The Gruen Transfer – ‘Objective neutral expert bigotry’

So fuckthepostpolitical has again taken the axe to the Gruen Transfer…it’s a great post and well worth reading.

One further point for me though: where dredgirl says that it comes off as simply a chance for bigshot ad execs to tell us what works and what doesn’t, I wholeheartedly agree…except that they don’t even engage in this properly. Their answers as to why a particular ad works/doesn’t work are glib, smug, devoid of much in the way of content and far too short and self congratulatory: “because it does” is delivered with a smug-cocky-aren’t-I-so-very-very-urbane-in-my-lime-green-shirt look (so urbane that I don’t need to answer the question). Well fucking duh dipshit! We know it does work…any punter could have told us that…and if it didn’t we wouldn’t need the show in the first place. But your JOB on the panel is to delve into how or why…

I mean even leaving aside the expectation that it might actually ’take a scalpel to the advertising industry’, even accepting the limitation that they will not engage in the social implications of their ads and the images they use, the fears, prejudices and desires they play into…just talk to us about responses to colours, surveys that show what people respond to that make you pick particular things ton include in an ad to make sure it works. Even in their evading of any critical engagement with the effects of their craft they come off as condesceding twats too important to discuss anything in any detail.

To discuss semiotics in advertising need not mean dirtying their hands with political discussion or context…they could, if they so chose, discuss but it only got a two second mention! In one single ad in one single episode…

So…if they’re going to *avoid* acknowledging political implications by simply discussing what is at work in advertising…well do that, and do it properly.

It actually feels like what is going on is an attempt to present this panel as ‘objective neutral experts’ with all the heft such a stance grants in this society: I’m the rich white expert, mostly male, token female just to prove to you if you’ve got a problem, it’s all yours and nothing to do with me: “I’m just stating facts honey pie, get in the kitchen and cook me a pie – in your undies in front of my mates…and don’t eat any tub-o-lard” .

Are they ‘experts’ in advertising? Sure. Are they sharing this expertise? Nope. Are they enlightening us? Nope. Are they discussing the tricks of the trade in any meaningful way? Nope.

And by presenting themselves and their opinions as neutral and objective (when in actual fact their viewpoints are vested, political and context specific in the extreme) by noting and glossing over the sexism in ads, and then cracking funnies about it…it’s reinforcing that this shit is funny, is not to be taken seriously, has no ‘real’ political implications, is not to be engaged with and critiqued, it’s entertainment, it’s fodder for money making, and now it’s apparently smart and anyone who takes offence is a whiney snivelling little pussy who needs to harden the fuck up. If you’re offended, that’s your personal psychological affliction, cos we are not here to discuss that pansy left wing crap…this is the real world…of advertising, cocaine and designer clothing. Fuck off with that crap.

On the one hand they’re not going into the social implications of what they make a packet doing…cos OHNOES that would be a political act/boring/not funny…but they are erasing the politics of making ads that sell us images of what femininity is, what sexuality should be, who is allowed to have it and how, ads with no racial diversity, ads which sell certain attitudes and make disrespect ‘funny’…erasing the politics of the act of them making sexist, homophobic, racist jokes and expecting that we’ll sit here and take it since our opinion doesn’t fucking count anyway. Gaarghh!

Lyrics of songs…the Delilah to his Samson

So fuckthepostpolitical has really thrown down on our decision to bring the rants to the web.

I was bitching and moping to her the other day about feeling excluded from some of the poetry of lyricists such as Leonard Cohen. While I do love his lyrics, he is often *bleak*, in that “I’m a tragic misunderstoon poet/artist” way…on a good day I am moved, on a bad day I feel shut out of identification with the protaganists in his song…

So there are times where he’s waxing lyrical, romanticising remoteness, loneliness, solitude and the pain of it, where it feels like *woman* is locked in the role of temptress/muse…she’s the mythical, the beautiful, the source of sadness/loss, potentially loopy…she doesn’t have the same agency as him…she’s beauty and grace, temptation and pain, a ‘mystery’…what saps him of his strength, a source of temporary joy, of wonder, but bound to cause loss/grief/a stealing of strength…don’t stay in one place too long…

So there’s all this *poetry* of the man who is always and ever alone, who has *known* beauty and love, but is busy being/doing/feeling/observing/creating…who can never be contained, a man of action, wary of temptation in womanly form, exoticising it, but not recognising woman perhaps as an equal in agency? A source of strength, action, laugter and joy? I just wonder if there’s any mutuality or if it’s more of the archetypal stories of women…of course I’m not familiar with his entire catalogue, and am happy to be proven wrong (and today have had a lovely day of identification with some of his lyrics)…

Where is the female equivalent? Where are the men singing about the strength and fire of their women – how much they’ve learned through them? Where are the women singing about men as mysterious and confusing? As temptation and a sapping of strength? I’m not proposing that reversal solves issues, or that these lyrics are *bad*…I’m just trying to think through the ways gender is *done* even by the ‘deeper’ lyrics – maybe more particularly in those lyrics….what do I have to pin my identification with the strength and dynamism of womanliness on? On being the desired object, or…identification with a codependant pathetic love, an “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, you’re killing me, I will not be able to breath in your absence for I am dependant upon your approval”. Ugh. If only I could write decent poetry! Unfortunately it turns out more like Dr Seuss than Leonard Cohen…

Anyway…oops, distracted from my point…she’s written another post on this stuff, on Music and Meaning, the Exclusion of Women and the Romanticisation of Men…check her out…

 

Linking for the technically inept

Cool, so a friend and I have decided to take our rant-fests into cyberspace….

So she’s responded to my last post here.

The idea is we’ll start up some kind of dialogue back and forth on the Current Topic of Ranting.

I’m supposed to be writing an essay, so I’d better keep this quick.

She mentions her *favourite* misogynist ad of late…

Mine? An old Lynx ad (if I can find the time, I’ll track it down and post it) but as I recall it, the dude sprays the Lynx in a line, down his body leading to his crotch…the punchline being that women are SO DRAWN to the smell that they’ll immediately and subserviently kneel before you and take your irresistable penis into their mouths. As it should be right?

Can I JUST SAY…If you have to draw a line of purchased ‘temptation’ to where it’s at, she aint going there no matter how much cheap-arse b.o basher you try to tempt her in with. FUCK!

This is fun.

The Gruen Transfer – Making misogyny ‘clever’

Look, I should say up front I am a little grouchy of late over feeling like as a woman I am being ‘locked out’ of certain cultural experiences. Since it’s acceptable to slip in slaps in the face to the idea that a woman might be more than a live blow up doll, might aspire to be more than the focus of mastabatory desire into songs, ads, movies, television, office banter etc etc ad infinitum, I am feeling a little like I am getting a giant “up yours” from the writers/speakers of such media/forums.

So…perhaps I am being mildy uncharitable but I really think not.

The Gruen Transfer [triumphant horn music heralding the arrival of an ALL NEW type of television show...intelligent debate, insight, critical thinking and 'clever' humour].

Now, don’t get me wrong…there’s space for all this, and a show about advertising, a show which ‘bites back’, talks back, debates, unpacks, pokes fun at, subverts is more than bloody welcome, it’s a necessity. Except that this show stops short almost every single time. The best one liner? From a woman. In response to the question “What’s wrong with this ad?” the prompt delivery “There’s no brown people”. Which is great. Except The Gruen Transfer is there for the quick hit one liner, not to actually engage with these issues.

Episode One I think (which of course featured scantily clad young hotties): One panelist observes in horror that only one percent of Australian women think they are beautiful!!! Does anyone take up the invitation to intelligently discuss the role of advertising in this mindset? Oh no, Wil (as ever) goes for the cheap gag, quipping that that one percent are “up ‘emselves!”.

I thought, Hmm, the guy who made this point might make another…no. In response to an ad in which a disembodied tongue goes off on a frolic of its own, he expounds on how great this would be…you’d never have to ‘attend’ to foreplay again. You could watch tele, and say “Give me a call when she’s ready”. GET. FUCKED!

You know, it isn’t that I can’t see the humour in the one liners, it isn’t that I haven’t laughed. It can be fun and entertaining…it’s just that…well Wil in show two shows an ad featuring Kylie Minogue writhing and bucking on a mechanical bull in sexy underwear. She then defies the men in the audience to stand up. The discussion is about sexualisation in ads…Wil’s response “I know I can’t”. Yep, good mate, we got it. Hot chick=boner. I’m seeing who your audience is and it is not me. It isn’t that I can’t relate to the ‘hotness’ of Kylie – she’s gorgeous, the absolute pinnacle in that ad of heteronormative feminine sexiness…but ok…you tell me you’re gonna be critiquing, you display the perfect mastabatory fantasy scenario (go amuse yourselves for a while women who object/feel uncomfortable/are annoyed at the objectification and glorification of the Impossible Attainment of the Clean and Proper Body – cos it’s BOYZ TIME!!!) you crack a funny about cracking wood, and I’m supposed to applaud your intelligent subversive humour? Yet again. GET FUCKED.

Look, it’s slick, it’s amusing, I laugh at some of the remarks, I enjoy some of the challenges, it facilitates a surface level discussion (but it always STAYS surface level, the bottom line is a succesful ad is a good ad needs no critiquing or further discussion) and is better than lots of other stuff on tele. BUT. It’s SOOOOOooooo goddamned heteronormative, so white privilege, so misogynist…so the invitation for the average man who fancies himself a cut above the rest intellectually to ogle objectified, perfected, sanitised women’s bodies…and call it an intellectual exercise.

I call total bullshit.

The Erin Brokovich issue again

Oh yeah, it’s been like forever since I posted!!!

I’m having a ‘moment’ right? Usually I get kinda embarrassed and skate past it if people try to make me out as a ‘hero’ for doing the single mum thing. You do what you do right? And I’m not a hero. I am flawed and fallible, I am a big wuss when it comes to moths and deep water and riding down hills…

But…I was trying to explain to my mother tonight this wierd thing I’ve had lately where my chest has been feeling ‘tight’. I thought I was sick. Cold? Asthma? Ribs growing too quickly? Then it occured to me that it happens right when I’m pondering how I’ve got too much to do and not enough time in which to do it…this led me to try to explain what I had on my plate…

And for real? I raise a child with a double diagnosis of developmental disorders (new Doctor Seuss title?). I do this on my own and have since he was a baby. He was a baby when I was twenty. I was twenty having grown up in pretty working class areas, little money, little hope, bugger all in the way of examples of functional caring relationships, fuck all ideas on proper nutrition etc. So I grew up with him. I learned how to cook/clean etc. But being twenty I had nothing…no degree, no proper employment experience, no idea of what I wanted to ‘do’ or ‘be’. I had been working since I was fourteen, but casual retail work. How the FUCK was I going to make a good life for the two of us?

So anyway…I guess I can’t be arsed covering all the bits in between – a breakdown of that ten years includes little sleep (insomnia is NOT fun), less money (it’s better than poverty), lotsa headaches, backaches and illness,lotsa worries,lotsa study, big moves, a vow off of relationships til I could be sure I wouldn’t date such pricks (long periods of celibacy are also unfun), lots of shitty jobs and shithouse bosses and a couple of school changes - and will just skip to now. My son’s eleven. He’s doing really well in school, despite the fact that the wheels fell off in a big way a few years ago for him. I have a degree in Arts, and am halfway through a degree in Law. I have a permanent job in a law firm and increasingly I am realising how much I’ve learnt there, and how much experience I am getting that ordinarily you get upon graduation.

I have managed to get a degree (will have two by the time he’s say fifteen) and find gainful employment, I have managed to avert the impending crises caused by my son’s anger issues which were a part of his disability, I have moved to an area I love from an area that was killing me, I pay a ludicrous amount of rent on a stupidly small income, I cook and eat well, my son reads voraciously (I like to think I had a little something to do with that with my own love of reading and my own animated readings to him of Harry Potter et al), has a great sense of humour, is interested in everything, tries new things, is teaching himself Photoshop and computer animation (and apparently this week Spanish). He knows he is loved, he is independant and clever, I DEFY him to have hangups about sex, he knows that other people exist – he knows about poverty, about racism and sexism, homophobia and discrimination. He can analyse any form of media, he loves good cinema, he talks back to advertising and he speaks his mind. He has adult role models of the very best kind I can imagine, teachers, postgraduate students, managers, protestors, authors, poets – people with imagination and intelligence who aren’t afraid to use those assets. I surrounded myself with good friends…and managed to stop dating pricks.

I came home today and my chest began tightening. My final essay for my current subject is due. In around two weeks. Plenty of time, of course I’ll get it done – but I’m exhausted, I’m totally fucking shattered. Because I am living more than one life. Work all day, study at night, a house to clean, shopping and cooking to do, friends to see, a family to keep happy, a relationship with a great guy and all this while I am the primary carer of a child with disabilities (not to mention the fact that it takes considerable time to invest in “looking good”, and Im kinda embarrassed to add that in, but you know, choosing outfits, personal grooming, makeup, hair – this shit takes time). When I spell it out like that, even I occassionally think I might just be a little bit awesome.

I’m beginning to ramble and lose what ‘point’ I may have had to begin with…but it’s not that I’m trying to say “I’m superior” or “I’m such an excellent person”…just that well, this good stuff didn’t fall from the sky into my lap I have worked my arse off for this, I have had to fight for every inch of ground I’ve gained, and there have been times where i thought it would kill me, times where I thought it would all come undone, times I couldn’t see how I was possibly going to pay the bills, times where I felt like a mess and a failure - and looking at then and now in such a stark way brings clarity to how far I’ve come…but I don’t want to lose the sense of seeing how I was working towards this with every single choice I made, every chance I took along the way. Our lives haven’t ended up this way by accident, they’ve ended up this way because of the choices I’ve made and the priorities I set. And because of a truckload of luck and race privilege.

Having said all this…I’m kind of a bit uncomfortable here, because any glib pronouncement of “Hey – I am great” ignores the fact that while for me, on an individual level I worked my arse off and saw some rewards, that that’s a narrative of heroism that can only take place within the context of certain privileges…I’m getting a bit uncomfortable with the lack of marking of white privilege in my blog in general, and this post in particular. If I were an Indigenous woman who had had given birth at twenty…with no resources behind her…I just imagine that it may have been quite a different story because I know I would have faced far more hurdles, had far bigger fights on my hands. It’s late and my brain is mushy and this is a serious point, and I really think it needs to be another post, or several. I just didn’t really want to leave it all ‘La di da, I’m so great’ without acknowledging that I’ve had opportunities others would not have had. I cannot imagine how things would have ended up for instance, if my son’s asthma were as bad as it in fact is, but I did not have the same level of medical care I’ve had. I cannot imagine trying to cope with my son’s issues without early intervention strategies and the help of a good childcare centre and a medical profession that mostly respected my parenting abilities.

And now, since it’s so late, I cannot wrap this up in any intelligent way, so I’ll just have to stop typing.