I’m an open book, of stuff

Markus Klinko + Indrani

There’s a lot of photography on consumerism, but it wasn’t til today, when I saw a little deconstructing-the-shot piece in the American Photo magazine blog, that I became convinced that all of it is pure snake oil, shit sold as gold. Apparently the idea was to “visualize a post-apocalyptic world where young people reassert their individuality by putting together pieces of clothing and making it chic.” Really?? In a post-apocalyptic world, we’re going to be concerned about reasserting our individuality by buying clothes?

I heard something on Family Guy that sums it up. Stewie says:

I took some photos. You can see them on my Myspace page, along with my favorite songs and movies and things that other people have created but that I use to express my individualism.

Branding is such a big thing now that sometimes it seems buying is self-expression, which I suppose it always has been in an indirect way, but the leap now seems to be that what you buy is directly related to who you are. One consequence seems to be that at any given moment, you’re stating who you are with what you are wearing or carrying. Which wouldn’t be so bad if it was meaningful. I carry a camera because I am a photographer – that’s a meaningful statement about me. But what can my jeans or bag really tell you any of the important things about me aside from whether I have the money to buy them? That’s no small statement, but it’s hardly new. I’d really like to know whether Victorian girls used brands in the same way that teenage girls now do. Is it human nature to always find something to show off with?

Perhaps it’s less about the thing itself than a signal that we’re playing the same game, which is more explicitly clear when you think about music. Music is a great example. People ask you what music you listen to when they meet you. But they don’t ask you what you’ve been listening to in the last week; they ask you “what do you listen to?” in a way that suggests “tell me something about yourself.” There’s nothing wrong with that per se, if it wasn’t for the fact that the same always seems to mean more than it should. I wouldn’t be surprised if brands have erroded our attention spans for getting to know a person. if it can all be summed up by a list of consumables…

Product awareness leads to a subtle (or not so subtle) pressure to conform. If what you buy says something about you, then you don’t want to buy or consume something that might give a bad or wrong impression. The thing is, it’s such a natural urge. Isn’t that why we list favorites in online profiles? I do it too – I mean, I gotta put some early Greenaway next to that Family Guy so people don’t think I’m not serious!

Conformity sold as individualism is a big money-maker, isn’t it? Buy buy buy, just like everyone else, because brands and looks are what define you, not, god forbid, what you actually intend to do with your life.

I was flipping through my quote books for a quote blog and, what do you know, D.H. Lawrence writes in Lady Chatterly’s Lover: (a great book in parts, but a little cheesy)

If only they were educated to live instead of earn and spend, they could manage very happily. If the men could dance and hop and skip, and sing and swagger and be handsome, they could learn to do with very little cash. And that’s the only way to solve the industrial problem: train the people to be able to live and live in handsomeness, without needing to spend.