Give me marketing or give me death

anne elizabeth moore, somewhere.





Last night, I went to see Anne Elizabeth Moore speak last night at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Lansingburgh. Ms. Moore was an editor for Punk Planet for about 13 years. I only know Punk Planet for its record reviews, for it completed boatloads of reviews, but Punk Planet I think was also really interested in providing critiques of pop culture and a provided a general reading of different music "scenes" in general.

Anyway, Moore's new book, Marketing the Unmarketable is supposed to discuss the trends taken by marketers to appropriate smelly indy rock cultural products, (like music, hoodies, and hair), and use these previously "unmarketable" traits as new sales ploys. She also has other "cultural texts" to focus on besides "indy rock," such as the American Girl Dolls you may have grown up around.

In the talk she gave at the Sanctuary, she talked primarily about her "mocketing" efforts to culture jam the American Girl store in Chicago--a store she has now been banned from entering because of her strategic placing of pamphlets that look like official Amercian Girl literatures, but are actually Anne Elizabeth Moore tracts about how American Girl dolls are made in China by 19 year old girls literally working themselves to death.

The talk was pretty good, but the culture jamming arguments are something that I'm familiar too and their attractiveness and effectiveness begins to pall on my ears. It often seems efforts of the left merely critique advertising practices for their distorted presentations of reality (American Girl Dolls may make six year old girls think that everyone has money to afford these expensive doll accessories, and no one has to work for that money), but they do not often CLEARLY EMPHASIZE an alternative message.


http://www.anneelizabethmoore.com/