ADVERTISEMENTS: Appropriating 'Disorder' and the look of alienation

For the most part when advertising appropriates a subculture and assimilates it into the mainstream where it is swallowed by the elastic hegemony, it is accomplished in a way that steals the signs of a subculture and presents it as a positive exaltation of fashion savvy. It depoliticizes the subculture's contest to hegemony by symbolic inclusion of, and dissemination of the marginalized markers or sign in such that it naturalizes the subculture. For example in the sixties and seventies as the Civil Rights Movement gained power many brothers and sisters strove to return to their African heritage. Growing "naturals" (Afros) and wearing ritual robes became its signs. At the same time, or just after, getting a kinky perm for white women and derivatives of this dress became the fashion. We see this same phenomenon today with the appropriation and consumption of hiphop tags by a white middle class audience (i.e. BBD and Starter, see below) . While it may partially stem from a desire to break out of expressionless middle class ennui, the effect is still the same, a symbolic (not a true) assimilation and ultimate depoliticization of a subculture.

Another prime example of this mechanism is a Dekuyper ad. It takes signs of rebellion, leather jackets, and uses them as a signifier for cinnamon schnapps. The multiple jackets signify multiple forms of deviation: from the hippie suede fringe, to the fifties "Let's Rock and Roll" (copping the music form that has always been parlayed as youth rebellion), from the biker slash Harley Davidson slash Hell's Angels out on the limits of reality and the road (one group of hard core anti-establishment individuals) to another hardcore subcultural element, the punks. All these differences signify deviation from the norm which is what Dekuyper offers with their "over 40 other flavors to keep you cool" (pun intended). They exhibit these anti-hegemonic signs in such a way as to exalt deviation. Yet at the same time, by throwing them all together, the ad reduces, nullifies, and mythifies (Barthes) the individual integrity, non similar politics, and hegemonic protest each of these separate jackets symbolize.

However, simultaneously, in advertising today we also see a completely different trend. Instead of false attempts to include alienated people into the hegemonic structure with an "we love you, subculture, you are not marginalized, look we wear your clothes, so hush up" approach, advertisements are now speaking directly (or indirectly) about alienation. It is the subject of many of their pieces. It is fashionable. And yet, it still serves to depoliticize the issue by only offering consumers their own alienation in the form of fashion and not political change or hegemonic overthrow. Two excellent examples of this are ads by Disorder and Marc Buchanan.

The first has anti-hegemonic overtones, "Word on the street...the new order is disorder." It appropriates a look popularized by the child rap duo Kris Kross. The look entails the wearing of oversized, ill fitting clothes backwards. In terms of Hebdige, they have taken the ordinary and altered it, transformed it in a way that creates a new meaning which is directly opposed to the status quo, the ideas of normalcy...of hegemony. The clothes are ill-fitting just as they do not fit into society and wearing them backwards is a denial of the "accepted" to which they are not accepted or rather alienated. In the second ad, Marc Buchanan steals the black urban hiphop look of hooded jackets (too expensive, I am sure, for any inner-city kid to even dream of buying). In the framing of the ad alienation is addressed. Notice the upper half of the Bloomie's ad shows one individual with his eyes closed (left) and another shot of him (right) with his back turned. He does not in any way engage the reader. Similarly the models in the MB ad look down (down troddenly) at their shoes (probably Nikes). In both ads they metacommunicate, "We are outside 'the normal,' outside the power structures, marginalized and alienated. As such we do not have to recognize you as we are not recognized in your system." Bloomingdale's and MB appropriate this alienation and offer it back to be consumed as a pose, not to be overcome. It speaks to the cynic, to the oversaturated ad viewer, to the privatized, and to the omnipresent feeling of alienation that capitalist hegemony creates. This is fashion. This is appropriation. This is depoliticization.