revolution
unlimited? consuming unamerican activities
"Are we
so blind that we support punk consumerism, no questions asked?
I'm sure someone will make the comment about how punk is a consumer
movement, or that we live in a consumer system, and we can choose
how and where our money goes. But to what end? Isn't it really
more punk to just buy your t-shirts from the Salvation Army,
or make your own fuckin' stickers, or write on your own fuckin'
coffee mugs?" -Bean
For fun and
educational purposes, I sometimes read business literature. (I'm
sick, it's true.) Capital has to reproduce itself somehow, and
it seems like a good idea to kee up with ideological apparatus
that fuels it. Full of praise for innovative entrepreneurship
and the "courage to be sucessful," cutting-edge marketing
and business engineers urge "thinking outside the box,"
"creating community among your consumers," and "believing
im your product." This is capitalism (in a sneaky incarnation)
re-cast as a romantic utopia of dreamers, a public space of freedom,
fellowship and unrestrained desires.
It's a bit
disconcerting to read the same advice, the same language and
ideological devices, in punk rock magazines featuring interviews,
and even articles, with Unamerican Activities.
I've been seeing
Unamerican product for several years now and always dismissed
it as hovering somewhere between silly and stupid, but at least
harmless. If you'd asked me in 1995, I would've guessed the (first
and only) Unamerican zine -- nothing more than poorly-designed
flyers with short slogans-- had been done by some college freshman,
brand new to the slogan-saturated Berkeley scene. Only later
did I realize that Unamerican Activities is a local San Francisco
company, peddling product --stickers, buttons, t-shirts, and
mugs-- plastered in catch phrases. The premise is agitprop and
the merchandise, a tool. Meanwhile, Unamerican frontman Srini
Kumar regularly drafts manifestos equating free enterprise with
free speech and promoting the concept of "punk business"
as the shining path. It's here that Unamerican Activities modestly
stakes its claim as a vanguard organization -- anarchy's ad agency,
according to the PR. And if Unamerican has anything to say about
it, the ad copy vows, the revolution is going to be one big fuckin'
party.
It's the fact
that Unamerican promises such easy liberation that makes me suspicious,
and the rhetoric of an Unamerican revolution becomes the ideological
itch I eventually have to scratch. Call me a cynic, but I'm not
the kind of girl who believes that power can be dispersed with
the slap of a sticker.
Browsing the
catalog fine-print, the litany of slogans gets to be mind-numbing.
(Do we really need "the devil is cute" and "be
not half-assed" when alternateen mall store Hot Topic already
offers the world "give weirdness a chance," "all
this AND low wages," and velvet miniskirts?")
Between the catalog and the company testimonials, the sheer bulk
of product and propaganda begins to feel extreme in itself, the
bloated surplus effect of the interpenetration of anarchy and
capital.
Clearly, Unamerican
Activities doesn't exist in a market void just because it calls
itself "punk." As the laws of the market attempt to
regulate our everyday lives, the imaginable terrain of politics
is confined to private acts of consumption; human relations are
merchandised as a brand name and logo. Hardly an exception, Unamerican
is a "local" case study the reproduction of capital
decked out in punk gear.
It's been said
many times of Western late-capitalist culture that nothing is
free but we are free to buy. Unamerican is a symptom of
that logic, but also a very apt pupil. Alienation proves to be
one of the more "secure investment climates" around,
and as capital discovers the potential in marketing a "safe"
revolution, Unamerican helpfully supplies some of the merchandise.
buy unamerican
and get laid! (the politics of advertising)
"If people
don't know they want [your product], how can you make them want
it?" Srini
Kumar, Unamerican Activities frontman
I recently
picked up an Unamerican flyer at a local record store, bored
and restless, and found out for myself that my liberation was
only an order away:
YOU have
the skills we need in order to build a world-class revolutionary
organism.The Internet and other grassroots media is [sic] the
bomb, we are the fuse, you are the spark. LET'S BLOW UP THE HEADS
OF TODAY'S YOUTH! We can only offer you a better world in exchange
for your efforts. A better world starts, of course, with better
friends, better lovers, better employment for YOU! This isn't
charity work, we will repay you with the PUREST, MOST LUSCIOUS
ORGASMIC JOY THERE IS the feeling of VICTORY OVER HORSESHIT.
Simply live a life that's aware of your own potential and it's
yoursUnamerican Activities is [sic] grassroots campaign to REBOOT
AMERICA. We are this nation's saving grace a subculture
that uses its freedom to make things better for everyone. (Unamerican flyer)
In exchange for a better world, for the "purest orgasmic
joy there is," all I have to do is well, it wasn't
quite clear until I turned the flyer over to find their catalog
printed on the back. And in the corner: "This is phase one
of our plot to REBOOT AMERICA, and we need your input badly.
Please consider buying something to keep this revolution alive!
You rock!" (That last "you rock" just clinches
it for me, you?)
Sifting through
all the ad copy and manifestos, the benefits of buying Unamerican
are seemingly endless freedom from wage slavery, better
sex and better friends, a guilt-free and almost effortless liberation,
and national political representation. It's a marketing fable,
a cartoon version of the crisis in the United States solved by
Unamerican Activities and their heroic plots to "re-boot
America." Offering "quality rebellion at affordable
prices," Unamerican frontman Srini Kumar asks, "What
if I promised you a revolution that was a fucking party?"
Having some training in the histories of revolutionary movements,
I'd say that's a difficult promise to keep. However, Kumar swears
that "[Unamerican] wants a country that is conscious of
its potential to really represent the will of the people, and
with your help, we will represent that will."
Is this what's
meant by voting with your dollars?
Throughout
it all, Unamerican makes an appeal for you to realize
your potential and contribute to the cause. By becoming a customer,
you'll also be a foot soldier in the coming revolution. Slap
on a few stickers, pull on a t-shirt, and proudly advertise your
affiliation with the Unamerican brand and its "world-class
revolutionary organism"! You're annoying the boring and
offending the sheep, fulfilling the horizon of your untapped
potential.
Consumption
sets you free and "democracy" restored with your purchase
of Unamerican merchandise. As a bonus the Man is mortally offended,
the System collapses beneath the weight of so many witticisms,
America is "re-booted" and Boredom, the Ultimate Weapon
of The Man, is destroyed.
And Unamerican
thinks this isn't marketing?
Commodity market
ideologies suggest that conspicuous consumption is a sign of
virtuous citizenship in late-capitalist culture. The more you
buy, the more you contribute to the economy and thus the greater
good of society. But the Unamerican promo kit tells you it's
also the path of an exemplary revolutionary -- buy Unamerican
and join the revolt. It's empowerment that Unamerican retails
at low, low prices and guarantees will give you a "voice"
and the necessary tools to fight the Man with all the political
sophistication the phrase implies.
Queer theorist
Lauren Berlant made the wry observation that "revolutionary
discourse is the kitsch of U.S. political culture." Commie
gone chic, red stars are reformulated for velcro wallets and
the Blank Panther is embossed on ashtrays for urban hipsters,
thick with tragic irony. Meanwhile even Miller incorporates a
once powerful statement about sexuality and public space into
its ad campaigns --"we're beer, we're here." The general
use of rebel imagery in contemporary advertising is everywhere
lest we forget, Rollins pitching Mac lap-tops was a definite
high-point in the packaging of "punk" for commercial
use.
So it would
seem naïve when so many signs of rebellion from Che
Guevara to punk rock- have been coopted for capital, that Unamerican
might be singularly unaware of their market uniformity. I mean,
they fit right in. Rather than contradict that commerical
aesthetic, Unamerican affirms its marketability, retailing "safe"
politics in forms custom-made to our social order.
Unmaerican
product in fact reads more like ad copy than anything else. "Sometimes
you gotta break the rules" (Burger King), "Resist the
Usual" (Young and Rubicon ad agency), "Innovate don't
imitate" (Hugo Boss), "Different is good" (Arby's),
or "Chart your own course" (Navigator Cologne) might
as well be Unamerican slogans, merchandised by "anarchy's
ad agency." (List of slogans borrowed from The Baffler
anthology, aptly named Commodify Your Dissent.) As rapper/activist
Michael Franti said, "You subvert [the politics] by reducing
everything to slogans like 'Fight the Power.' It could just as
easily be a song that could be used by the Republican Party or
by any other group of people" --including marketers and
PR execs.
So that actual
Unamerican ad copy follows the letter of the (ad) Law, parroting
its usual promises. Their product will enhance your individuality
and identify you as a rebel, even while providing passport into
an imagined community of equally well-equipped and "rebellious"
consumers. Or more specifically, your purchase guarantees acceptance
into a community of fellow anarchists whose choice to buy Unamerican
proves your collective superiority over "HORSESHIT."
(Thus earning you the privilege of buying a sticker reading,
"you're all sheep.") "Extreme truth for extreme
youth" is the Unamerican trademarked tag-line, plugging
into the hip, new advert lingo of "extreme" sports
and "extreme" sort drinks and your desire to be "fringe."
My head starts
to swim, squinting at the catalog. I've been obsessed lately
with the utopian promise of the commodity, the ideological guts
of consumer capitalism, and the glowing rhetoric of freedom and
individual self-determination that defines all ad copy
including that for shampoo, cross-trainers, and so-called revolutionary
bumper stickers. I'm skeptical, obviously. The notion that we
can buy liberation and freedom bothers me. And why shouldn't
it?
It'd be stupid
to deny that we get very real pleasures from consumption, and
that we often use the things we buy to communicate to each other
all kinds of things about our politics, desires and chosen communities.
Punks are hardly an exception, sporting band t-shirts and pins,
patches pinned and sewn to backpacks, jackets, and those extraneous
butt-flaps. And no doubt, not a few of those consumers who buy
Unamerican supply the politics and passion-- in their commercial
absence. But even if we've gotten to the point where we understand
that not all consumption is bad, does it mean that all consumption
is good? Or that the self-promotional ad copy and propaganda
is sincere?
Just because
it's "punk," does it mean we don't get to be critical?
A friend suggested
"Unamerican is not so much a dumbing down of radical thought,
or its shoddy execution, but instead an almost seamless extension
of the advertising and capitalist logic behind the co-opting
of youth culture." In other words, what at least partially
(if not totally) counts as subversion in this scenario is a matter
of conspicuous consumption -- buy Unamerican and show the world.
So that between
ideological commitment and brand loyalty, Unamerican blurs the
line so that ideological commitment is brand loyalty
to Unamerican, at least. Whith its claims to offer miracle cures
for social ills, Unamerican ad copy attempts to mask the business
of commerce and its ideological roots in capital.
But what Unamerican
Activities retails as liberation could be instead authority disguised
as freedom your desires packaged in a commodity form that
affirms the existing social order and subordinates politics to
relations of commerce. Marketing catch prhases as revolutionary
tools and spinning its own mythos of countercultural spunk, Unamerican
half-heartedly wants you to believe that their product can address
economic insecurity ("poverty sucks"), racial dissension
("race-mixing is cool"), class conflict ("tax
the rich"), and sexual discord ("bad sex sucks").
But more, it
seems Unamerican just want you to buy their product because in
the end, "politics is boring."
Unamerican,
my ass.