I spend a lot of time going through old publications. Sometimes it’s for work, but most of the time it’s for fun. And spending as much time as I do turning old pages, I’ve found that I’m often as interested in the advertisements as I am the articles in many instances. I have this whole larger theory about how the way we’re sold things today is one of the best examples of just how little capitalism truly cares about people. The Romantics wrote novels and poetry as a way of dealing with the change brought on by the Industrial Revolution; I’m typing out a Substack kvetching about how I’m not sold things the same anymore because of algorithms. I am truly living proof of how far we’ve fallen.
But this is something I think about a lot, the continued dumbing and dulling of humans whether we realize it or not. I see it everywhere, just a general lack of care for people. I see it in new buildings going up in my neighborhood, those big ugly glass boxes that look so cold and uninviting. I see it when we’re loaded into an airplane and my mind flashes to pictures of happy travelers in the 1960s with their legroom and comfortable seats. I see it when a massive pickup truck passes by on the street and I wonder what could that person need with a spotless pickup truck that’s nearly the size of a semi just sans trailer. There’s just a general here’s some slop, and you’ll enjoy it feeling I get too often and it gets me down. And, I see it in advertising. That seems counter to my entire argument, I’ll admit. I’m crying about how capitalism doesn’t care while at the same time saying I want capitalism to care more. It is a very contradictory stance, and I’m willing to be called a hypocrite on this one, but when I was looking at the October of 1991 issue of Vanity Fair and saw this Coach ad featuring Mark Twain’s great great great grandnephew, I couldn’t help but thing, gee, it would be nice to see something like that every once in a while these days.
I realize there is something a little silly about Twain’s great great great grandnephew as a luxury bag model. I’m sure there were other Clemens’ out there, but Clint Clemens was probably the hottest one and that’s why they picked him, but I do like this idea that a designer bag company would not only go out and get Mark Twain’s ancestor to model for them, but also the great great great granddaughter of Sitting Bull:
And they got Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald’s great granddaughter:
And also Clark Gable’s son who was also really good looking:
The “An American Legacy” campaign ran for a few years and also included the great great great great grandniece of George Washington and Albert Einstein’s great grandson. As far as I can tell, it’s almost all white people save for Sitting Bull’s niece, which is one of the few things I can take a little solace in, that the 30-year gap between these ads would mean they’d probably (hopefully!) be more diverse. But besides that, what I couldn’t help but think about was how and who these sorts of ads are delivered to today. How is usually through Instagram or websites that deal in high-end, luxury brands. For instance, the A$AP Rocky, Iggy Pop and Tyler, The Creator Gucci ads from last year found me or I found them because 1. I still buy print magazines and 2. The algorithm knows what I like. I mean, I guess I’m glad some computer realizes Jason likes to look at luxury brands, is a lifelong fan of Iggy Pop and talks a lot about Tyler, the Creator’s growth as an artist, but there’s also something so cold and creepy about that. That it’s for me and not for everybody; not the ad itself, but the idea that there’s something deciding I need to see it. It makes me long for the days when being sold idea of luxury at least felt like it was for everybody. It obviously wasn’t given the price tags and the inequality that has been the one constant in our history, but anybody could pickup a copy of Vanity Fair or Vogue or whatever when they were sitting in a waiting room. It felt a little more democratic, the idea that anybody could appreciate nice things and smart and artistic people and maybe dream. Because that, as I understand from watching enough Mad Men, is the point of advertising. Sell the dream, the idea, of something better. Now it feels less so. Even dreaming feels like a You have to know to know sort of thing, and there’s something very off about that.