A common criticism of contemporary capitalism is that the financial industry has completely decoupled capital from the materiality of production. The crisis in Europe has achieved such epic proportions because the creation of wealth was no longer inextricably linked to the labour of workers in the eurozone but could be amplified by complex algorithms of a computerised speculation. However there has also been a twin decoupling that has taken place alongside the rise of financial industry from the 1980's; a race to the bottom of signification which has seen a wedge driven between signifier and signified. The rise within advertising of a pure aesthetic of connotation which has created a feedback loop that engulfs the entire cultural sphere.
In 1981 Jean Baudrillard wrote in Simulations and Siumulacra:
Today what we are experiencing is the absorption of all virtual modes of expression into that of advertising. All original cultural forms, all determined languages are absorbed in advertising because it has no depth, it is instantaneous and instantaneously forgotten. Triumph of superficial form, of the smallest common denominator of all signification, degree zero of meaning, triumph of entropy over all possible tropes. The lowest form of energy of the sign. This unarticulated, instantaneous form, without a past, without a future, without the possiblity of metamorphosis, has power over all the others. All current forms of activity tend toward advertising and most exhaust themselves therein.”
In a world where all original cultural forms are absorbed into advertising it doesn't become the only possible language but any changes to this language are logically seen in all the subsumed cultural forms. Baudrillard speaks of advertising's overtaking “madness”, that of “always voting for itself” and this overdeveloped system's power being stolen by the language of computer science. This predicted loss of power does not seem to have been borne out, yet advertising's always voting for itself has indeed become the dominant cultural form: an advertising which advertises advertising is now the only language that cultural forms can speak. In this respect advertising has become the reserve in a cultural gold standard, the value to which all subsets of value are tied to. This shadow decoupling is not widely discussed due to the pressing nature of unfolding economic events yet the effect this absorption of cultural forms has had on products and importantly the way we consume them has important ramifications for political engagement.
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From its very beginning advertising has sought to persuade and to manipulate. In its earliest forms advertising promoted the the qualities of its product and assured consumers that its object was the leader in its field, yet almost at its birth advertising became associative. Not only were products the best in their specific context but they were able to tap into the deepest aspirations of their consumers. Through connotation products became associated with everything from social movements to fundamental hopes, and fears, of each different strata of society. From (now) quaint 'groovy' adverts for banal domestic products to sophisticated lifestyle marketing advertising became increasingly adept manipulating consumers through their own culturally embedded desires.
However, beginning in the 80's, the contextualisation of this cultural embedding became disrupted whilst simultaneously more and more consumers became aware of the levels of sophistication with which advertising was able to operate. Yet this did not lead to an end to advertising or even a radical break with its past methods, rather the functions and connotations imbued in products were replaced with a single signifier, that of signification itself.
This process began with the emergence of Post-Modernism in the 80's and 90's which dismissed the reverence for the cultural and historical contexts of cultural forms. Combining images and objects in a form of bricolage that couldn't necessarily be reduced to a simple irony or juxtaposition, post-modernism gave artists, writers and designers a freedom from historical context that those who spent their formative years in one or both world wars would never have. To its critics post-modernism's freedom resulted in a shallow preoccupation with surface, yet it was to become the dominant aesthetic across the dominant cultural sphere. Its disrespectful focus on existing objects rendered the whole world its palette and allowed for a disruption of the relation of signifier and signified that had previously been the domain of advertising.
Advertising however flourished, at first it was able to utilise this bricolage and play with signification as an aesthetic, projecting a cutting-edge vitality on to products. Yet as the level of appropriation broadened exponentially to include multiple aesthetics from the past and imagined futures it became harder to identify a unifying aesthetic. At this point, with all signs fair game for appropriation, the only function adverts need to perform is that of an empty signification. Products would still be made to appear to connote some culturally desirable affect or function but the aesthetic or strategy for producing this connotation is almost arbitrary; the very act of connoting, rather than what is being connoted, is now the one that instils value.
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The feedback loop created by adverts that advertise advertising has a profound affect on products. They cease to be receptacles for the properties advertising once projected on to them but exist instead as vague signifiers of an ill-defined quality; imbued simply with an abstract quality of connotation products become adverts themselves. In this world products never fail to live up to the qualities ascribed to them by advertising; as adverts themselves they are filled with an empty connotation which becomes value in itself, unfettered by the constraints of material imperfection.
It is true than products and their packaging have often contained advertising yet this formation is different, here products have no value other than the pure value of advertising: That is, an aesthetic or more often a combination of aesthetic tropes which appears to signify something more than its base materiality, but which never actually enunciates anything. In this respect the product-as-advert speaks a kind of semiotic jargon, a language which sounds convincing but on reflection says nothing at all.
If at a given moment, the commodity was its own publicity (there was no other)
today publicity has become its own commodity. It is confused with itself (and the
eroticism with which it ridiculously cloaks itself is nothing but the autoerotic index of a
system that does nothing but designate itself ”- Jean Baudrillard
Again we can see the beginning of this of this formation in the late 80's and 90's where an initial crude version emerged in the prominence of brand logos in the fashion industry, usually dismissed as simply buying in to a brand or projecting affluence or fashionableness . This was then developed to utilise our sophisticated ability read values through signs as object were transformed by a colour, a stripe or a fragment of a logo to become an object of value. However as these signs become further buried in the form of the object every idiosyncratic turn in the design can become an allusion to a brand, the end result being that the object itself disappears and is replaced by a patchwork of indefinite allusions.
The consumer is faced with a market of unreadable symbols, yet rather than call the products' bluff, calling out its meaningless signification, the consumer treats products with the reverence of the uninitiated. The assumption that the rich combination of aesthetic tropes implies some hidden meaning, that there is a wealth of semiotic relationships just beyond the consumer's grasp, both plays on the consumer's intelligence in expecting an advert/product's manipulation and belittles them for not understanding this manipulation whose apparatus is so clear. The fact that an understanding is impossible when the quality connoted is purely that of connotation is the very thing that upholds the value of the product.
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One reason for this inability to question advertising's meaningless signification comes from the effect of the now default aesthetic deployed by averts and products, that of novelty. This novelty has nothing to do with originality or progress but is rather a novelty of combination: Whether that be a novel aesthetic bricolage or a novel combination of object, aesthetic and context, it forms an ever accelerating stream of recombined layers of pseudo-symbols which are too fleeting to have their semiotic jargon caught out. Here the instantaneous form, without a past or future, disrupts the critical gaze; terms such as 'new' and 'limited edition' are applied to each passing wave whilst 'vintage' and 'retro' encourage an ever quicker recycling of de-contextualised historical styles.
With products reduced to the role of adverts, they too are subject to advertising's short memory. As a product's particular combination of signification grows old it must be recombined to continue to be affective, however the product's function as an advert and its constant connotative recombination demands a shift within consumers themselves: This shift can be seen in the fact that where once products were consumed to change the consumers' life, now the consumers' life is altered in order to consume.
As products become adverts it becomes impossible for consumers to interact with them in conventional ways, instead they must change themselves in order to meet advertising on its level. Traditionally the only members of society able to transcend this barrier are celebrities, those in the public eye who are able to manipulate their own image in order to embody values in much the same way that advertising once had. Yet in the last decade a tool has emerged which allows all consumers to meet advertising on equal ground; social media.
Social networking allows users a total control of image previously only enjoyed by marketing departments. This unprecedented level of identity branding literally gives users the ability to manipulate the scope, angle and focus of the others gaze, effecting a flattening out of identity that can bear little resemblance to reality. However this is not to say this manipulation is crude, on the contrary given advertising's tools a consumer's different brand identities and marketing strategies are developed through different social media and online presence to target specific markets. Slowly identities, like those of the post-modern artists are transformed into brands whose marketing departments work longer hours than even the biggest ad agencies and whose brand ambassadors commitment is unmatched. Again material relationships are reduced to numeration, whether posts, friends or followers.
A lineage of social networking can be traced from the movements of identity politics and radical subjectivity in the 1960's and 70's and it is well documented how this identity politics has been appropriated by the consumerism of contemporary capitalism. Where consumerism was able to sell a false individuality through the tailoring of products to a plurality of identities, a veneer over an unchanging exploitation, social media shifts the radical subjectivity to a radical objectification. The precise control of an online presence through the entirety of visual and textual output is simply the creation of an object, a self objectification which allows for an entry into the closed system of advertising.
The defining cultural myth of the US, and one that has proved pervasive across the western world is the prosperity of the post-war years and the emergence of American hegemony. The ideal of this mythological period was that of middle class conformity yet identity politics replaced this ideal with its opposite, that of individualism. The past fear of falling out of the middle class, into the chaotic identity of the working class was been replaced by the fear of lacking a unique, defined identity. However, as advertising and products become indistinguishable this individualism, through social media, also began to resemble advertising. The content of the required identity became unimportant, as with advertising's equivalence of all signifiers the value lay in the production of the identity regardless of what it actually contained. In this formulation identities and products become part of the sea of meaningless signifiers which are the interchangeable variables of advertising's novelty: A novelty which up holds the connotation of connotation, the empty signification which is the pure value of advertising.
