***Future actual review forthcoming. The following is a paranoid rant:
I'm not a fan of advertising. I choose my media and clothes in ways that neither***Future actual review forthcoming. The following is a paranoid rant:
I'm not a fan of advertising. I choose my media and clothes in ways that neither follow advertising campaigns nor advertise for themselves as items while I'm consuming or wearing them. I'm not allergic to advertising say like Cayce Pollard, the protagonist of William Gibson's Pattern Recognition, because that isn't an allergy. It's a preference.
Sidenote: the concept of allergy has gotten muddled these days by people, who in their need to feel unique, place restaurant and coffee orders like Sally in When Harry Met Sally (1989), and go so far as to justify these perverse orders on the basis of allergies, real or imagined (i.e. preferences rounded up to allergies in order to strengthen their argument. The latter being such a whiny bastard move. If you're not going to bleed out, shit yourself, swell or lose consciousness: let's just say you don't like something). Not all the blame lies with neurotic consumers, since North American corporate chains encourage this behaviour by giving consumers 1000 inflated ways to have their coffee and food. The chains also passive-aggressively insist you learn their menu at the risk of looking like a moron ("Coffee with milk, and whatever passes for the standard hamburger here, please." Whatta rube for failing to ingest lots of marketing. God, go back to whatever TV-less hole you crawled out of.) Save a prayer for the poor baristas and waiters everywhere, contorting themselves to meet everyone's inverted ideas about how special they are vis-Ã -vis what will soon either be piss or shit.
Side-side-note: Being Canadian these days, I experience this at least once whenever I return to the US and try the new fast-food chain du jour, because Canada is provincial and takes 3-5 years to adopt or copy a successful US chain. "Whatta you mean you don't have Sad Clown Taco Surprise in Canaydia?! Here, let me show you how this works, like I did for my Amish friend. Pick a sad clown, level of spice, sizes are piqueno, grande, and borracho, etc"
William Gibson will bring me back to my original point. Gibson's Spook Country and Pychon's Bleeding Edge have many similarities, but the one I want to harp on is that the dubiously rich characters in both novels drive Maybachs.
Maybachs, go . Maybachs are black and white German luxury sedans with a pricetag of >$400K. They are uninspiring mini-tanks, that if painted yellow would be mistaken for taxis with swollen hoods, manufactured by the same company that built panzer tanks for nazis. Late capitalism doesn't seem to mind about the nazis, because any German company surviving from that era was nazi at the time. For example, Hugo Boss still makes suits, despite designing the black SS uniform. The difference being, if any, is sometimes Hugo Boss suits look good. Maybachs don't. Maybachs are rich people toys because rich people can afford them and advertising says they are rich people toys. Duh, non-rich person. So un-suh-mephisto-mah-cated.
Gibson, Pynchon, and all use Maybachs similarly in their recent works to move shady, shark-like characters around their stories and songs. For the authors, some savvy editor may have said "Hey Gibson/Pynchon, if you gotta mention a villain car, why not get paid doing so?" The authors did the math, thinking about however many Soviet-era hand calculators or croissants they could buy, and made the sinister luxury car in their novels a Maybach. Kanye either was told about them by his PR firm or just thinks they are is dope, and either way he got paid, because damn right. Whatever the pathway, this is product placement.
Product placement is advertising. I'm sure product placement in novels has happened before, but not so obviously and so quickly to me. I was tipped off after looking at one of these dumb cars (Online, natch, since there probably isn't a dealership in Canada and I'm lazy and would rather read than look at any car). Why would all three artists mention them, rather recently, as cool sinister things when they are lumpy dumb car-blocks? While I'm flattered that I'm mistakenly being pitched to like I'm Jay-z and Mark Zuckerberg, I don't like advertising, especially in NOVELS.
I was neither paid nor given a Maybach for this review, since the cars are dumb....more
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