Entry 19:

Jim,

Yes, you're definitely onto something here. The pages of the bourgie press--New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Harper's, New Yorker, SalonSlate?--are increasingly filled with titillating exotica from the margins of consumer culture. And it works! Look at these strange folks down thar in Skullbonia, says Holt. Seems to be a hot new market for journalism. After all of the celebrities' homes have been toured, there are always some strange dudes out there somewhere having fun.

And then, of course, there's the third node on the consumption circuit, as the readers of Slate consume us consuming Skullbonia as another genre of exotica: full-of-themselves professors getting paid (by taxpayers in your case!) to spit out trite nothings rather than marching out into the world and having a go of it themselves. (I did tour the Slate comments early on and did note the term "prancing" directed our way.) So, hopefully, this is fun for all. But to complete the circuit, seems like we need to get those Skullbonians involved in these proceedings, so the readers of Slate could feel the glare of the consumer spotlight as well.

Anyway, prancing around the titillation factor: What's happening in Skullbonia happens all the time in mainstream brand marketing, though usually more subtly. Brands feed off politics. Take the recent Miller (High Life?) ads, which play on fantasies of men conquering those ever-slutty women. When brands grab hold of societal tensions on what sociologists like to call "axes of social difference"--gender (Miller), race (Skullbonia), class (all those fussy brands you study), sexuality, nation, etc.--through consumption, they transform the world we live in. The net result, I think, is that we end up relying less on political systems and community interactions to resolve such tensions. Instead, we "act out" through consuming. Interestingly, the social movements that attack these issues--the Greens, Act Up, anti-free traders, simple livers--increasingly voice their politics through consumption (e.g., the "jamming" of Nike's customized shoe design feature on their Web site, as reported in the Village Voice a few months ago).

All adds up to one of the strangest modes of political organization in world history.

Really,
Doug