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Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Paul Street at Feb 09, 2005

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This story (below) is interesting on numerous levels. It tells the curious and disturbing tale of a Super Bowl advertisement that didn't happen. ... In a proposed Ford commercial that never saw the light of kick-off, it turns out, a priest was depicted feeling “lust” of a curious kind: for a pickup truck. A young girl appeared in the advertisement – returning with her mother to reclaim the keys for this hot item, which the priest was caressing. The girl had mistakenly dropped the keys in the church collection plate. The priest must have run out into the parking lot to fantasize about throwing off his collar to run away with his new turbo-charged hunk a hunk of burning utility vehicle. Apparently some members of a group representing survivors of priestly sexual abuse saw the commercial's promo and connected the girl and the priest to claim that the advertisement trivialized the well-known sexual misdeeds of the nation's clergymen. The advertisement was killed for that reason. Not having seen the promo ad, I don't want to appear to deny that it may well have trivialized those misdeeds. It probably did. Still, I find this little dispute to be typically American in that nothing is said about the core sickness that lay at the heart of the commercial: the rather over-literal “fetishism of commodities,” to use the title of the fourth section of the first chapter of Karl Marx's Capital, Vol.1. The corporate advertising industry has no shame, --- nothing that would stop them from insulting Christians by portraying a priest having pseudo-sexual daydreams about a Ford pickup. If not for the misstep on the girl and the subsequent intervention of the anti-abuse advocates, the ad would certainly have survived with this crass commodity fetishism intact. All-too-typical for a country that was riveted to the point of mass fever by the spectacle of Monica Lewinski and Bill Clinton's adulterous liaison but officially bored to tears by the stunning levels of domestic and international social and economic inequality that were reached under Clinton's vicious neoliberal reign. The really sick thing is the way this sort of stuff plays out politically. The lords of our corporate-crafted “popular culture” know all about it. Basically, these Orwellian/Huxlean masters use sex, violence, constant spectacle, and an endless electronic parade of scandalous late-imperial gluttony to shock the Hell out of the confused and bewildered herd, whose lack of access to basic Marxian common-sense (much more widely available in other societies) encourages their dangerous blind authoritarianism. The freaked-out mass of outraged proto-fascist Caucasians lurches further to the right, grumbling about those terrible “Hollywood” liberals. Lacking any elementary understanding that America's powerful, decadent, and “repressively de-subliminal” (Herbert Marcuse) mass entertainment culture is a quintessentially CAPITALIST, profit-lusting enterprise, the herrenvolk is encouraged by shameless media excess to ironically embrace a party that is even more dedicated than the corporate Democrats to giving the corporate communications empire an ever freer hand to offend, manipulate, titilate, misniform, and market the masses: to manufacture cluelessness. Meanwhile, the conservative counter-reaction from evangelical and other appalled sectors gives the purveyors of mass consumerism a perfect “Church Lady” foil to more effectively market their stupid, fetishistic, and nauseating stream of “cool stuff.” Leading capitalist media has, since the 1960s, curiously aligned itself with and profited from “counter-cultural” rebellion against the corporate state and religious conservatives. This corporate “conquest of cool” (left business and cultural historian Thomas Frank's excellent phrase) is displayed in clever advertisements in which anarchic youth undertake “hip” resistance to “square” authority figures and puritanical ideals by purchasing supposedly liberating products (from Nike shoes to the latest software) and services (on-line trading) provided, ironically enough, by repressive and authoritarian corporations. The corporations have long been playing both sides of --- and profiting economically and politically from --- the ongoing "hip" v. "square" contest. It's part of how you get an idiot nation. Here's the story, which I got at http://money.cnn.com/2005/02/03/news/ fortune500/ford_superbowl.reut/ February 3, 2005 NEW YORK (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co.'s Lincoln Mercury unit says it won't air a Super Bowl ad depicting a clergyman lusting after its latest truck following a protest that the spot made light of a church sex scandal. The Ford (Research) commercial, titled "Charity," was to air during Sunday's Super Bowl football broadcast, television's most-watched event, where a 30-second spot costs $2.4 million. In the ad released to the press this week, a Christian clergyman finds a set of car keys in the collection plate. In the church parking lot, he finds the new Lincoln truck and begins caressing the vehicle but stops when a parishioner arrives with his young daughter and explains that the child dropped the keys into the plate by mistake. After collecting himself, the clergyman posts his next sermon's theme -- "Lust" -- on the church's outdoor sign A group representing victims of sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests urged Lincoln to withdraw the ad, produced by agency Young & Rubicam. The group said the commercial "trivializes childhood sex crimes by trusted clergy" by combining the image of the clergyman, a sheepish-looking young girl and the theme of temptation The group, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, or SNAP, is one of the largest support groups for clergy molestation victims. The American Catholic church has paid millions of dollars in recent years to settle hundreds of sexual abuse lawsuits against clergy. "We were surprised by the negative reaction," said Lincoln Mercury spokeswoman Sara Tatchio. "It was not our intention to offend anyone." Advertisers have been shy of stirring controversy since the 2004 Super Bowl, when singer Janet Jackson exposed her breast during a half-time performance and prompted an indecency crackdown by federal regulators. Tatchio said the company was considering whether to run another spot during the Super Bowl.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Cmzimmermann, Cmzimmermann at Feb 15, 2005 21:31 PM
2.) From a critical standpoint, I do not think that advertising is a question of duping us, or of us being gullible, or of us believing what is presented in an ad. As was pointed out earlier, we are much more fluent than previous generations in this world of advertising and thus more cynical. Of course, advertising is an attempt to convince us to purchase items that we need or do not need. The more central issue here, I think, is one step further removed. Advertising (and the entire capitalist apparatus of the creation of desire, fetishism, etc) offers us a sort of utopia. Ads are the 'good news'. We feel comforted by these ads with their beautiful people and perfect lifestyles. Ads sell an entire mode of being not simply a particular product. McLuhan points out that commercials are not the breaks in the news, which is usually if not always violent, depressing, etc., rather the violent news is the break in the utopian perfection of the ad world. The news re-focuses our attention on what is comforting, non-threatening, what is possible through consumer bliss.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Cmzimmermann, Cmzimmermann at Feb 15, 2005 21:19 PM
A few brief comments concerning some issues that were raised in this discussion: 1.) Art, entertainment, and advertising are three very different practices with different impulses, traditions, and functions. In our entirely pluralist cultural and artistic constellation(s), anything has the potential to be art. This does not mean that anything is art, rather we determine art as art by the way in which the work fits into a larger institutional framework. Because similar techniques are often used and because the culture industry does tend to absorb avant-garde movements into its machinery, we tend to lump ads, art, and entertainment into a similar category. Probing beyond this, one can see that the Phantom of the Opera and one of Arthur Miller's plays have very little to do with one another, besides representing two opposing positions within the larger culture industry. Perhaps, this is not the place to go into such a discussion, but these distinctions are vital.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Gammon101, Bwong at Feb 14, 2005 04:41 AM
I am not denying that there are questionable projects that an artist should not take part.But it is unreasonable to say catagorically artists should not work for advertising. The effect of advertising maybe exaggerated. Unlike our grand parents who can be forgiven for their gullibilty we grow up with advertising and commercials. I suggest we all have developed some form immunity. My initial reaction to your story about Thatcher was geeze, if the Brits were indeed so stupid that they voted simply based on some ads then it proves once and for all democracy is for monkeys. But Thatcher's was a different time. Today's generation is much more skeptical and cynical to be taken in by ads. No one can say for sure how effective advertising actually is and how it works. Marketing data are subjected to different interpretations.Then why do companies pump so much money into ads? According to an ad man this is because they aren't sure ad does not work.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Gammon101, Bwong at Feb 14, 2005 04:17 AM
Russia has never had a commodity based economy therefore commodification of art is a non issue. On the other hand, many artists in the U.S.S.R used to make a living by churning out propaganda for the party and the leaders. If artists working for ad companies represent prostitution that is like being a in house sex slave.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Gammon101, Bwong at Feb 14, 2005 00:26 AM
"Tolstoy had a few simple tests: It has to ask who am I? And why am I here? And the artist has to really mean what he or she says, and the person experiencing the work of art has to receive (feel? absorb? understand?) the artist's real meaning" But I should point out for the benefit of the readers that Tolstoy has turned into a religious fanatic and was getting quite crazy towards the end(when he wrote his art criticism). His "simple tests" disqualify almost all classical European master pieces as art. Those that failed the tests, according to the Count, included Beetoveen, almost all French authors, most of Tolstoys's own work and a lot more.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Gammon101, Bwong at Feb 14, 2005 00:14 AM
"Arthur Miller's 'The Crucible' and 'Phantom of the Opera'. Neither of them would distinguish between a well-made film financed by Nazis and one financed by a socially aware director putting his or her last pennies into the project." I don't find the phantom particularly interesting but a lot of folks do. People go to see a film or a play for different reasons. Some want to be provoked, some only seek entertainment. I think it is a ted snobbish to think that only "serious art" is art.It takes a lot of cleverness, wit and ingenuity to create good entertainment!(The Phantom is not even good entertainment IMO) For every Arthur Miller there are untold number of "serious" playwrights who have a lot of social conscience but zero talent.I know a few individuals like this. Like you said they put their last penny into producing and staging their plays, their determination is admirable, but the plays simply suck. A lot of experimental films are just pretentious trash while there are well made Hollywood movies. To compare advertising with the Nazis is just over the top. I won't even dignify that silliness with a reply.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Hesed00, Hesed at Feb 13, 2005 13:43 PM
Joeblog, I don't know how it is you construed my saying that arts purpose should not be based on profitability into the very confrontational and misguided assumption about what my values are? You're reaching. If putting words into peoples mouths is the only way you can find to make your point, then I'll ask you to use someone else as your device.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Hesed00, Hesed at Feb 12, 2005 20:47 PM
Good point Bwong. I think if the world appreciates a piece of art enough put a monetary value on it, then so be it...so longs as the purpose of it's conception wasn't just to make a dime or sell a product. I don't think that profitablity is the standard by which arts greatness should be gauged. For instance, is a Van Gogh worth less than an old WWII coca-cola ad painting because the coca-cola ad generated more profit for coca-cola?

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Gammon101, Bwong at Feb 12, 2005 18:21 PM
" A whole movement of art has prostituted itself in this country to advertising pimps.' There is nothing unusual about it. Classical painters and sculpters used to make a living by creating art with religious motifs or drawing larger than life portriats for lords and their rich patrons.Was Michael Angelo prostituting himself to the Church? Perhaps. It is just a fact that artists are often not independently wealthy. What you refer to as "prostitution" is merely selling whatever one is good at to make a living. I am not sure how many jobs can actually be considered "kosher" in terms of creating greater social good. Probably not many. Yet most of us get up and go to work everyday. I am not sure why artists should be held to a higher standard.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Street, Paul at Feb 12, 2005 03:51 AM
This following comment comes from Geradette - I didn't write it she did: I am studying arts administration and I find this fallacy of "corporations as model citizens generously donating some profits for the good of society" to be disheartening. There is an attempt to inculcate this idea of corporate sponsorship as beneficial to nonprofits and the communities they serve. It is considered an essential part of funding. The idea of an arts organization as a public space that should be devoid of marketing is given no credence by my colleagues. Sadly, one individual even argued with me, saying "that all members of a nonprofit organization, even the curator, should be concerned with marketing." Personally I find it horrific that people are so quick and eager to turn nonprofits and the causes that they support into a large commercials for corporations."

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Street, Paul at Feb 11, 2005 08:19 AM
ninjafish very int. about the org.food sector's cooptation into the corporate cultivation of mass ignorance and the related financial dependence on corporations. I work for a nonprofit that (like many other nonprofits I know in the city and around the nation and world)is grotesquely enslaved to the money and (worse) to the culture of corporate chieftans I personally look forward to incarcerating at some point in the revolutionary future. Terence I've known very intelligent and creative people who were somewhat conversant with left social theory and who went into advertising. The thing I remember about them most is their cynicism and their determination that humans are pretty much material vectors and slime. When they are playing as radicals in their youth they are often rather elitist know-it-all-variants, more inclined to structuralist and theoretical approaches than to moral and democratic commitments to real and everyday people...if that makes any sense. I'd say drop the hope/hopeless dichotomy altogether and just spit in their eyes.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Street, Paul at Feb 10, 2005 09:36 AM
Actually the corporate-capitalist state is constantly trying to destroy difference and meld people into a faceless homogenized mass of dullard worker and consumer robots and futile spectators....to turn us all into replaceable parts. Some of Marx's best writing was about the commodifying dehumanization inflicted by capital.Martin Luther King, Jr. used to mention how capitalism turned people into things...commodities. Talk about that honestly and someone will actually call you a Nazi.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Street, Paul at Feb 10, 2005 09:35 AM
Fascism was not socialism: private ownership of the means of production remained very much intact and German bourgeoisie was pleased to benefit from fascism's assault on labor and the left and the state susbidization of military industrial expansion, under the Third Reich. The Nazis were pretty good for that old rate of surplus value. There's a decent Marxist literature on this but that would be discredited in advance for YB so he might want to check out the interesting volume by mainstream US author William Manchester: The Arms of Krupp. He should also see Robert Brady, Business as a System of Power (1943). YB is equating savage class hieararchies and the constant rape of the common good by the wealthy few with the glories of human diversity and pluralistic difference. That's a bunch of bullshit....

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Street, Paul at Feb 10, 2005 09:22 AM
as for Yakov, I've known more than a few Christian Marxists...there's some common ground; mayber quite a bit given the portrait of historical Jesus that emerges in Catholic Depaul professor Richard Crossan's recent study of "historical jesus," which paints JC as sort of an itinerant IWW member...a kind of peasant-artisanal left-anarch and a revolutionary opponent of empire and inequality. The line about Zinn and me not knowing history is funny since I actually have a doctorate in history and so read zillions of books and gave all bunch of history lectures and didn't actually read Zinn until after most of that....

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Street, Paul at Feb 10, 2005 09:12 AM
bwong the only thing worse than moralizing too much is not moralizing (within reason)at all; we should keep alive a "moral economy" (the great British historian EP Thompson's term to describe the ethical base for early artisan resistance to industrial capitalism) but I agree we should link our values to an intelligent democratic restructuring of the political economy, our economy... along freely associated lines of cooperation and justice. Mike Albert likes to ask: "Have you tried Parecon?" I don't know if we have to engage in grotesque and ceaseless growth underwriting consumption ----- our main jobs anymore (in an age of capital disaccumulation) being to absorb surplus-- to keep our heads above water but I suspect the global corporate system is in fact unsustainable beyond the middle of this century and that it will be worthwhile to get up and running with some local and regional models (parecon perhaps or some variations...certainly not state socialism) of practical radical economic justice and sustainability to fill the opportunity-rich void that will emerge when it collapses.

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Occupy_iowa_city_rally

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Street, Paul at Feb 10, 2005 09:05 AM
O.H. Lee raises an interesting empirical point on the ad that is intriguing. Hesed, that first post was hilarious - thank you for that...it lightened up a dreary day of copy editing and thank you and Matt Cunningham for defending me against the brilliant and devastating claim that I am a Nazi since I am a leftist. I agree with joeblogs on the differences he mentions between marxism and fascism. These and other critical differences are why fascism was all about clubbing socialists and labor movement down and marxists equaled (or close to equaled) Jews as hated enemies in Mein Kampf. It was not for nothing that marxists were thrown in camps by Hitler quite early on.

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Person

By Hesed00, Hesed at Feb 10, 2005 06:09 AM
Yakov, let me get this straight...you're saying that from what Paul Street has indicated in this post, that he is a fascist and that his ideas are nothing more than Nazi propaganda? Wow, I think it's you who needs the history lesson.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Gammon101, Bwong at Feb 10, 2005 05:20 AM
If we all cut back on consumptions significantly pretty soon we'll have a recession if not a full blown depression. This is a structural problem. Grotesque consumption will HAVE TO continue unless we find a way to organize the economy in such a way that we don't have be enslaved by growth for growth's sake. I doubt that moralizing would have much effect as long as our collective well being is tied to the GDP. Nowadays more people are realizing that the current economical system is envormentally insustainable(as opposed to merely philosphically or morally objectionable) Hopefully long term survivial would be enough incentive for people to look for non growth based economical models.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Gammon101, Bwong at Feb 10, 2005 05:18 AM
I think it is too simplistic to blame commodity fetishsm on "corporate greed" and the scheming of the advertising industry. Our kind of economy cannot survive without ever expanding consumption. We all have a stake in it. If GM is not selling enough cars, many people will lose their jobs and when these people are not spending because they no longer get a pay cheque the diner down the street will have to lay off the waitress because of slow business, the mom and pop store may have to close down for lack of customers. The ripple expands. (With outsourcing people may still be losing their jobs even if GM is selling a lot of cars, but that's a different issue)

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Bok, Yakov at Feb 10, 2005 03:09 AM
Marxism tries to eliminate difference in people by making all things equal. Further, to repeat myself, national socialism also known as fascism, is rooted in socialism. Take out racist diatribes in fascist propaganda and you can't tell the difference between it and the socialism that you promote. The reason that racism is able to exist is national socialism, is the ability to say "the reason all things are not equal in our society is because of them." Lord knows that has been said by socialist as well who have tried to seperate themselves from their national socialist brethren.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Bok, Yakov at Feb 10, 2005 00:28 AM
Further, stop trying to seperate fascismm and socialism. Fascism is National Socialism - it is socialism first and foremost. Sorry to inform you, but you have the same idiology as the dreaded Nazis. If you knew anything about history other than what you read in a Howard Zinn book, you would know that!

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Bok, Yakov at Feb 10, 2005 00:23 AM
Did you really defend the sensibilities of Christians with a Marxist statement? I'm sufficating in irony. Speaking of an "idiot nation," isn't it more idiotic to promote a philosphy that ignores differences in people, and in the attempt to make all people equal, will necessitate eliminating liberty because that liberty could lead to inequalities? I also wonder what real world experience you have with "communism." Brother Noam realized its failure on a Kibbutz in 1952 when he wasn't allowed to do what he wanted. So he came back to a life of luxary in the U.S. Further, have you ever spent time with say, a condominium exec. board meeting? What a pain. Socialism just doesn't work.

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By Hesed00, Hesed at Feb 09, 2005 22:58 PM
Advertising: Are you unhappy? Has the life you've bought into suddenly feel vacuous? Is their a swelling malaise growing in your unexamined life? Do you ever feel like there is something just below the surface of your existance that's telling you that something is just not right? Have you ever thought that there might be a universal moral sensibility in all humans that senses and rejects things which they know to be wrong and when left to fester, will manifest itself in desparate, irrational behaviour such as conspicuous consumption? No? FANTASTIC! Then you should buy our new and improved shiny piece of shit which is sure to satiate your desire to feel like a person of worth and value who belongs to a community of people just as fuct up and unimaginative as you!

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Person

Re: Talk About Your "Fetishism of Commodities": a Priest, a Truck, a Girl, and an Idiot Nation

By H., O. at Feb 09, 2005 17:30 PM
Could this be another example of "viral" advertising, like the VW Arab terrorist ad? Something is not right here. First, an ad produced for a Super Bowl spot would have to be focus-grouped months before air date to justify running it in such a high-priced time slot. Then it somehow comes to the attention (even viewed, maybe?) of this SNAP group. Big stink, lots of publicity just day ahead of the game. Finally, FoMoCo announces that it will not air the ad. I haven't checked yet, but I bet this ad is available for viewing somewhere on the net.

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