Ralph Lauren

Normally I don’t pay much attention to branding—I narrowly missed the whole “designer jeans” craze in the 1980’s—and because I can sew, I can copy. I was really peeved in high school because I had a pair of tweed knickers and wore them (with argyle socks of course) and was the only one in school who had such a garment and then knickers became popular. That took a lot of the fun out of wearing them. The one brand that has intrigued me since my formative years is Ralph Lauren; however, I was (am?) a horse-crazy Scottish Anglophile with upscale tastes and a great love of vintage fashions before I found the brand (and if I’m going to watch grown men chase a little ball around a field, let them do it on horseback; there’s nothing like a good chukker—or chukka for that matter, comfortable boots even when not on horseback) so I’m not sure if the marketing ploys really work—If I were to design my own clothes, I’d probably be wearing something pretty close to RL anyway. I love tweed with old lace—that IS me—not a Madison Avenue construct of me (the tweed goes well with my hair and the old lace with my skin; I look good in ivory). Also, there is a quality issue—RL clothes tend to be well made and made from natural fibers (I avoid synthetic fibers as they’ll melt into your skin and make the burns much worse if you’re ever in a fire) so that rather than the fantasy they sell appeals to me. I also only buy the Lauren brands at thrift stores—I just found a Black Watch lambswool scarf made in Scotland—what could be better than this? Well it could have been cashmere and made in Scotland, but that’s about it.

One of the hard things about writing about advertising for me is that I have given up on commercial TV (I only watch PBS, and I can't do that any more because my converter box isn't bringing in WILL-TV, Champaign Urbana, and cable thinks I'm in a Peoria market, so it dropped WILL for the Peoria station) and I listen to NPR stations so advertising is kept to a minimum. I hate shopping in malls, unless "antique" is in front of "mall" and I've always been attracted to old things so they don't need to advertise to me. I love perfume ads, but perfume aggravates my allergies (or the allergies of the person next to me), and most of the ads that attract my attention are for things I cannot afford. This could be because I am a baby-boomer and my Mom sometimes teases me that I, and not her and my father, was really the one who grew up during the Depression and war years (really, rationing sounds like a good idea sometimes)

Springdale Cemetery

October 16. Great day—a friend and I went to Springdale Cemetery in Peoria since I had to do a “visual rhetoric” photo shoot. The day was perfect weather-wise: sunny and warm enough for a jacket, but not oppressively chilly. The cemetery was rather busy with others doing what we were doing—people had cameras, or were dog-walking, making grave –rubbings, or a combination of both. Peoria Wilds people were also doing something (seed collection?) as there were several vehicles parked by the savanna with “Peoria Wilds” and “Yard Smart” bumper stickers. The Peoria Public Transport System had a “trolley” bus that cruised by when we were near the table graves. The sculptures proved to be very compliant and posed without complaint against a very blue and largely cloudless sky. One bronze sculpture was particularly photogenic . I knew there was a dog sculpture at the cemetery—we ended up finding four, and I found a horse too (I can’t say I’ve ever found one of those before—and none of these were in the pet cemetery section). Many of the mausoleums had glass behind the decorative ironwork doors and these reflected the autumn trees (the autumn color season was just starting) as well as the light and sky. I had fun at the main mausoleum trying to capture the stained glass windows on the far wall through the glass doors as the glass also reflected the trees behind me (who needs Photoshop?). We then went to two cemeteries in Metamora and did more of the same. Both of us got some really great photos.

I had been at Evergreen Cemetery in Bloomington earlier in the week--it was gray nad rainy, and I was by myself, but that's okay. It was fresh air and no computer screen and the colors were starting to change (although they always seem to be in front of the sculptures I wanted to shoot). It is amazing what you can find in these places when you have a camera and are on a mission.

Color of Green, Part II

I had a lot of fun with putting together this presentation; for it being such an esoteric subject and narrow culture (Renaissance England), I was surprised at how much information I found before the book The Key of Green came in and I wasn't initially aware there was a time limit (my first read through was at 14 minutes). I am not a huge fan of Power Point presentations in the classroom—even if the presentation text is short, I notice students often don’t write down anything more than what is on the screen. On the other hand, chalk dust aggravates my allergies, whiteboard markers stink, and I can only write on the lower half of the boards any ways, so Power Point allows me to use text in easy to read fonts (no deciphering my handwriting) and I don’t have to worry as much about spelling (Spellcheck usually gets my big spelling goofs). Best of all, I can use pictures, and students have to come up with their own notes. However, I have been warned by other, more-experienced-than-me colleagues against using some of the flashier aspects of Power Point such as fancy backgrounds and fonts, and animation—keep it simple, they tell me. Hence the use of Ariel as my main font—although I used Britannic Bold for the slide titles (I chose that font just because of the name, but it worked well) and colored all the fonts a dark green. I saved the Old English Text just for a handful of slides. Also, apparently aspects like animation can trigger epileptic seizures. In hind sight, I could have tried a buff background, but I would have ditched that if some of my illustrations had white borders (they blend into a white background so well). So, if my presentation seemed a bit stark—that is why.

Bits and Pieces

While the text listed the spectator, the gaze, and spectating, it wasn’t as specific with one other aspect of the relationship: the spectacle, or what is looked at. I was working on choosing texts for next semester, so Euripides Medea has been on my mind. Medea flying off to Athens at the end of the play in a chariot pulled by dragons is what I usually see given as an example of spectacle as per Aristotle and his unities of drama. As I was perusing possible translations, there was repeated reminders that Euripides’ audience was much more familiar with Medea’s back-story and her marriage to Jason of Argonaut fame (Medea literally saves Jason’s hide). I thought it interesting that spectacle, as a concept at least as old as the Greek dramatists, was not specifically mentioned.

An interesting twist on Foucault and Bentham’s inspecting gaze and constant surveillance in our world—perhaps this is why vampire stories are so prevalent in our society today. Part of the vampire myth is that vampires cast no reflection; in the British television series Ultraviolet, the inability to cast a reflection is extended to technologies such as telephones, photographs, surveillance videos, and answering machines/voice mail. The only way to see them is with the eye. A danger/predator that cannot be detected or recorded by technology is certainly very provocative.

If the spectator does not know what an odalisque is, will he or she see a painting such as Ingres’ La Grande Odalisque as orientalist? Why is this woman Turkish? I’m northern European and she is no darker than I am. She is wearing a turban, but that was a popular hat style during the Napoleonic War years (watch Jane Austen films and note the hats, especially for evening wear). Before commenting on western women appropriating the head gear of eastern women, note the role of women’s hats in western culture. To me, she is just a woman. There appears to be a hookah off to the side of the painting as well, but unless you know what it is, it is easy to overlook. The Guerilla Girl Met poster is interesting in its argument, but I noticed that the poster also slyly directs our gaze to where it WANTS us to look—yes, it visually uses the Ingres painting (an example of French Neo-classicism), but the text limits the statistics to art and artists represented in the “Modern Art sections” of the museum. I’ve never been to the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, but the Modern Art sections of the art museums I have been in would not be the sections I would expect to find a painting such La Grande Odalisque (Magritte, Rothko, Picasso—yes). What about the artists and nudes in Medieval art? By limiting the statistics to Modern Art, the Guerilla Girls exclude the male nudes of ancient Greece and Rome (the Greeks didn’t portray women completely in the nude until Praxiteles’s Aphrodite of Cnidus), and other artistic periods in Western art as well that may have had women actively painting or sculpting (Angelica Kaufmann was one of the founding members of the Royal Academy). But we weren’t supposed to notice that the stats are limited to certain sections—just the 3% of artists and 83% of nudes that are set off with purple ink, rather than black ink. The poster also doesn’t address the number of women who were art patrons and collectors (Lucrezia Borgia, Catherine the Great, to name a few) whose private collections form the core of some of these art museums (like the Hermitage—named after a painting in Catherine the Great’s bedroom). One of the explanations I have read on Vermeer’s domestic interiors is that a female viewer would have had more access to the paintings (the men being off fighting wars and trading). I will warrant though that there are more male artists and female nudes represented in museums.

I take exception to the statement that the mirror convention in paintings of Venus establishes her gaze as narcissistic. There is a convention in classical art that only deities are portrayed in the nude, so are these female nudes with goddess names actually human? As for Aphrodite/Venus and the mirror—narcissism gets its name from a male character in mythology. While a mirror is one of the attributes of Aphrodite (she is, after all the goddess of beauty), it would have been an item only the wealthy could have afforded in the ancient world where this association originates. Mirrors could show literacy (why inscribed them if their owner couldn’t read) and have scenes from mythology on them. Mirrors were also dedicated by women to various deities (male and female) and appear in bridal art. While a mirror may have symbolized vanity during the Renaissance, it was more a symbol of femininity and grace. (this info comes largely from a book entitled Women in the Classical World by Elaine Fantham, Helene Peet Foley, Natalie Boymel Kampen, Sarah B. Pomeroy, and H. Alan Shapiro).

Were the Calvin Klein underwear and perfume ads homoerotic, or were they being used to market the products to women, who may be in a position to buy the items for their men? I just remember an awful lot of the ads being used to decorate women’s dorm rooms when I was an undergrad, but not in the rooms of gay friends.