Selling Ain’t Wrong
What punk still doesn’t get about capitalism
Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity | Anne Elizabeth Moore | The New Press
By Harold Henderson The beauty of punk was that it couldn’t possibly sell out. Who’d want to buy? “It was by definition ugly and nasty and based on an opposition to money and fame and success,” writes Anne Elizabeth Moore, former coeditor and associate publisher of the defunct Chicago-based zine Punk Planet, in her new book, Unmarketable. “Membership was based on the principle that what was made by hand for yourself and your friends was better than what could be purchased.”
Whoops! Punk turned out to be highly marketable, as Moore details in story after story, all turning on the ability of corporations to use humor, irony, and weirdness, sometimes so subtly that the underground had no sense of having sold out or opted in. In the late 90s Jones Soda prospered by putting its vending machines in skate parks, bike shops, and record stores, “as if it were a natural part of that scene.” In 2005, prior to the release of Star Wars: Episode III—Revenge of the Sith, a crumpled pseudo-homemade envelope showed up at the offices of Punk Planet. It contained an invitation to check out a Web site called Grrl.com, which “appeared to be a wholly unofficial fan site for hipsters who grew up loving Luke Skywalker,” though it was actually the creation of Lucasfilm marketer Bonnie Burton, a woman who “claims a direct connection to the early 1990s riot grrrl movement.”
Nike ripped off the iconic album-cover imagery of the hardcore band Minor Threat for a skateboarding tour promotion, then pulled the campaign partway through and apologized. But it got the buzz it wanted and put Dischord Records, the label run by Minor Threat front man Ian MacKaye, in a no-win situation: either let the thievery stand or take Nike to court, thus further publicizing an unwanted association. Two summers ago Matt Malooly, a WLUW DJ and contributing editor to Lumpen, came across a graffadi campaign for Axe Body Spray on Milwaukee Avenue that had been funded by a promotional outfit called Critical Massive. When he and his friends started painting over the images (“too cute to be street art,” says Moore, “too gritty to be advertising”) they were accosted by the man who’d been hired to make them. He said he wanted to break their fingers for ruining his piece.
Moore sees these episodes as threats to the integrity of the movement she’s had a hand in chronicling and shepherding. She bemoans, for example, how Bonnie Burton’s e-zine “served to blur the line between what is genuinely DIY and what is done for the Man,” a division that Jake Dobkin of Gothamist describes this way: “Art is created for the love of the creative act. Advertising is created to convince people to buy more crap that they don’t need.”
But these distinctions won’t stand. Some advertising is art. Some art is advertising. Most advertising is schlock because most people have bad taste, not because of who pays for it. For that matter, most attempted art is schlock too.
Like their counterculture elders from previous decades, punks are blinded by the romantic idea that artistic creation wells up from some intrinsically authentic place within you. But you are what you are because of the culture that surrounds you, good and bad. Your personal artistic impulses grow out of it and rely on the materials within it.
Some of Moore’s stories illustrate this fact, but she doesn’t seem to notice. She has a hopelessly ambivalent relationship to the “Star Wars” movies, which are commercial and therefore (in her worldview) despicable. But she grew up with them, hence it’s “genuinely unthinkable that we wouldn’t attend and support every episode of the series.” Similarly, the underground couldn’t condemn Converse even after Nike bought it in 2003, because Chuck Taylors were “practically a required uniform for my 1980s-era adolescence.” If soft-drink vending machines were really as alien to the culture of skateboard dudes as Moore claims, Jones Soda would’ve gone bankrupt.
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The truth is there’s no problem here if you don’t create one. We’re all part of our culture, and our culture is (among other things) about selling stuff. And that’s OK. Selling stuff isn’t wrong; selling by deception is. When capitalism is done right (and it often isn’t), it’s one of the best ways ever invented for different people to get along and prosper. Hipsters are no match for it, not because they’re dumb or venal, but because their underlying philosophy is bankrupt. Not only does it confuse marginality with merit, it’s all about being pure and separate from a culture you can’t help but be a part of.
Moore is so frustrated by the way corporations mimic and co-opt ironic strategies like culture jamming that she’s finally reduced to proposing that underground artists produce not ugly, unsellable stuff, but seemingly sellable stuff with just a faint stain or imperfection, “a mark imperceptible to most, and difficult to locate . . . [that] looks very much like everything that surrounds it, until you notice its fundamental difference. And by then you can’t get rid of it.”
Huh? This futile reduction of DIY and punk to homeopathic invisibility would be funny if Moore hadn’t already described plenty of real abuses that need to be exposed and stopped. Pretending to be an ordinary person when you’re flogging merchandise is wrong. Cheating is wrong. Buying legislators is wrong. Punishing graffiti artist John Tsombikos with jail time while letting Verizon off with a wrist slap for graffadi is wrong.
To deal with these abuses we don’t need a purity-obsessed counterculture. We need a counterpolitics that blows the whistle on dishonesty and gives people and governments at all levels the will to hold wrongdoers accountable—not because they make money, but because they lied and cheated instead of just telling us what’s for sale. Send a letter to the editor.
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Kyle at 12:30 PM on 11/1/2007
How can an anti-capitalist sell a book? Isn't that what capitalists do?
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Pupating Omnivore at 10:06 PM on 11/1/2007
DIY is alive and well. I wish everyone would stop worrying. You must check these guys out if you're annoyed by culture-jamming hipsters:
http://www.tvo.org/podcasts/bi/audio/BIHeathPotter052007.mp3
They have a book, Rebel Sell. Awesome stuff.
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RevolutionNow at 11:17 PM on 11/1/2007
Those who are so consumed with opposing pop culture are the worst of it.
Think of the real change that could happen if all the hipsters actually stopped pretending to be apathetic and read the papers so they could react.
Stop buying hightops and neon colored clothes.
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that guy at 1:54 PM on 11/2/2007
...and furthermore, Anne Elizabeth Moore is sort of hot. sorry to interrupt this thrilling thread, but it's true. it's true.
AEM: I don't care if you're a communist. Heck, that's sort of sexy. Call me.
xo
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WEIRD PUNK at 3:30 PM on 11/2/2007
THIS IS THE WEIRDEST PUNK I HAVE EVER HEARD
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Louhi at 4:51 PM on 11/2/2007
Henderson's criticism of Moore's 'homeopathic' remedy (in his words) is poignant. Nonetheless, in terms of criticisms of capitalism, Henderson misses the point. In an economy where everything embodies commodity, economic value (credit, equity, property, etc.) is the only true priority. Everything else is externality. According to capitalist ethics, all things equal, theft or property damage are the only crimes. In that case, 'crimes' like graffadi, buying legislators, cheating are not crimes at all. In fact, they are the fabric of the capitalist society. They operate it.
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Paul LaBarbera at 9:34 AM on 11/3/2007
As far as Moore's book, I hope it's informed by Dick Hebdige's "Subcultures", which detailed the processes of punk culture being recuperated into mainstream culture in the 80s, and the processes haven't changed.
What Hedige (and Henderson) misses, and Moore seems to be on the edge of, is indicating that "punk" culture is merely one historical manifestation of an inherently human action: an individual re-creating meaning out of any cultural
artifact.
There's punk culture, and there's the punk attitude, and the fissure between culture and individuals is going to exist as long as history does. Moore's idea of adding a "little smudge" isn't new. Smudging is an individual taking back meaning, which is punk as fuck to me.
anyway, if the reviewer or author or anyone else wants to talk about marxism and punk culture, i do: p dot labarbera at gmail
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Bert at 5:13 PM on 11/4/2007
Harold Henderson's writing always has a free-market libertarian bent. He loves capitalism. He thinks capitalism is "one of the best ways ever invented for different people to get along and prosper." If you do too, you'll probably agree with him.
The Reader takes great care to cover the books and films and bands of the "counterculture" but their heart is clearly with Henderson, Reason magazine, the Cato Institue, and the socially liberal wing of corporate America.
Since they don't have an official editorial page, the Reader's pro-business slant is much less overt than the Tribune or the Sun-Times. But it is always, always there.
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Harold at 10:47 AM on 11/5/2007
Bert -- I hope you will make the case for alternative ways of arranging an economy. As I've said on the blog, capitalism works better if it has competition. But please don't lie about my story. You omitted the key qualifier to my statement about capitalism: "When it is done right (which it often isn't)." I trust that your constructive arguments will rest on a sounder foundation than this.
As for the idea that the Reader as a whole has a slant of any kind, that's just hilarious. I've been here 22 years. As any reader can tell, there's never been a "party line," and Creative Loafing willing, there never will be.
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Bonnie Burton at 5:17 PM on 11/7/2007
As the person that Moore directly badmouths, let me clear up a couple of points that she never bothered to tell the truth about.
I am not in direct connection with the Riot Grrrl Movement. Though I do admire it. I started Grrl.com in 1996 for my own writing, and quite frankly for fun. It's not a political site, though I do think of myself as a feminist.
Grrl.com is NOT owned by Lucasfilm and never has been. It's mine since 1996 and will continue to be mine until I die. Period. I started Grrl.com in 1996, I didn't become an employee for Lucasfilm until 2003.
I work for Lucasfilm as a Senior Editor at starwars.com. Not as some underground super-secretive mastermind of marketing. Though that does sound cool.
I sent Punk Planet magazine (not to Moore directly) some Star Wars swag because we send swag to lots of mainstream magazines, and for once I wanted to send cool stuff to magazines I actually read like Giant Robot, BUST, Juxtapoz, and so on. Ironically, Punk Planet's assoc. editor Moore, is the only one who made an issue about it and didn't do so until AFTER the fact. Which I thought was odd since when she got my envelope of swag she sent me a nice thank you note that read:
---
From: Anne Elizabeth Moore -- Punk Planet [mailto:anne@punkplanet.com]
Sent: Friday, July 15, 2005 10:44 AM
To: Bonnie Burton
Subject: PUNK PLANET story re: Lucasfilm's marketing campaign
Hi Bonnie,
A few months ago, I received a package here at PUNK PLANET with a
Darth Vader t-shirt and several Yoda/Mr. t stickers in it from you. I was struck by the idea and the artwork involved; it was not what I'd expected to see from Lucasfilm Ltd.
We're writing a story on such underground marketing campaigns by
major labels and major studios, and were hoping to talk to someone
there—you, hopefully—about this intriguing campaign, and the several
interesting art projects it encompasses.
Feel free to call me on my cell phone, or check in via email, at your earliest convenience. I go to press in early August and would love to include your comments in this story.
Sincerely,
Anne Elizabeth Moore
Associate Publisher
Punk Planet
---
What I didn't know was that she would twist my words around in an email interview and make me sound like some weird corporate villain exploiting DIY culture.
But then again she just wanted to sell a magazine with a sensationalized Stephen Glass-esque unfactchecked story full of her own opinionated slant. And now it looks like she's doing it again with the same exact story in a book, dragging my name in the mud along with it.
So I hope when your readers look at her book, they read it for what it is -- Poorly Written Fiction.
- Bonnie Burton
Grrl.com
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Just the Facts at 6:24 PM on 11/7/2007
Good writers check their facts first, and don't spread unnecessary untruths! You should follow suit.
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Another White Guy Heard From at 8:32 PM on 11/7/2007
I didn't read Anne's book, but I liked the review.
The ideology supporting capitalism is not greeed. Greed is a vice. The ideology of capitalism is humanism. Everyone is special and free and has the right to start a zine or customize their dream home or write half-baked stuff on a web page.
You can't fight capitalism with humanism, or fundamentalism with liturgy, or totalitarianism with Marx.
But not to be a hater-- hopeless causes can be beautiful.
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Flippin' Eck at 12:17 PM on 1/2/2008
Punk was just exciting music to get drunk/high/lose yourself/forget life is dull etc.
For some it was a reaction to the status quo, the rise of boring art et al, but for most it was just a laugh with a bunch of like minded folk... revisionists/protectionists re-write things like it really meant something and challenged the world.
It changed somethings from within, but never shook the foundations.
Just a thought
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Brutus at 9:47 PM on 7/23/2008
Ms Burton it is, if not illegal, highly immoral to reprint another's email without their permission, regardless of your intentions at clearing your own name.
Just food for thought for anyone in the future who stumbles across this.
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