SUBARU IMPREZA

The spectacle subjugates and incorporates all real human experience (fluid lived value), even those elements, such as punk, hiphop or grunge, which set themselves up in opposition to its movement. Guy Debord wrote that the essential movement of the spectacle consisted "of taking up all that existed in human activity in a fluid state so as to possess it in a congealed state as things which have become the exclusive value by their formulation in negative of lived value" (Debord 1977:35). In the spectacle, we see the jealous workings of the commodity form, which never rests until all experience is abstracted, reified, and made equivalent after its pattern.

Advertising is the vanguard of the hegemonic domination of the spectacle on culture. Culture, the sum total of human activities, is stolen, cooked and distilled in the pattern of the commodity, and is given back for our consumption. Advertising is the avant garde of the spectacle, ever sniffing out ever newer contents of human meanings for colonization.

The spectacle gleefully appropriates and commodities its opponents, rendering their energetic protest into bland, safe depoliticized and reified units. For example, there are now grunge fashion shows in New York. Seattle Salvation Army fashion is sold to very rich people. A paraphrase: "It is silk, but it has the look of polyester." Nothing is sacred for the spectacle either, except the spectacle itself.

The recent spot for Subaru Impreza is a perfect case in point of the appropriation of a subculture's oppositional meaning by the hegemonic forces of the commodity form. It is an appropriation that depoliticizes the critique offered by punk, and reinforces the hegemony of the spectacle.

In this spot an absurd equivalency is made between a mythified signification of punk rock music and the qualities of a car. The analogy is so absurd that we suspect, combined with other elements of the commercial, that this is an extreme case of falsified metacommunication: they are showing us that they aren't trying to fool us, so as they can fool us even more. The juxtaposition of punk and a car is interesting for this aspect, but it is also of value for showing how advertising, one of the institutions of dominant culture hegemony, appropriates and depoliticizes a subculture.

The spot opens with a young man, dressed in what could only be described as Northwest collegiate chic, jumping into a camera shot of a car. He appeals to us: "I want to talk to you about my new Subaru Impreza, and explain its relevance to you, and me and the car business. Okay? Okay." Having appealed to us with his offhand conversational sell, and replied to his request for us, he proceeds to say: This car is like. . ." He is grasping for an analogy, supposedly. He comes up with a signifier: The car is like ". . . Punk Rock!" He pretends to be unsure of himself, and tries to reassure us: "Now just trust me. This is relevant." The connection is so silly, since punk seems too indigestible for a car commercial to appropriate, that it must be an attempt to pull us in and catch us off guard with humor. We must expect that punk will appear in this ad as a gutted, sterilized, clean second-order signifier for a concept.

Our young salesman (jumping around as quicker and quicker as the cuts speed up,) continues with his explanation of punk equals Subaru. He asks for us to recollect some ancient history. (This must be falsified meta-communication, because ads almost never conjure up that unsteady genie of the past.) "Remember when rock'n'roll was boring and corporate? Well, punk challenged all this and said, "Hey, excuse me, but here's what's cool about music. Remember?

The ad reifies punk, by attributing to it the conversational qualities of an individual. Punk is constructed in terms of rock'n'roll. It's critique of society has been abstracted from the dim hazes of history so as to apply the punk critique solely to music, and (very interestingly) to the big business institutions of music. This reference to the anti-corporate "challenge" is interesting in an ad put out by a giant corporation; it's preferred reading becomes apparent in the next section of the commercial. The destructive feelings of punk towards all institutions (and everything 'normal' and sacred) is side-stepped here, suppressed. Punk's assault on culture becomes a "challenge," and almost sounds like punk had a constructive attitude towards the institutions of the music industry. Personified punk is offering positive criticism to mainstream, and hegemonic, music: "here's what's cool about music." Here's how you can save your product from being boring, Mr. friendly corporation. Not a whiff is there of the attitude of institutional and ideological anarchy and destruction that was demanded by the early punks, and many of their flag-bearers to this very day. Subaru, as would be expected in the advertising form, commits gross distortion in its mythification of punk. Punk is stripped of its unsavory and threatening elements, and, though still slightly exuding an odor, is used to prop up the corporate sign, and to reinforce the hegemonic domination of big business.

"Remember?" (Does he remember punk rock? I don't remember punk rock and he looks younger than me.) He gets to the portion of the ad where he cements the constructed equivalency of punk and the car, and supplies a more solid concept to attach to signifier-punk. "Now, Subaru, with this Impreza is challenging some car thinking here." Just as mythified punk "challenged" music thinking, (the hegemonic ideology within the music business?) Subaru is challenging the ideology of what makes a car. Just like sanitized-punk revolutionized boring and corporate music, Subaru is challenging boring and corporate cars. "This car's all about reminding you and me what's great about a car, and moving forward, and making cars better, and less disappointing." Punk is constructed as having done analogous things for music and the music business, and it is the manufactured sign-value of punk which is supposedly to explain the transcendently advanced things Subaru is doing with this car.

The concept is about better, more advanced, less disappointing cars, and it is one that could have been piggy-backed onto an infinite number of mythified signifiers, but for the specific purposes of an extreme falsified metacommunication, they chose to steal punk. The too few words they use to describe punk and its relationship to cars, and thus ours to the car business, creates a highly absurd distortion of punk, one that's had the guts removed, and attached to an exceedingly arbitrary signified. Just to remind us of the equivalency set up, his spiel ends with the words: "Just like punk, except it's cars." (sign-punk --> myth-form-punk plus car-concept equals revolutionary Subaru.) In this ad, depoliticization is almost complete. The fluidity of punk's great refusal is congealed and appropriated into the spectacle. Remodeled along the lines of the commodity-form, the rebellion of punk is stripped away, and the resulting myth is used to sustain corporate sales.

To say that there is an active conspiracy amongst among the elites of this country is unnecessary. No such organized thing exists. The system, decentralized among many institutions, works to exploit and discredit all alternatives, all challenges to the status quo. This is not for any other consciously insidious agenda, at least not in the institution of advertising, except to expand economic production, and control of economic production. Even such relatively benign threats as punk, grunge, and hiphop are continents waiting to be colonized, to provide that new bit of blood for the vampiric appetite of the expanding spectacle.