Looking out of the hotel window in Houston, Texas, I caught this threesome. It seemed so American to me, a church steeple between the American flag and Transco Tower. So without further words to expound on this imagery, I'm off to shop at the Galleria, just across the street.
Just 32 years ago two important things happened. First, French wines lost in blind taste testings to California wines in the famous "Judgement of Paris" and the wine industry has never been the same since. Second, I had a blind date with a guy.
At that time French wines ruled the world. A year after the famous taste testing, I stood in dark winery caves tasting French wines with fellow students as we toured down to Grenoble where we would be pursuing our studies. At that time I didn't have a developed taste for wines. I had no idea, really, what wines were all about. I had no idea what made a good wine good or a great wine great. My boyfriend stayed in the states. Like the wine in the French oak barrels, my relationship was aging as well, picking up flavors and personality.
Now, 32 years after our first blind date, California wines are nothing to sniff at and wineries have proliferated in the U.S. My husband and I taste the wine from the wineries that became famous on that one day in Paris and savor 32 years together.
Well, maybe that is a stretch, but it is the #2 tourist destination in California. Going from winery to winery is much like standing in line at Six Flags for the rides with the big motion being the swirling of the wine in the glass.
I crassly exaggerate, but part of the draw is not just the top quality of the cabernet sauvignon wines but the agricultural feel of the place. When bucolic is now spelled M-O-N-S-A-N-T-O in most places, the barns of Napa Valley are most picturesque and the zoning laws have kept housing development to a minimum.
Wine, food & family. Elements of the good life, sought by all. Taking it all in, glass by glass.
The Me Generation might be on the wane. The first signs of disintegration of the me might have been Time's cover, "You", around the time YouTube went orbital. Everything has been so i-centric. Then vvvvvttt, culture shifts.
Up came the populist political cry: Obama's Yes We Can. Now it is Al Gore's new logo for his environmental endeavor, Alliance for Climate Protection (which Al gore funded with his Nobel Peace Price monies), which is just now launching with a big campaign called The We Campaign with a website, WeCanSolveIt.org.
When the logo is turned upside down, you can see the me in we. The idea for we was from Gore's most recent book where he wrote, "Our first expression of a nation -- 'We The People' -- made it clear where the ultimate source of authority lay."
I think the logo design and concept is brilliant. We-centricism has wriggled out the i's, the me's.
4/12 update: Another sign of the collaborative movement: WeBooks (via Lauri)
Polo is going to outfit the U.S. Olympic team, bringing a preppy look to sports once again. Maybe this will help improve America's image abroad, says David Lauren in a WSJ article today. Polo first started dressing athletes in 2005 at the U.S. Open and then at Wimbledon (when the logo grew to HUGE proportions - all the better to be seen by the tv cameras).
With the recession here, I'm not sure if luxury goods will be wanted by American consumers, who comprise 69% of Polo's sales. The flattening of the product, the mass consumerism of branding is making luxury or designer products available to all. A "warehouse" store for Polo in Durango, Colorado, had shirts with the HUGE logo on them (below). 
The idea of logos everywhere, as with this Polo shirt with the entire design being the Ralph Lauren pony logo, at right, strikes me as over-the-top logo-ism and I'm repelled by it on one hand yet culturally interested in the cachet of people being attracted to something that shouts logos and branding in such an overt way.
I was struck with (and appalled by) the HUGE logo when my daughter wanted the over-sized pony logo right as we moved to NYC, and I wrote about it earlier.
The big logos were on the sales racks in the U.S. However, I have admired how Lauren has marketed an original American look and he tapped into the American West as cachet. I guess I'm an American West elitist. Perhaps he might help clean up our image. America rebranded.
Never talk politics, religion or money at the table: politesse. Well, politics is passionate right now and it is the subject of every gathering, bar none. Why, as women, do we need to talk about how Hillary looks haggard? Well, she does. She swam and she still keeps swimming. And we women had to talk about how haggard Silda Spitzer looked, too. Whose the haggard-est? Be careful, we discuss. Why does this matter, we think? Careful. Women, not men, get botched (think Pricilla Presley).
Looks Matter in our culture - that is what I wrote when I picked out Hillary's fresh face at one of the important televised debates in October, photo at right. Life doesn't keep you fresh, though. Swimming for a long time can be pruning.
Meanwhile, Obama has used the presidential-looking, symbolic stage for his race speech and those since and that image keeps playing, echoing in the media. What props! Blue curtain! Flag in the background! Slogan above the head, to the right: read him, read message. Hillary's tag line is her name. This is important. Slogans matter.
But what caught my eye, really, is the CNN scrolling caption when Obama was on Larry King (again, the candidate controlled the symbolic stage for his interview!). Swum?
Has already a swooming swum been done?
Swim, swam swum: the race is far from done.
It is making this soccer mother haggard, too.
Related:
The Art of Campaign Visuals,
Word Art: Talking Points
Part II: Privacy &
Eyes Looking In:
Starting with the eye as the definition of self, artistically and symbolically in Part I, Eyes Looking Out, I am now in Part II looking at the issue of technology and privacy and wondering how this will alter our very sense of self, our soul and our way of seeing our identities and our world.
For our children, things will be and are dramatically, radically different, far more different than they already are, tech wise. Profound changes are altering us in ways that are complex and scary and unfathomable. Like the kohl used for protection around eyes long ago and today (this kohl-lined eye at right is from an Egyptian sarcophagus in the Met), what firewalls or metaphorical kohl and protections will we have? What will we give up for convenience, for safety, for security and what are the long-term implications?
Continue reading "Part II: Privacy and The (Watching) Eyes..." »
Hillary is changing her oratory. But is it too late for the rhetorical flourish of unity work? This week it is "together" and "us" and "we" as she attacks her opponent, Obama, but she is still using a style of communication all about herself. Her use of "I/me" outnumbered "you/you're" 21 to 19 if you analyze her televised speech this week.
Here are a few semantic examples from her speech in Wisconsin this week:
"...when I think about what we're really comparing in this election, you know, we can't just have speeches. We've got to have solutions. And we need those solutions for America.
We've got to get America back in the solutions business, because while words matter, the best words in the world aren't enough unless you match them with action.
(APPLAUSE)
But this election is not about me or my opponent. It is about you. It's about your lives and your dreams and your future. And I can't do this without all of you here in Youngstown and across Ohio. It is going to take an effort from all of us.
Hillary started out winning with her iconic familiarity - and her ability to capture the media limelight. But she is losing the oratorical battle. She just can't get her mojo flowing against the power of Obama's charismatic use of language structure which captures the pathos of change and unity. As her words shift into attack mode, it debases the tone and paints her words in diametrical opposition to the charismatic uplifting themes of Obama's policital rhetoric. In the process, his stylistic verbal mojo will gain even more power.
Hillary's speech uses the term "People" then refers to people as "they" while Obama's linguistic formations put people as the subject with a "we" reference, signalling collaboration, not authority. This is a generational shift in our cultural approaches. Kids are being taught to do group projects and not work alone. The wisdom of crowds is an idea of the times.
I put a crown and ermine on Hillary a long time ago in that photo as it signaled to me her use of power which I thought was dated in a Queenly way for our times. She speaks out to the people. Obama pulls them in.
The "best words in the world" is what Hillary calls them. She ain't got that thing.
Related Media/Political Culture Communication Posts:
Rhetoric, from Aristotle to Obama
The Obama Poster
Presidential Campaign Logos
Word Art: Talking Points
The Che Factor
Political Art: Powerful Tools in the Icon Age
Phenomes in Literacy: Peace, Love & Obama-Che
Hillary Clinton: Leading by Visual Impact
At the time it happens, you don't know the impact of an image. But today if you think about Jackie Kennedy, the Jackie 1964 print by Warhol might be the iconic image embedded in your brain. But it has remained in the realm of pop/fine art, controlled and managed and it is the creator Andy Warhol who became the star in the process of mining popular culture to make graphic icons and a fortune in the proces. When you see the photo of Jackie, you think: Warhol. How do we iterate ideas? How are they reiterated? Is the reiteration more important than the original?
Just as popular is the graphic image of Che Guevera by artist Jim Fitzpatrick, who has copyrighted his work under the caveat that it can be freely used as long as it promotes Che Guevera. The image as a one-color rendering has became a part of our culture, more famous than the personage Guevera.
In the first instance, Warhol's Jackie, Warhol is equally as famous, if not more so now, than the images he created. The opposite is the case with Fitzpatrick.
Fitzpatrick's graphic was taken from Alberto Kordo's 1960 photo of Guevera, which has been considered the symbol of the 20th century and one of the most famous photos ever (also released with a conditional copyright allowing the image to be freely used as long at it propogates the memory of Guevera). But now it is the reiteration of the photo that has become more culturally famous than the original photo, which was an iteration of the man. Does the third iteration express the idea of the man, or has it come to represent popular uprising, brave oppositional leadership, anti-establishment and the ideas that the man represented? The image is now a symbol.
Media and ideas and communication. A process of continuous iteration and interpretation. A Che-thing. Packaging our culture-as-it-is and as-it-changes.
Related Posts: Wh-Wh-Wharhol
