Mediaevil
AN EMBARRASSMENT OF RICHES
MAYBE
IT'S A BUSH sitting smug in the Whitehouse while West Coast poor and
middle class stuggle to pay their energy bills. Maybe it's the residue
of bull-market nouveau riche against a backdrop of layoffs and a quickly-deflating
economy. But the juxtaposition of wealth and poverty in this country
has never been so apparent as in today's blissfully-ignorant popular
media.
___Part of the reason might be that 1789
and 1917 (look 'em up) shrink quickly in the rearview of an OnStar-equipped
luxury sedan, diminishing the guilt reflex in legions of flippant well-to-do.
___Case in point: Page seven of the May
28th issue of The New Yorker features the latest in a series of ads
for U.S. Trust Corporation, a wealth-management firm. The image is of
a young woman wearing fashionable eyeglasses, dressed in black. The
ultra-flat rendering, suggests silk screen or, more accurately, the
sterile, innocuously-colored doodling that littered mens magazines through
the '80s (e.g. Dennis Mukai). This style - as compatible with computer-drawing
programs as it is with retail passivity - has reared its head most noticeably
in clip-art collections and in the pages of Wired.
___The artwork is a blank smile on the
face of someone who's about to piss in your coffee. The urine, here,
being the copy:
"Everyone
thinks we lead this charmed life," you sigh, "great jobs,
a wonderful house, private schools. They don't see the flip side.
The long converstions about how the money will impact our lives, the
lives of our kids and maybe one day, their kids, too."
___The
body of the ad goes on for several irony-free paragraphs about the misery
of wealth. To use their words, "who would ever believe all that
money could ever feel like a burden rather than a blessing?"
___"Money is not the end of worry.
It is the Beginning." That's the title of this U.S. Trust advertisement,
and you're damned right it's the beginning because - not to dwell on
revolutions, but - a bunch of rich Frenchmen lost their heads from a
similar lack of perspective.
PART OF
THE REASON for this detached coexistence must have to do with the internet.
(Everything, everywhere seems to have something to do with the internet…)
Far from bringing equality and information to the masses, the web seems
to be following the yellow brick road toward becoming another corporate
tool. (Think RIAA.)
___If a medium can unite white supremacists
and Brittany Spears fans, it can certainly provide community and shelter
for the unashamedly wealthy. Venerated brick-and-mortars such as Neiman
Marcus, Bloomingdales and Saks Fifth Avenue all maintain web boutiques.
These sites offer haven in their emphasis of crisp layouts and bright,
flat photography. The dirty pastels, common in the backgrounds of all,
convey hipness with security, the digital equivalent of blonde wood
and polished metal. But even away from obvious retail oases, the smell
of disposable income remains strong.
___The May 31st MSNBC homepage ran a banner
ad from UBID in which high-priced electronics - Palm Pilots, cell phones,
digital cameras - scrolled horizontally in tiny compartments each with
its own link to similar gadgets. This struck me not with its decadence,
but with its casual, serendipitous approach to luxury shopping. The
ad made me think of picking sushi from a boat, a virtual Automat for
tech-craving yuppies. And, yes, $200 cell phones and $400 appointment
books with batteries are a luxury items.
___Of course, this kind of shopping is
not new, but it used to demand personal contact. You had to give your
keys to the valet, elbow through crowds, talk to a sales clerk. Now,
except for the student handing you a Frappucino, or the guy detailing
your SUV, you really don't have to be face to face much with the monetarily
incompatible.
___But the web's really never been an experiment
in plurality. It's always favored some type of snobbery, intellectual
or economic.
NEWSPAPERS,
now that's a medium for the masses.
___Who the hell am I kidding. No one reads
anymore, and even if they did they'd be met with the same conjoined
disparity. More so, in fact, because newspapers still occasionally write
about real people. An ad unabashadly campaigning for the rights of the
rich in a glossy monthly targeting six-figure-plus, college-educated
types is not a stretch; it doesn't even stand out. But when a recent
L.A. paper accidentally paired an advertisement for costly cosmetic
surgery - liposuction, Botox injections - beside an editorial photograph
of an emaciated, dying and poor AIDS patient, it unwittingly printed
the most accurate portrayal of Los Angeles to date.
___Which leaves us with television. My
M*A*S*H rerun was replaced the other night by a half-hour's worth of
adventure advertainment. This program, dedicated to the fictitious sport
of off-road touring, was brought to me by the good folks at Land Rover.
It had never occurred to me that at two o'clock in the morning sandwiched
between reruns of Star Trek and Unhappily Ever After there would be
a market amongst TV viewers for a $70,000 jeep with air shocks. I watched
along with a thousand beer-sucking insomniacs across the Southland as
features were demonstrated that, even in the fantasy-addled mind of
a child, would never be useful in a commute to the office.
___I watched as a caravan of Land Rovers
traversed the globe, managing roads that were barely cowpaths. Across
China and India and South America, a half-million dollars of leather-appointed
technology rolling past water buffalos and poor bewildered brown people…
click.
