leader the end result of having our sexual anxieties rechanneled by corporate entities and their advertising? Is the social value of monogamy translated into political obedience through the popular medium of salacious and lascivious marketing? When Carles asks "Are Calvin Klein jeans ‘the new skinny jeans’?" he really asks, "Are you prepared to give your life for the fuhrer?"