BEL BIV DEVOE FOR SALE

And now for a change of pace we decided to use an edited version of Edward Ames BBD ad analysis for our critique of advertising's appropriation of the hiphop subculture. Besides the fact that this was the best ad example we could find, we decided that we needed to break the flow of the hegemonic-speak that we have been using and let a little Texas twang flow through this paper.

Okay, sexy folks. I found the most blatant ad I could in terms of its appropriation of the appearances of subculture's revolt against style. If anyone can convince me that there has arisen a fashion that is more opposed to mainstream ideologies of style than hiphop then I'm all game for your nomination. Now hiphop has been evolving for a good decade or so and has been in the process of being stolen by the dreamthieves of MadAve for about half that, ever since the white-boy rap of the Beastie Boys and their ripoff parody of black hiphop culture. Especially in the last couple of years there has been a lot of talk about CROSSOVER, over to white suburban kids that is. Rap is no longer a black thing. However, my impression of the meaning of hiphop style must be qualified by the statement that I am a white kid from Texas. Though I don't necessarily see my self as one of Kerouac's white negroes, I don't necessarily disrespect those of my white youth peers who look to black youth culture for inspiration on how to rebel against their parents and society, and try to be a part of something more "authentic" than the pretty vacant youth culture of Amerika's suburbs.

Now in this ad we have all the markers of the commodity form, naturally enough since it is an ad after all. We have your urban youth fashion, abstracted from the subcultural context that gave it its original meaning as a subversion of mainstream fashions and that gave members of the in-group all the markers they needed for self-identification. We also have the rap group, BBD, lending their sign-currency to the clothes by Starter. They of course have been abstracted from the reality of hardworking musicians, and now exist in this ad as signifiers of the signified, that is of the clothes. The ad asks us to "wear what u hear" and if that ain't equivalency and reification all in one little imperative, then I don't know what is. The clothes then become the rap group, taking on the properties of human beings, and this expands the exchange-value of the clothes. What we get then if we purchase these clothes is real authentic clothes qua the music made by real authentic rappers. As to the signifiers of our ad, that is the rap group Bel Biv DeVoe, they are of course in full hiphop regalia, as they are of course trying to get us to buy that regalia in addition to the style that they lend to it.

As hiphop becomes mainstream, more and more controversy arises among many rappers. Cries of sell out fill the air. By now it is impossible to not see the appropriation of hiphop style that's going on. It is everywhere you look. I mean even Burger King has an ad that absolutely steals hiphop, or at least they steal that part of it which has become Global Teen shopping mall homogenized product. It is necessary to mention this ad was in Details. This magazine, from the content and glossy photos is, as nearly as I can tell, essentially a white young man fashion rag. I'm not sure who the target market for the ad is, but I'm guessing that it doesn't market to the same "cluster" from which hiphop originally arose. I see the hiphop in this ad in terms of Barthesian theory; a meaning has been drained of all blood and guts and the shell refilled with SOMETHING ELSE. What is that SOMETHING ELSE?

The brand name, I assume, is called Flipside. This obviously connects up with the "wear what u hear" imperative. But it has other connotations. The flipside is the neglected side of a hit single. The hit being the one they played on the radio, and the flip being the one no-one ever listens to, the "marginalized" one, if you will. That the band is posed in front of the clothes' sign is a pretty transparent transfer of sign-value. To state a fact, they're right inside it. They are the sign and the sign is they. Indistinguishable. You can't hardly see the big logo, because BBD is in the way taking over the sign. Luckily they have a smaller version of the sign below so we'll recognize it, and of course it provides a connective device to the box with the texts. Do they invite the viewer to step into their clothes? I'm not sure. They sure don't have very friendly looks or body language. Perhaps that style of intimidation is something that they're trying to transfer to the Flipside sign. Perhaps that is something that would appeal to the alienated wannabe macho global teen consumers.

The fuzziness about what exactly is the product proffered in this ad is something interesting here, much as it is in the Madonna Pepsi commercial. How much is record promotion a part of this ad? With most pop music after all, style is the main device used in positioning. After all, how many of those forty million people who bought Jackson's Thriller were buying it just because they liked the music, and how many were buying because of the spectacle? For pop musicians, then style is as important, or more important, than the actual content. How else are rappers like Bel Biv Devoe going to differentiate themselves well enough from the thousands of other rap groups putting out records to convince people to buy them?