Nik, I agree with you about this Black Spot nonsense — “enough of the critique, let’s do someting positive!”, feh — but I think the left can learn a lot from corporations, and does already on everyday levels of appropriation anyway. What capital fundamentally lacks in the dynamic cultural ecosystems that produce creative life, it makes up in the monstrous and vampiric resources that it can marshall to come up with shit. Everyone knows all the cool stuff that comes out of the military industrial complex, and it ain’t just gadgets — it’s systems, too. And even though capital itself cannot fully internalise the systems that bring creativity, it can undoubtedly do well in cultivating creativity within its environs — it hurts, but we’ve got to admit that there are some corporations that are a lot more creative and dynamic than some activist collectives. And personally, I’m not completely sorry that I’ve worked in marketing for some very scary megacorporations, because I’ve learned stuff that you can’t pick up in some self-marginalising anticapitalist ghetto.
Anyway, back to sneakers: even on its own terms as a bizarrely idealist “antibranding” exercise that dematerialises the structure of the global economy as much as “branding” does, the biggest problem with Adbuster’s Black Spot initiative is that despite (and probably because of) its stated attempt to “rethink the cool”, it’s just not cool. It’s like telling people not to do drugs, and get high on life instead. It’s like Ben Stiller’s undercover Starsky saying, “don’t try and be something you’re not, just be yourself — because that’s what’s cool”. Black Spot is so not going to make Phil Knight quake in his boots. If you’re gonna reduce everything to a left-consumerist level of “social change through choosing between different commodities”, at least be tangential enough to escape the lame master-slave dynamic (which is something utterly different with both the “negativity” of critique and the need to engage with the current landscape). And on that level, it’s all about good marketing.
On a marketing level yeah I’d agree. But the real important part of the blackspot project is really in the space of production. People have been yelling “don’t wear Nike” for over a decade now. But when you need a pair of sneakers your only viable options are other sweatshop shoes. Nothing undercuts the movement more thoroughly. If all that is offered is critique with no viable alternatives presented then yeah its true all you have is negativity. Adbusters has sat in that negative space forever now, and are finally trying to bust out. An essential step I think.
Critique is negative, in the same way that say shit is negative. When isolated it serves little to no value, it smells bad, and you sure don’t want to step into in the street. But if hooked into an ecosystem, shit takes on value. It clears out the body and then regenerates into nutrients. Critique is largely not hooked into a larger ecosystem anymore. The labor unions and politicians now are in an ecosystem regurgitating old concepts. And the thinkers are just stewing in their own shit.
The blackspot, if it actually gets produced, hooks Adbusters concepts (as low grade as they may be) into a larger system, one that deals in more then text and images. It offers a path forward, the first real alternative to sweatshop sneakers in decades.
Fuck words, put some shoes on their feet…
So, granted viral marketing strategists have much to teach bored lefist activists, granted the real reason this Adbusters move will fail is that the whole idea is uncool — ‘Rethink the Cool’, ha! Anything involving rethinking, reframing, remaking immediately strikes me as suspect, and not just in marketing campaigns.
But, bottomline, how much will a pair of Blackspots cost? Will they sell them for five bucks a pair? I really, really doubt it. They;ll be about the same price as Nikes, right? (Like Adbusters mag is hideously expensive.) And, not having the financial resources to buy a pair even if I wanted to, I don’t think they’re any kind of viable alternative. Just a way of impinging the spectacle into a mode of production — the marketing is much more important than the ‘really existing’ sneaker. No-one will wear them, and the people who actually need proper shoes won’t be able to afford them.