A spectre is haunting our media
The Gillette ad wasn’t necessarily virtue signaling but instead both an award for signaling and a signal that Gillette already signaled our “good morals” for us. It is another instance of a concerning trend in media.
by Kenny Peluso
The flurry of “signs” just read and to come is to be regarded as poetry, as diction embodying some soon-to-be-dissected facet of said “concerning trend in media.”
This article assumes familiarity with Saussure’s structuralism.
We started 2019 fully embroiled in our neoliberal hellscape where many of us watched a minority of engaged people debate the worth of a razor ad.
The commercial in itself, alone, is nothing, as most/all things are. Alone within society’s dialectic, it is harmful. Coupled with critique, it may be beneficial, so though there is reason to express gratitude to Gillette (or Procter & Gamble?), this post is only concerned with one part of that coupling :)
To me, this ad is dangerous for two core reasons:
- Gillette characterizes toxic masculinity in the most stereotypical of ways, leveraging the most accessible of archetypes.
We see boys beating each other up, chasing another, silencing a female in a boardroom, etc.
This limits the scope as to what can be “toxic.” Even worse, the employment of these accessible, archetypal symbols doesn’t add to the Social’s finite list of “toxic behaviors.”
A clear counter states that no matter how popular and understood one may consider the depicted actions to be, these multiple exposés are still new and thus educational to some. My rebuttal: I refuse to surrender educational responsibility to corporations for reasons explored elsewhere. Another clear counter states: Tackling the more nuanced, more subtle, more menacing instances of “toxic masculinity” may be beyond the scope of an ad. My rebuttal: The rest of this article discusses why any blind symbolic propagation should be met with critique if not caution no matter how obvious or nuanced the depicted signified. - Gillette characterizes those who “stop” toxic behavior as heroic.
The climax of each depicted instance of toxicity is a man “thinking differently,” being the “better men,” etc. always with a child looking on, a promise that our actions will be registered by the most easily influenced and obtainable of audiences.
This may condition viewers to associate certain acts with rewards, but I don’t believe that mass-conditioning was Gillette’s intention, for they could profit without it. Gillette is incentivizing blind action for action’s own sake insofar as said action signals that I too am the “best a man can be.” Gillette, Dove, Heineken, and all other companies that at least attempt to sell sign value (defined later) are all guilty in this regard, for by contributing so obviously to the flow of signs, they are among the most responsible facilitators of the human Subject’s degradation in agency and ambiguity.
I refuse to surrender this article as yet another blind signal, as another exposé of shameful “virtue signaling” (deconstructed here) — the now-slur’s utility as method of critique is exhausted. My argument instead calls attention to the more pernicious, less-examined phenomenon of pre-signaled signaling. I endeavor to discuss why merely “depicting actions” — e.g. showcasing signals of toxicity and heroism in the face of toxicity — may be a culprit worth damning, and hence why depictions of any signal of any behavior, no matter how popular or nuanced, should be met with scrutiny or criticism. I view the Gillette ad as a perfect springboard and lens for such a discussion; The ad’s scenes read as clear instantiations of a preexisting onslaught on the more subtle components of ambiguity and agency, whose proper motivation must first be founded atop their superset’s definition, that of the Subject.
A tour of the Subject
I can’t possibly do the Subject justice as its existence in the Western philosophical project spans from at least Descartes (Subject is the mind in Cartesian Mind-Body Duality, however the “subject” has been subject to a myriad of subtle redefinitions over the centuries) but I may briefly speak to the value of its agency and ambiguity and thus motivate apprehension of thoughtless sign dispersion.
To motivate a need for agency may be a tautological effort to some, but to be specific, I mean “agency” in an unintuitive sense — I speak of an agency over what would otherwise be “automated” or exist outside of us, much in the same way one’s art becomes Subject in its own right, subject to countless subjectivities, each accumulated in some ambiguous, restless heteroglossia, which is reimagined (in the Lacanian sense) recursively by the current iteration’s becoming Subject. Agency is to be regarded as a unique linkage between our Subject and the becoming Subject embodied by the External (“My painting, formed of Object (matter, inspiration) beyond me, will be subject to my own interpretations and those of all onlookers, will spring into existence as another forever-becoming Subject.”) To remove our agency is to remove this linkage, the necessity for what is beyond us to be contained by the External; The removal of agency is the formation of singularities where there was once relation; If the former-External can become Subject without us, what use are we to that singular, other Subject?
To motivate a need for ambiguity, imagine a world where humanity is not ambiguous, completely determined. Imagine that today’s complex society was determined right now and forever into the future. Why would we have to sense Subject (others and ourselves, to live our experiences)?
Now imagine what happens when we lack both ambiguity and the possibility of agency, where we know nothing of these all-descriptive deterministic mechanisms. Everything is determined, but nobody knows how, though some singular other beyond us may know how. We have no need to sense ourselves, others, all that is determined. We are disposable to the Determined as are the contents of a mass-produced book we have already read. Some may argue that we’re already neck deep in such a world, and some cybernetic theorists may wish to facilitate our convergence toward that end. As a potential character of a disposable book who may still be constituted by ambiguity and agency (as self-interpreting Subject), the prospect of losing that agency prompts a relatable sensation, triggers both my innate loss aversion and suspicions of power, namely the power of the Determined as author (thus also as disposer if such disposal is authored). I quote Foucault’s What is an Author? (taken from here) to explain the author’s power:
the author is not an indefinite source of significations which fill a work; the author does not precede the works; he is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes, and chooses; in short, by which one impedes the free circulation, the free manipulation, the free composition, decomposition and recomposition of fiction.
Therefore, I am skeptical of the disintegration of our ambiguity and agency.
A tour through the wicked
The Gillette ad represents the next step in an ongoing trend in media, for better or for worse, to realize the abstraction of our humanity. In a Zizekian analysis, where there was once the abstraction of our actions, then of our reactions, there is now the abstraction of moral systems/ideologies, the mechanisms through which we determine our actions and realize our reactions; We observe yet another recursive abstraction of our Subject. There is (or will be) no need to labor (machines will do it), there is no need to react (let the laugh track laugh for you), there is no need to propagate or be committed to an ideology (the commercial will do it for you). This is elaborated by Zizek in his lectures, interviews, and writings (including this), but can be summarized by his perspective on cinema in The Pervert’s Guide to Cinema (taken from here):
Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn’t give you what you desire — it tells you how to desire.
Gillette goes a step further and actually “desires” (as an ideological act) for you by depicting an explicit hesitation (expressed desire) of each eventual heroic figure coupled with an explicit reward meeting that desire (the onlooking child and Gillette’s affirmation that this is “the best a man can be.”) Only the desire, not its fulfillment, is transferred (in the psychoanalytic sense) onto the viewer — this may seem unintuitive (“Why are both not transferred?”) but Zizek already has an answer (from How to Read Lacan, taken from here):
The analyst is not an empiricist, probing the patient with different hypotheses, searching for proofs; instead, he embodies the absolute certainty (which Lacan compares with the certainty of Descartes’ cogito ergo sum) of the patient’s unconscious desire. For Lacan, this strange transposition of what I already know in my unconscious onto the figure of the analyst is at the core of the phenomenon of transference in the treatment: I can only arrive at the unconscious meaning of my symptoms if I presuppose that the analyst already knows their meaning.
…
For Lacan, the fundamental impasse of human desire is that it is the other’s desire in both subjective and objective genitive: desire for the other, desire to be desired by the other, and, especially, desire for what the other desires.
where the “analyst” is the ad (as representation of the Other, as the imagined symbol for validation of an immanent ideology, as embodied meaning), the “treatment” is the viewing of the ad, “symptoms” are the viewer’s realized (not fulfilled, but sensed and becoming) ideological desires.
There isn’t even a need to watch the ad to reap these same “benefits!” Through Baudrillard, we find one of the more obvious predictions for the fallout of the ad, namely profit. Baudrillard adds nuance to exchange value, namely sign value, the value of the commodity as signal. Suddenly the purchase, use, and brandishing of Gillette is sign in itself, a sign that “I adhere, I am moral.” To update what Zizek once famously said (from The Pervert’s Guide to Ideology):
“Are we aware that when we buy a cappuccino [razor] from Starbucks [Gillette] we also buy quite a lot of ideology.”
Not only did Gillette provide a reward system for propagating a set of signs, but it has already signaled those signs for us and packaged this pre-signaling into their product — no longer is heroic behavior of arbitrary authenticity necessary to signal some morality/allegiance, now both the ad and product act as references to that morality/allegiance.
A tour of failing solutions
Envisioning means of counteracting this abstraction surfaces further evidence as to why complacency as defiance is a healthy critique and maintenance a Subject’s humanity. Not complacency as a becoming of Subject as bystander, not a defiance as Luddite-esque rebellion, as reactionary outcry, as default to heuristic, as appeal to tradition, but a complacency as defiance of the sign, an obstruction to its flow, where “flow” is both the sign’s distancing from its signified and its propagation. It is not the complacency forced on us by the flow of signs (“Sit back and let this ad act, react, practice this morality for you”), nor is it to let the signified die (“Sit back and wait to forget morality”), but it is to reject the flowing signs themselves. “‘Heroism’ is not to ‘save the day,’ ‘break up the fight,’ ‘prevent your friend from cat calling,’ ‘be the better man,’ it is not to play hero but to become hero, where I have successfully hunted, found, created the newly becoming sign for what I am signifying.” More simply: “Being the better man,” internalizing that sign, and to deem oneself as a “better man,” invoking that sign, is to invoke the sign for its own sake, not for the sake of the signified, and to act inauthentically.
I’m convinced of this remedy’s uniqueness as “remedy,” but I’m pessimistic of this remedy’s implementation. Gillette sold us an opportunity to procure sign value. Analogous to the financial value and the financial economy fueled by the flow financial value (not of products) are sign value and the economy of signs fueled by the flow of sign value (not of the signified). The capitalist financial structure promises no end to its accelerated growth, and I have no reason to suspect that a similarly built structure is not subject to the same acceleration. Philosophers far smarter than me have in fact predicted similar outcomes, most notably Baudrillard. To summarize his thinking:
This anticipated ending is the “spectre.” Communism may have been the spectre in the past, but in the new millennium, faced with a ubiquitous, ever-empowered capitalism, history’s synthesis is simulacrum.
BONUS detour of Gillette’s detractors
Many immediate, right-tending detractors (I have referred to them as “reactionaries’ thus far) have not expressed disgust toward the actual signs of the commercial, but toward an “implied” meaning suggested by the sign’s existence:
Apparently we were all lost before Gillette came to show us the way! Thank goodness they created an ad to teach toxic males the error of their ways!
taken from here:
So the ideology was still immanent, and maybe the same desires were transferred as before, yet there is a tension that differentiates this class of responders from both the subdued and Gillette’s supporters. I have no opinions in regard to those of the reactionaries, but I do consider their existence as evidence of the aforementioned burgeoning simulacra in lieu of meaning (the Real). Their expressed tension is hysteria in a Lacanian sense. They are not responding to their desires (the ideology of the ad is still immanent) but they question the analyst (Gillette/the ad/the big Other) as to why they needed moral re-/education. This is the hysteric’s canonical tension of identity, best explained by Zizek (from How to Read Lacan, taken from here):
So one has to think of the phallus not as the organ which immediately expresses the vital force of my being, but, as such an insignia, as a mask which I put on in the same way a king or judge puts on his insignia — phallus is a kind of organ without a body which I put on, which gets attached to my body, without ever becoming its organic part, forever sticking out as its incoherent, excessive supplement.
Because of this gap, the subject cannot ever fully and immediately identify with his symbolic mask or title; the subject’s questioning of his symbolic title is what hysteria [6] is about: “Why am I what you’re saying that I am?” Or, to quote Shakespeare’s Juliet: “Why am I that name?” There is a truth in the wordplay between “hysteria” and “historia”: the subject’s symbolic identity is always historically determined, dependent upon a specific ideological constellation. We are dealing here with what Louis Althusser called “ideological interpellation”: the symbolic identity conferred on us is the result of the way the ruling ideology “interpellates” us — as citizens, democrats or Christians. Hysteria emerges when a subject starts to question or to feel discomfort in his or her symbolic identity: “You say I am your beloved — what is there in me that makes me that? What do you see in me that causes you to desire me in that way?” Richard II is Shakespeare’s ultimate play about hystericization (in contrast to Hamlet, the ultimate play about obsessionalization). Its topic is the progressive questioning by the King of his own “kingness” — what is it that makes me a king? What remains of me if the symbolic title “king” is taken away from me?
The reference to Althusser’s historical lens is especially pertinent, suggesting that the magnitude of identity crises vary with a time-dependent Other, begging the question: “Would there even be such reactionary hysteria (where there was none before) if the Other were not in a state of turmoil?” I think this is equivalent to asking: “Would the threat of overarching simulacra be so immediate if the Other were not in a state of turmoil?” In the concluding remarks of The Big Other Doesn’t Exist, Zizek agrees (assuming hysteria as self-mutilation, defense mechanism, fulfillment of a “need for violence,” death drive), granted he argues that the Other is already dead (the fulfillment of turmoil/life) though one may equate a dead “efficient symbolic fiction” to the destiny of a “less-efficient symbolic fiction” in turmoil.
Thus, the fact that “the big Other doesn’t exist” (as the efficient symbolic fiction) has two interconnected, although opposed, consequences: on the one hand, the failure of symbolic fiction induces the subject to cling more and more to imaginary simulacra, to sensual spectacles which bombard us today from all sides; while on the other, it triggers the need for violence in the Real of the body itself (cutting and piercing the flesh, or inserting prosthetic objects into the body).
Bibliography & Further Reading
In the Shadow of the Silent Majority by Jean Baudrillard
How to Read Lacan by Slavoj Zizek
Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative by Jean-Luc Nancy
