Above The Influence

Traditionally, anti-drug Public Service Announcements are hilariously inaccurate, probably because it's hard to convince kids smoking a joint will make them shoot their friend in the face or make their face fall off, since it's scientifically and anecdotally completely off-base. So what does an anti-drug campaign look like after Reefer Madness has been widely debunked?

Enter Above the Influence. You can check out some of their ads here on their website. I'd like to focus on two of my favorite anti-drug commercials, namely "Dog," "Not Again."

"Dog" features a girl named Lindsey whose dog tells her she's not the same anymore because she smokes pot. Leaving aside the fact that smoking pot is unlikely to get you into a conversation with your dog, giving you the ability to communicate with your pets is more likely to be a selling point than an effective scare tactic. The commercial also deploys circular logic - the dog's intervention is only appropriate if we already assume that marijuana is bad. The commercial tells us nothing about the effects of the drug; it only suggests that some of your friends might not want to hang out with you anymore if you do it. That seems like a contradiction with their earlier commercials about peer pressure - apparently giving into peer pressure is okay as long as your peers agree with your parents and teachers.

"Not Again" is so silly I probably wouldn't have mentioned it if I hadn't seen this article in Slate about how it's an exemplary anti-pot commercial. The premise is this: If you smoke pot, your girlfriend will leave you for a "straight-edge" alien. No, I'm not making this up. Apparently there are so few scientifically verifiable ill-effects of marijuana use that they have to resort to telling guys that their girlfriends will leave them for aliens if they smoke it. The glaring hole is that, gee, what if his girlfriend isn't a complete asshole who'll leave him for a little green man at the drop of a hat? What if he'd asked out Lindsey from "Dog" instead? Plus, this bites the same peer pressure contradiction highlighted above. If a girl left her boyfriend because he didn't smoke pot, Above the Influence would be quick to characterize him as valorous and her as, at the very least, fickle and addicted.

These commercials might not be so bad if it was clear that marijuana wrecked lives consistently. But if that were true, why couldn't Above the Influence make commercials about the actual health effects? I'm sure it would be easy to throw together a plausible commercial on memory loss ("God damn it, where are my keys?! I just had them!") or overeating ("woah, dude, is that entire pan of brownies gone already?!"). But those scenarios aren't scary enough, because they're just slightly more annoying versions of things that happen to pretty much everybody in daily life.

So, if Above the Influence is still a total failure, how do we make effective anti-pot commercials? I'm afraid I don't think we're likely to come up with anything soon. Most people don't base their decision to consume or abstain from illicit drugs on 30 second PSAs. The scariest thing about marijuana is the black spot a conviction can put on your criminal record - but even then, is a PSA about kids getting arrested going to do anything more than temporarily distract a few pot-heads from the giant box of cheese balls due to creeping paranoia. In other words, nothing slasher films and surprise dorm checks haven't already done. So maybe we should stop wasting time and money on these silly ads.

House Bunny

As a viewer about to watch House Bunny, I was skeptical. From the commercials, I assumed the movie was a girly version of the vacuous "college is awesome" (or "bro flick") genre of movies that have recently become popular. I was correct in this assessment, but I did not expect the clever and potentially self-critical execution that was House Bunny. While I enjoy the occasional guilty-pleasure chick flick or outrageous college movie, I didn't expect a whole lot out of a movie premised on a playboy bunny becoming a sorority house mom and teaching nerdy girls how to get boys' attention. But as I watched the film, I realized that this movie was not only hilarious, but also brilliant. What I missed in the previews is that House Bunny is such an extreme exaggeration of the overdone, unbelieveable plotlines in chick flicks and bro flicks that it is a poignant and ironic film.

The first clue that this movie was going to be better than expected was that it featured actresses with substantial credibility among lovers of chick flicks and bro flicks alike. Emma Stone (one of the Zeta girls) was in both Zombieland and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, and before that she made her name as Jules in Superbad. Kat Dennings (another of the Zeta girls) was in 40 Year Old Virgin, and played the female lead in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist opposite Michael Cera. Anna Faris of Scary Movie fame played the House Bunny herself, and has also been in Observe and Report, My Super Ex-Girlfriend, Just Friends, and a number of other films. The only other way to load this movie with more of the same sort of mainstream appeal with young people would have been to toss in Kirsten Stuart (Adventureland, Twilight). If there's any cast that's well-suited to maintain an illusion of such an absurd proportions as House Bunny and make it uproariously funny at the same time, it's this one.

The second clue was the rigidness of the movie's adherence to genre rules and simultaneous riffs on pop culture. The Playboy bunny storyline is given realism by the appearance of Hugh Hefner, Holly, Bridget, Kendra, and several other real Playboy bunnies playing themselves, as if Anna Faris's Shelley has been superimposed into an episode of the Girls Next Door. This clash of reality TV and Hollywood movies blurs the line between fantasy and reality seamlessly, as the faux-realism of reality TV breaks down the boundaries between Real Life and what's just on the screen.

The movie also played with popular narratives about sorority girls and the relationship between beauty, popularity, friendship, intelligence, dating, and "being yourself." The Phi Iota Mu girls are caricatures, robotically perfect in all ways except for an inexplicable, sociopathic cattiness. The Zeta Alpha Zeta girls are tropes, acting out the traditional storyline of the nerdy girls who get makeovers and learn the value of inner beauty. This would all make for a very formulaic movie but for the many curious moments where the characters seem to be acting in good faith according to their prescribed roles, and yet behaving in ways so unrealistic as to undermine the principles they seem to be superficially supporting. For example, when Natalie (Emma Stone) is confronted by her crush right after she's shoved a giant mouthful of hotdog in her mouth, she is behaving like someone completely unfamiliar with standard social and hygeinic standards. However, her inability to chew and swallow this bite full of food, or even to spit it out, is a far more extreme ignorance of social and hygeinic standards than even any believeable nerd character could exhibit. Likewise, when Shelley coaches Natalie that boys don't like smart girls and steers her away from him to show him that her time is in demand, she is following the standard cultural line. Yet, her advice seems a little off, even as the other characters treat it as gospel. Even those who think it's acceptable and necessary to play games in the beginning of a relationship usually tend to steer clear of explicitly saying that intelligence is a non-starter with all men and therefore an undesirable trait in all women. Shelley's advice is consequently exposed as naive, when it causes her own date to backfire.

Although this movie is ridiculous, it made me laugh and it made me think due to the adept use of irony and exaggeration throughout the movie.

Cosmopolitan Magazine

Cosmopolitan Magazine is an object of cultural conflict. It is central to the feminist sex wars, with some feminists expressing the opinion that it is a classic example of patriarchal socialization that monitors and controls womens' sexuality and others considering it emblematic of an increased cultural acceptance of female desire. It is also a centerpiece of the cultural struggle between the Christian far-right and corporate raunch culture, with one side blasting it as pornographic and the other defending it as a product that fills a natural want by the public. In addition, it is considered either an entertaining diversion or a holy book of essential tips on "sex, fashion, and dating" by many ordinary women.

I fall firmly in the middle on the question of whether Cosmopolitan is a progressive or regressive publication, but only in relation to comparable magazines and websites. I find many articles nauseatingly stereotypical, but I am also able to identify places where the magazine's editors have responded to criticism and attempted to modify its content to please readers and critics. I think Cosmopolitan's medium, which is that of a glossy women's interest magazine, limits it. Within these limits, however, Cosmopolitan has moments that make it a little easier to justify as a low-culture guilty pleasure, and possibly as a necessary pop culture counterweight to alternative publications in the same genre.

One of the most ubiquitous and unfortunate aspects of Cosmopolitan is its traditional advertising. The pages are splashed with models, makeup, and expensive clothing. Each advertisement seems to scream out a vision of female beauty the overwhelming majority of women fall short of. No body part is exempt from being judged by appearance in Cosmopolitan, where teeth must be white, bodies must be slender, and busts must be emphasized. This is reinforced by the content of many of the articles. Even articles that present themselves as being tailored to "your body!" and "your shape!" are at best a momentary break from page after page of starving models and at worst a ridiculous example of capitalist co-optation of valid concerns about the magazine's stance on body image. The repeated message of Cosmopolitan's fashion and style section is that in order to be sexually desirable (which is presumably the main motivation for reading a magazine about sex and fashion) women must follow rule after rule and trend after trend. Articles can praise women for their "positive body image" ad nauseum, but as long as the "fashion" element is present, its unlikely Cosmopolitan will be able to successfully subvert any of the low self-esteem they sometimes mention wanting to combat.

Its sexual ethics are a little more liberal. Advertisements for the Plan B pill are a fixture on the magazine's website, and birth control methods are often-mentioned in the magazine's sex articles - this is an improvement over the scare tactics young women receive in most sex ed and religious youth programs. Women are also spoken to as if their sexual desire is valid, and the mere existence of a magazine that thinks women should enjoy sex is sometimes a step forward in and of itself. For example, Cosmopolitan made the unfortunate decision to publish an article from the outrageously sexist AskMen website about "10 Things Men Don't Want to Hear In Bed" (which includes such gems as cautioning women against noting that its their first time, because men will assume they're bad in the sack and saying that women shouldn't ask to cuddle because it's too arousing to men) but also responded with its own list of "10 Things Women Don't Want to Hear In Bed." At least if some men are going to write heavily gendered self-serving relationship rules, Cosmopolitan writes a women's version. If that women's version sometimes relies on making generalizations based on gender, at least it gives women the right to make the same kind of demands AskMen portrays as men's right to demand. It also explicitly opposes some harmful stereotypes of women by saying "when we’re getting it on we want to be treated as your dirty partner in crime, not a newbie" and to use grown-up language when discussing bodily functions because periods are normal and biological, not weird and gross.

In the end, I'm ambivalent about Cosmo as a pop cultural icon. However, I do think it presents an interesting opportunity for criticism. Although much of its content is based on sexist conceptions of how men and women behave, many of these standards tell the women's side of the story. Whether the steps in the right direction Cosmo seems to make ultimately affect the genre or the effects of patriarchal thinking about gender I'm not sure, but I think it is possible for aspects of Cosmo to be subversive in some circumstances.

My Culture Jam: Becoming Officers Slade and Miami

Here is the project this essay is based on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWOkFx2YYVk

The essay itself:

A culture’s collective fantasies, as manifested in comic books, often differ radically from the lives comic book readers live. Heroes seek out villains in a way ordinary people rarely do, and they dress in costumes that would be absurd clothing choices for the ordinary person. Yet, despite the mismatch between the extraordinary images in comic books and everyday life, superheroes remain a ubiquitous symbol in popular culture. In order to investigate this disconnect and detourn the medium and symbols of the comic book, I brought Grant Morrison’s The Filth to life. In replicating the details of this cultural artifact and moving the superhero from ink to literal reality, I intended to spark a re-evaluation of the relationship between our desires of heroism and the predictability of students’ routine days.

In Morrison’s The Filth, a fat, balding older man named Greg Feely is approached by a woman who claims to be working for a secret organization. The woman is dressed in outlandish colors and identifies herself as Officer Miami of the Hand: Supercleansing Operations. She explains to Feely that his days of caring for his beloved cat and masturbating to hardcore pornography are not his real life, but rather a fake parapersonality designed by her organization to give him time off from his stressful work as an agent. According to her, his real name is Ned Slade and his skills are needed due to the return of his rival. Before he has a chance to recover from the shock of this revelation, Miami drags Officer Slade back into active duty and on a series of missions.

In order to examine whether Feely’s reaction and the plot that depends on it are congruent with the way they would happen in real life, I decided to re-enact Miami’s sudden appearance to Feely. I attempted to create an eye-catching costume reminiscent of Miami’s uniform, complete with bright orange leggings and a neon pink wig. After donning this unusual attire, I went door to door on campus inviting my fellow students to live the comic book dream. In shifting the medium from printed pages to University Village, the message changed drastically. The outfit that was alluring in a drawing was odd on campus, and references that had been clues to understanding the comic book world were simply confusing to the people I encountered.

This method of blurring the lines between comic book characters and real people is drawn from the themes of The Filth. One subplot follows the characters of the Paperverse, an alternate universe dictated by the eccentric interventions of its writers. This subplot is tied to the main storyline through the power source known as ink. Ink is the substance that allows capricious human authors to create the traditional comic book world of the Paperverse, but it is also the source from which the agents of the Hand derive their power. The Hand symbolizes the dismembered Hand of God writing the world into existence, which confers the organization of the Hand with its holy mandate to enforce the Status: Q. This is true even while the comic undermines this imperative by suggesting God cut off his hand in disgust the vileness of his creation. The Hand is the lightening rod for the comic’s conflict between change and stagnation and between good and evil.

The power of this symbolism does not hold up well without the supporting self-referential relationship of ink to the comic book medium. Changing the situation of the Hand from a comic book world written in ink to the physical world of UTD empties the metaphor of its original meaning. In my project, “the Hand” is a nonsensical reference to a group of people unlikely to be familiar with this particular comic book. This was intended to replicate the confusion faced by Feely at the beginning of the comic. Both Feely and the students I spoke to had no prior knowledge of the Hand. However, unlike Feely, the people I spoke to were not interested in learning more about the Hand. They did not take my mission seriously the way Feely took Miami, because the altered context made my shouting ridiculous instead of resonant.
These transformations in perspective impacted the content of the characters as well as re-routing the symbolism. It transformed Miami from a mysterious underground police enforcer to an object of laughter. Instead of being a credible leader of a crusade to clean up the dregs of human society and protect the Status: Q, my Miami is a merely crazy college student in a pink wig. The potential recruits whose doors I knocked on deviated from the accepted script of the superhero fantasy accordingly. Instead of responding with Slade’s open-mindedness, the students I approached seemed stunned into silence. Instead of asking questions about what the Hand was, or asking why I was telling them to put on orange shorts and 3D glasses, the first two students succinctly declined my invitation to help save the world. They retreated into their apartments and closed the door, washing their hands of the opportunity to play superhero. Despite the wide distribution of movies and comic books based on heroes like the X Men, Spiderman, and Iron Man that were surely available to these students, they were unwilling to even consider living these fantasies. This exposes the superhero fantasy as practically unworkable, puncturing the illusion that anyone is only a radioactive spider bite away from becoming a hero.

Even Kiwi, who did follow me on my cross-campus adventure, provides more evidence of people’s hesitancy to break out of the safety of what they consider normal. She says she is not prepared to save the world, and she will only “maybe” commit to trying to save it anyways. Her immediate reaction is to turn down an adventure, but she obeys when I directly instruct her to put on her costume. She is flustered when put on the spot to act as an interrogator, but she also dutifully sticks around until I inform her that the mission is over for the day. This sentiment is echoed in The Filth, as Slade becomes increasingly disillusioned with the Hand. Like Kiwi, Slade is an open-minded participant, but cannot shake nagging concerns about giving up an ordinary life in favor of being a superhero. However, Kiwi does not go far enough to be considered the real-life equivalent of Slade. While Slade is actively engaged in both aiding and questioning the Hand, Kiwi passively follows along. Even when Slade finds himself at odds with the wishes of The Hand, he is unable to escape his own desire to create a better world. Kiwi, by contrast, never attempts to influence the goals or methods of our adventure.

Turning The Filth into a real-life experiment was successful in subverting the fantasy of the superhero and the symbolism of Morrison’s comic. However, the end result of the project is ambiguous. On the one hand, Kiwi was not the dynamic character Slade was. On the other, holding Kiwi to the standard of Slade might be an impossible expectation, and holding humanity to the standards of superheroes might be equally unfair. While it is easy to conclude that ordinary life is self-masturbation when the example given is Greg Feely’s preference for Anal Quakers over performing the holy work of the Hand, it is more difficult to judge this in the context of Kiwi’s uncertainty over trying to find secret agents on campus.