EQUIVALENCE

The meaning of equivalence is revealed when something thought of as unique is rendered reproducible. Benjamin (1969) described how works of art lose their "aura" when copies can be easily made and sold. They lose their quality of inimitable uniqueness, a singularity in time and space which is the hallmark of their authenticity. When produced en masse, the originality or singularity of a work of art becomes a matter of indifference, insofar as every work is now replaceable. This is truly the triumph of equivalence. "To pry an object from its shell, to destroy its aura, is the mark of a perception whose 'sense of the universal equality of things' has increased to such a degree that it extracts it even from a unique object by means of reproduction" (Benjamin, 1969:223). The work of art is alienated from its primary and traditional status as a use value, an object of aesthetic experience, and becomes an exchange value, an object whose character is determined first and foremost by its relation to the market.

Advertising so frequently lays claim to the territory of art that we often cease to notice. Wrapped in the rhetoric of "hand crafted perfection" or "original artworks" to set themselves off from "mass produced," upscale products offer consumers status by representing themselves as works of art, while others are presented as a means of turning self into a work of art. When individuality depends on how one presents oneself as a work of art then the circuit of freezing and packaging experience as "commodity aesthetics" is complete. Lifestyle has come to refer to experiences defined by consumption of aesthetically coded sets of commodified appearances. When the Look, personal identity, and lifestyle become culturally synonymous, a Code West Boots ad can bluntly command "Live by the Code" because it presumes that we already accept the general formula of equivalence between commodity sign and lifestyle image. As they say at Sebastian Artistic Centers, "We're much more than a haircut. We're a lifestyle."

Benjamin's reflections are no less pertinent to the portrayal of experiences which, like works of art, are fetishized if they are no longer sought for their intrinsic merit but are prized for their commercial sign value. Advertising works best where it effectively freezes the meaning of an experience in a photographic image, and then offers us packaged bundles of abstracted experience. Chaps cologne, for example, brings you the romantic West. Ads joined the meaning systems of Chaps and the West via a series of equations.

The West....It's an image of men who are real and proud. Of the freedom and independence we all would like to feel. Now Ralph Lauren has expressed those feelings in Chaps, his new men's cologne. Chaps is a cologne a man can put on as naturally as a worn leather jacket or a pair of jeans. Chaps. It's the West. The West you would like to feel inside yourself.

Ads such as this reveal the assumptions made necessary for expressing subjectivity in commodity format. Like Chaps, Tommy Hilfiger, Gatorade and Lee's Jeans invoke claims of freedom that require the relationship of Freedom to be completely abstracted from any set of real lived relationships. To do so, we must convert the condition of freedom and independence into an image. Can impoverished freedom be supplemented by wearing a commodity sign endowed with the meaningful feelings of freedom and independence? Each of these brands is positioned as possessing spirit and as the conduit to desireable experiences of authenticity. The product is thus connected to, and eventually becomes, the lifestyle to which it is an accessory. "So the product and the 'real' or human world become linked in the advertisement, apparently naturally, and the product may and does 'take over' the reality on which it was, at first, dependent for its meaning" (Williamson, 1979:35).