Caution - Ad Rant Ahead
Have you seen the most recent ad for Cisco Systems? Oh, you might probably have without realizing it, because it doesn’t so much stand out as blend into all of the other ads hawking similar messages.
The ad is part of Cisco’s “the human network” campaign. It starts with a boy in an average suburban kitchen, and a camera phone held, presumably (all you can see is the hand) by his father. “Do something,” the father implores his son, and the son starts getting down, busting some moves, doing a sort of fluid robot. The commercial then zooms around the world, showing all types of people watching that very same kid dance on a variety of devices, from a child turning on a TV to a group of Tibetan monks gathering around a laptop.
On a side note, why have Tibetan monks become the visual shorthand for “we go anywhere, and I mean ANYwhere.” Reminds me of the scene from Living in Oblivion when the midget actor freaks out about his role. “Of course it must be a dream sequence, there’s a fucking midget!”
Anyway, the Cisco ad ends with the kid’s video playing on a Times Square billboard and the not unfamiliar advertising sentiment, “Now everyone can be a celebrity.”
On its face, this ad and others like it (this isn’t exactly a fresh perspective from the advertising world) are merely pandering to the celebrity-fetish of American consumers, but the message is indicative of something far more insidious. It is an example of how capitalism co-ops the mediasphere.
It hinges on the tagline, on this idea that everyone can be a celebrity. Which, of course, isn’t true. “Celebrity” is by definition a privileged status, demands an audience from which the celebrity can be separated, over which the celebrity can be elevated. It isn’t as innocuous as “everybody gets 15 minutes of fame,” though that is the viral shell that the message is packed in. It is really about setting celebrity up as a positive value within the discourse of networks and interactivity.
Injecting the notion of “celebrity” as a value into the greatest tool for open-source collaboration in human history serves to preserve capitalism a place by introducing a false scarcity. Celebrity presents an achievable thing for individuals, something to aspire to, to desire, the access to which can also be controlled. Celebrity as a positive value is commodifiable, giving it the power to create controllable consumers. Further, it opens up roles of passivity – in creating audience it enables audience membership, a surrender of active participation.
Perhaps it would be less worthy of comment if it was an isolated message, but “everyone can be a celebrity” resonates across media, various iterations hawking all manner of product and service. These tiny bits of narrative become the pieces we use to construct our world. They are the seeds. Corporate media is Monsanto. I think that makes us dead monarch butterflies.
The ad is part of Cisco’s “the human network” campaign. It starts with a boy in an average suburban kitchen, and a camera phone held, presumably (all you can see is the hand) by his father. “Do something,” the father implores his son, and the son starts getting down, busting some moves, doing a sort of fluid robot. The commercial then zooms around the world, showing all types of people watching that very same kid dance on a variety of devices, from a child turning on a TV to a group of Tibetan monks gathering around a laptop.
On a side note, why have Tibetan monks become the visual shorthand for “we go anywhere, and I mean ANYwhere.” Reminds me of the scene from Living in Oblivion when the midget actor freaks out about his role. “Of course it must be a dream sequence, there’s a fucking midget!”
Anyway, the Cisco ad ends with the kid’s video playing on a Times Square billboard and the not unfamiliar advertising sentiment, “Now everyone can be a celebrity.”
On its face, this ad and others like it (this isn’t exactly a fresh perspective from the advertising world) are merely pandering to the celebrity-fetish of American consumers, but the message is indicative of something far more insidious. It is an example of how capitalism co-ops the mediasphere.
It hinges on the tagline, on this idea that everyone can be a celebrity. Which, of course, isn’t true. “Celebrity” is by definition a privileged status, demands an audience from which the celebrity can be separated, over which the celebrity can be elevated. It isn’t as innocuous as “everybody gets 15 minutes of fame,” though that is the viral shell that the message is packed in. It is really about setting celebrity up as a positive value within the discourse of networks and interactivity.
Injecting the notion of “celebrity” as a value into the greatest tool for open-source collaboration in human history serves to preserve capitalism a place by introducing a false scarcity. Celebrity presents an achievable thing for individuals, something to aspire to, to desire, the access to which can also be controlled. Celebrity as a positive value is commodifiable, giving it the power to create controllable consumers. Further, it opens up roles of passivity – in creating audience it enables audience membership, a surrender of active participation.
Perhaps it would be less worthy of comment if it was an isolated message, but “everyone can be a celebrity” resonates across media, various iterations hawking all manner of product and service. These tiny bits of narrative become the pieces we use to construct our world. They are the seeds. Corporate media is Monsanto. I think that makes us dead monarch butterflies.
posted by JJisafool at 8:42 PM
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