Russell Brand Live Branding, Media

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Human Demonology: Occupy Daath, or The Missing Protagonist

Satan Inc.

We may have reached a point where no choice or action can lead anywhere but mayhem, genocide and ecological apocalypse.

Why not buy from a big-box, low-rent retailer and fund human trafficking and forced labor? To get billions from point A to point B without resorting to walking or biking requires accepting environmental devastation, endless war and propping up dictatorial regimes. Mountains of Appalachia are leveled to provide the energy I'm using to power the laptop on which I write this. You are able to get online and read this because legal and moral crimes were committed. At the same time, behind all these things that make the way we live possible are the best efforts and innovations of millions of good people who do much to make life on earth better. Everyone drinks deeply from the same pool of atrocities. The picture all this makes varies with every map drawn of the territory. What the individual sees of their own self depends on which map they locate the “you are here” point. There is no master patter that can be laid over the landscape that can capture every aspect of the territory.

Bottom line, it is all myth in both the pejorative and philosophical sense.

Oftentimes, when trying to uncover the mythological underpinnings of our culture, the emphasis is on narrative and where character comes in. Attention can often concern itself on the question of from what protagonists and villains are made and how to make the greatest number identify with the one intended to represent the desirable behavior and thoughts. Entertainment "news", which has adapted so well to the web holds up the people in the creative industries behind whom the most cash has been spent. Reality shows and talent competitions perpetuate that hoary old Hollywood trope of the person in the street being discovered and plucked from obscurity. Cop shows with their tortured and earnest protagonists, the characters sketched out in most detail. The criminals get the most compelling and dramatic interactions with the intrepid heroes. The officials from higher up the law enforcement may be foils to "lone wolf" officers a la Dirty Harry, or the entire system could be represented as an occasionally squabbling, but unified family united against the criminals and the press, as in the original Law & Order and its myriad spinoffs. Generally, the victims, who represent neither law breakers nor law enforcement are props to kick off the plot so the real drama can proceed. This last group is where we find most of the population, helpless, at the mercy to the fates but for the authorities and their weapons and surveillance capabilities.

...the Cop Show has only three characters--victim, criminal, and policeperson--but the first two fail to be fully human--only the pig is real. Oddly enough, human society in the eighties (as seen in the other media) sometimes appeared to consist of the same three cliche/archetypes. First the victims, the whining minorities bitching about "rights"--and who pray tell did not belong to a "minority" in the eighties? Shit, even cops complained about their "rights" being abused. Then the criminals: largely non-white (despite the obligatory & hallucinatory "integration" of the media), largely poor (or else obscenely rich, hence even more alien), largely perverse (i.e. the forbidden mirrors of "our" desires). - Hakim Bey – Boycott Cop Culture 

The Anatomy of Brand Conversation: Sourcing Trust in Relationships

By Gunther Sonnenfeld

We’ve rediscovered mass communication. The floodgates have opened, literally. It seems that all of the media and content fragmentation we experience in the form of white, conversational noise, are a direct result of conscience overload. Underpinning this is an anthropology, mythic circumstance, language topography and genealogy predicated on establishing trust that begins (or ends) with hopefully meaningful conversation.

Then there’s this troubling notion of a thing called a “brand”. Many would argue (myself included) that brands are often just manufactured forms of perceived value, built to declare certain “truths” about a company’s existence and its justifications for the products or services it sells. 

In a more ideal state, brands are really forms of expression culminating in definable actions – things we see, think, feel and share as part of our cultural identity. And of course, trust is the currency by which we manifest our identities.

But here’s the thing.

Trust isn’t something we discover by way of relationships, or even something that we build within them. It’s something instilled within us before we create them. 

A Brand Is Born

"I admit, technically this isn’t a film review. Hell, it isn’t even figuratively one- but I was told I could blog about “whatever,” so let’s see if that holds. If my posts stop, and I am later found, gnawed at by rats and cannibals in a back alley in Chinatown… well, you know what happened. Raise your glass to another patriot who died for his convictions.

For me, the process began about a week ago. I was told that we will be unveiling a new review blog, angled towards our gay male market. After much deliberation in the editorial and marketing departments, I was presented with the name of the new blog: “Homo Pop.”

Now when you’re presented with something like this as a designer, your job isn’t to make copy suggestions- it’s to “make it work.” (Project Runway can’t sue me for just saying that, right?) I’m not ashamed to admit that at first I was stumped. To the writer, and to the designer, the blank page is terrifying. You pace, think you’re nowhere, call your friends and ask for their condolences on your impending demise, appeal to higher powers that you don’t believe in, and then suddenly- you have something. Hammer it out in a flurry, and pass out in a pool of your own sick"...

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