The elevation of the late Pope Francis to the status of ‘brand’ was achieved at his funeral in Vatican City. The stamp FRANCISCVO on his stone tomb in an ornate basilica marks his elevation into the ranks of single-word human brands such as RONALDO, BONO and TRUMP. He joins APPLE, GOOGLE, TESLA, DUNHILL, AMAZON and NIKE in the pantheon of big brands.
FRANCISCVO’S schtick is humility, a weightless commodification of a widespread human quality, in the same manner as innovation, excellence and performance are also commodified in the service of the world’s leading brands.
There is a hollowness in this abrogation of the words, which the desires of consumers can occupy and thus feel sated, at least temporarily. Images of priests and bishops raising iphones to capture images and selfies at FRANCISCVO’S funeral make this branding manifest. They are not present at a solemn, liturgical rite, but consuming a death-gig.
Sainthood beckons as the next elevation, possibly on a five-year schedule, enabling the brand to become FRANCISCVO SUPERIORE.
TRUMP’S schtick is disdain. He is a lout, delivering disdain on a mass scale. The disdain of the powerful creates fear, which drives consumption.
TRUMP says he favours manufacturing, desiring to bring US production back to America. Behind TRUMP’S desire is a failure to understand that these brands are not American, but global. Manufacturing goes anywhere labour is cheaper, costs are lower, tax regimes more amenable and profits are higher.
APPLE dodges tariffs by moving production from China to India, not to America. Workers at the INTEL chip-manufacturing plant in Ireland fear for their jobs, as the owners of the brand move to ‘trim non-core activities’ in order to boost profits. Non-core activities are performed by non-core people, who will be disdained and dismissed.
It is good old-fashioned ‘action at a distance’. Like physics, economics inhabits fields of action across which no apparent connections exist in order to benefit the few over the many. It is casino-capitalism. The people holding the most chips gain the most.
TRUMP is no more than a casino player, a carpet-bagger, in the style of the American Old West. New towns, new frontiers, new wealth, not for universal well-being, but for accumulation and concentration by adherents of the TRUMP brand.
Stocks are tossed about like confetti, as he plays green light/red light with tariffs, so that he and his adherents can make gross profits. The rest of us can have his disdain and nothing else.
ISRAEL’S schtick is self-defence. The brand is tarnishing itself before its consumers’ eyes, with continuing aggression, massacres, denials, cover-ups and lies, as it out-terrorises the terrorists.
Fear and desire drive consumption.
In each of these instances, the brands act at a distance, stimulating desire that is never satisfied. The desire itself is commodified and gathered for production and automation ends, such as training AI software. Even the trivialising images of the clerics will be gobbled by the digital maws that underpin the brands.
Which is the best brand to consume? FRANCISCVO’S humility, with its gold jewellery, scarlet robes, snow-white finery, and multi-billion dollar property portfolio, and not a woman in sight of the main table? Or TRUMP’S disdain, with its self-interest, exploitation and destruction? Or ISRAEL’S self-defence, fronting self-interest that validates massacres?
Whichever we choose we end up living by a brand, desiring all it offers and never gaining satisfaction.
*The Years Of Theory: Post-war French Thought to the Present Day
Frederic Jameson, Verso, London, 2024
See also blogpost: The Age of the Lout
https://breathingwithalimp.blogspot.com/2022/07/the-age-of-lout.html
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