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Sut Jhally v. James Twitchell
continued from previous

JHALLY: We can argue about this in terms of moralistic standards or whatever, but I prefer an empirical question: "Do people become happier when they have more things?" There's quite a bit of literature on this. Robert Lane and Fred Hersch have talked about it. And Tibor Scitovsky, in his wonderful book The Joyless Economy. There's a wonderful article by Richard Easterlin, who examined all the cross-cultural data on subjectivity and happiness and found that there is no correlation cross-nationally and historically between things and happiness. More things do not bring you more happiness. Although things are connected to happiness, it is always in a relative state. It is always in terms of what other people also have at that time. And so happiness in that sense is a zero-sum game. I think you can make a fine argument for a system of production that says, "We are going to make the most number of people the most happy, and we will do this more and more over time." But capitalism is not that system. Advertising people don't want to be selling this stupid stuff, they want to be making films and writing novels. If you really wanted to make more people happy (which I think should be the goal of a political movement because that notion of subjectivity is incredibly important), then what is it that actually makes people happy? What institutions will cater to those things? Secondly, if it's having this incredible effect on the environment, then we need alternative ways of thinking about it.

TWITCHELL: I'm with you. We agree. But I'm going to be Johnny One-Note and ask, "What are those things?" I'm very suspicious of those things and how powerful they really are. The great con game when we had very few things was the promised pie in the sky. In other words, a life after death. Really, what's happened is that we've moved all those promises down here into this world. I don't know if this works or not. But who cares whether it works. We believe it works. We think things make us happy. My personal view is probably .0001 percent of that is true.

JHALLY: I want to go back to your question, "What are those things?" Those things aren't what I say they are. The social scientific literature reveals that what people talk about is social things. They want good family life...

TWITCHELL: Yeah, I never listen to what people say. I always listen to what people do.

JHALLY: That's a strange line for a democrat to be taking. [laughs]

TWITCHELL: No, not at all.

JHALLY: In democracies, shouldn't you pay some attention to what people say they want?

TWITCHELL: Here's my idea for an independent film. I want to set a camera on the head of my colleagues. And then I want to see what they do when they're left alone, to study the difference between saying and doing. It seems to me that reaching into the wallet is a much more powerful articulation of desire and belief than delivering the lecture. In that area, I think the market essentially shows this. What is being consumed is what people really do think is entertaining them, satisfying them, making them happy. It may not be what you and I like, but it is the illusion perhaps that is so powerful. And this illusion seems to be making American culture incredibly attractive to others and making other cultures essentially mimics of American popular culture. Whatever this stuff is in advertising, it's incredibly powerful. It's pushed all these other things aside. Literature, art, religion. It's eating everybody's lunch. Maybe that's because most people most of the time want that for lunch. Maybe it really is resolving the concerns that they have, as hard as that is for us to believe.

JHALLY: Or maybe it's that the environment within which people make decisions is so dominated by one very narrow segment of the population.

TWITCHELL: Exactly.


"Let's say it's not popular: So what! Why must popularity drive everything? Why shouldn't minority views be heard? Why is that so radical?"

JHALLY: That's where the issue of power comes in.

TWITCHELL: Even in countries where these commercial interests were put not just on the back burner but on no burner at all, all it took was just a momentary crack in the wall--Berlin or wherever--to come tumbling down.

JHALLY: It's the major motivating force transforming the world.

TWITCHELL: Could it also be because partly it is resolving what most people consider to be their concerns?

JHALLY: I go back to Marx on this. He starts off Capital by saying that if you can understand the world of commodities then you can understand the entire system in which we live. The other thing I always use from Marx is, "People make their own history [or meaning] . . . but not in conditions of their own choosing." If you only look at the "conditions not of their own choosing," then all you focus on is power and manipulation. If you only look at "people make their own meanings," then all you see is individual freedom and choice. If you only look at one or the other, you get a distorted view. Advertising is the conditions not of your own choosing because it has dominated everything. If you give me a monopoly I can sell you anything. That's what De Beers did.

TWITCHELL: And, of course, communist countries essentially had a monopoly on media and on the production of objects and what happened to them? Why weren't they strong enough, powerful enough to make the dream of Marx come to reality?

JHALLY: Well, they weren't Marxist countries. The Soviet Union never dealt with people's individual needs. The Soviet Union fell apart because no one believed it. It fell apart partly because they could see these images coming out of the West, the most glamorous images of an alternative. When your reality is hunger and despair, no wonder this advertising model should be so powerful.

TWITCHELL: You seem to see advertising as a trick. I see the trickery not as them pulling a trick on us, but us actively collaborating in this process. Like the audience observing the magician, we know the lady is not being sawed in half. We can't quite understand how it works, but we suspend disbelief and give ourselves over to it. Even though we know that the claims of Alka-Seltzer are not true, we give ourselves over to it.
JHALLY: I agree. Advertising is an active process of creating meaning in which people and advertisers interact. But that is not devoid of power. Again, people make their own messages and meanings, but not in conditions of their own choosing. Jim always wants to stress the first part.

TWITCHELL: Yes I do.

JHALLY: I stress both. I don't stress the second part, but I don't forget the second part. If you don't have the second part, then you don't have the context within which things are taking place. You have abstract analysis, literary analysis. That's why I asked you if you view your work as literary analysis, because that would explain our different takes.

TWITCHELL: Yes, and I think the context that Sut refers to is so close to the water in which all us fish are swimming that we're begging the question if we think we can ever come to any understanding of it.


"Who cares whether it works. We believe it works. We think things make us happy."
JHALLY: Oh, but we have to try, otherwise what are we here for? One more thing. It's a little bit annoying to me because you used your colleagues as evidence, but I agree, I think most academics don't think about knowledge the way that you and I do, actually. I think most people view this as a relatively simple, easy job that allows you to teach six hours a week and once you've got tenure you don't have to do very much.

STAY FREE: Jim, where does morality figure into advertising?

TWITCHELL: It doesn't. Advertising has one moral: buy stuff. Not very sophisticated. There are certain areas where I think we should pull the cord and say, "No advertising." I'm vehemently against Channel One. I despise billboards. They are in my opinion immoral. I am distraught that the State not only has gone into the lottery business but advertising. Other than that, I think that the application of moral concerns to advertising is feckless.

JHALLY: I think there is a morality in advertising. It may not be totally systematic, everyone may not adhere to the same thing, but there is a sort of story about what is good and bad, and what values should be stressed. That is a moral system. And I think you can evaluate that as you can evaluate any moral system. I think whether advertising tells the truth or not is actually the last thing you should evaluate it for.

TWITCHELL: It does not tell the truth.

JHALLY: Advertising doesn't even make any claims. That's one of the great tricks of the ad industry in terms of how it's regulated. You can only take legislative action against an ad if you can prove it is deceptive. But you can't evaluate most ads on that basis because there is nothing to evaluate.

TWITCHELL: I think when most people consume advertising, they know that they have to filter it because it's not going to be telling them the truth. But it's not the truth that they're after. They're after these patterns that have to do with belonging, with ordering, with making sense. So put the Truth Meter on Nike and you'll say "My God, who would pay an extra 50 percent for something that is fungible with another product?" Put the Truth Meter on De Beers and you'd see that, "My God, what are we doing?" It's not put on these things because clearly they're addressing concerns that are not susceptible to normal reasoning. Ask somebody who has just bought a Lexus SUV, "Was that a sensible purchase?" And they'll almost always tell you it was a ridiculous purchase. Ask them why they bought it and they'll say, "I dunno... I just like the idea that I have this." Why would somebody have a Polo pony on their shirt when they know that they're just paying an exorbitant amount for the pony? Why would they do that unless somehow the pony was a badge or some kind of a token through which they magically thought they could understand and fit into the world? I am as susceptible as anyone. Sut teaches at the University of Massachusetts. Down the road is Amherst College, which charges triple what U. Mass charges. I, and my colleagues, go into voluntary indenture sending our kids to schools like Amherst rather than the University of Massachusetts. Why do I, who is inside this system and I know that U. Mass is not four times worse than Amherst, why do I go and borrow money to send my kids to this school? I do it because in the system that I move, that is one of the Polo ponies. It doesn't go on my shirt, actually, it's a decal that goes on the back of my Volvo. It violates every sensible bit of behavior. But in so doing it gives me what I want, which is this other sense of, "I'm doing well, I'm raising my child properly, I'm with the community that I feel values what I do." We are willing and conscious participators in a process that is hyper-irrational.

STAY FREE: Is advertising art?

TWITCHELL: Art is whatever I say it is, and I mean that quite literally. There is a group of people whose job is to make claims about certain things and in making those claims essentially apply the label "art." We are to high culture what advertisers, in some ways, are to mass-produced objects. Art really is what the people who teach literature, teach art, who run galleries, who edit magazines, say it is. It is not immutable, it is not timeless, it is not free of space. It's a community of critics who, in order to trade, teach, and communicate, say certain works need special treatment and that they're art. Is advertising art? No. Could it become art? Absolutely. The next generation may very well look at Birnbauch's Volkswagon ads and say, "Oh, that's art!" But right now, advertising is in the position of photography back in the 1930s where it was treated as a kind of whimsical, not very serious study. You can see it happening in movies. Movies which were thought to be entertainment, now thanks to the Academy, are considered works of enduring art.

JHALLY: There is a famous article by Theodore Levitt that essentially equates advertising with art. It's a defense of advertising that says, "People have always interpreted the world. What's the problem?" It suggests that as long as advertising doesn't lie, it should be evaluated by the same criteria that we've always evaluated art. I think that's a sort of self-serving argument.

TWITCHELL: But you wouldn't think that advertising currently is thought of that way, would you?

JHALLY: It depends what you mean by "art." Art in elite standards, no. But advertising has always been popular art. Even early on, people stuck ads on their walls. And in one sense that's a good indication of what people regard as art.

TWITCHELL: Except it's the wrong people. If you were to take your camera around to your colleagues' cubicles, what you'd see there would be more intriguing. I think if you were to take a camera around to my colleagues' offices you would find a lot of advertising.

[At this point, I asked them to comment on a fan letter to Nike, which was printed in Stay Free! #14; the letter writer, like many Nike devotees, has a Nike tatoo; she thanks Nike for helping turn her life around and offers an idea for a commercial.]

TWITCHELL: "Listen, Carrie, I've been terribly depressed in my life, I've been an alcoholic, free-based cocaine for most of my childhood, and then I found Jesus . . . and, look, I have a cross tattooed on my forearm."

Of course, I'm distressed over someone who attributes redemption to a sneaker company. I've been conditioned not to be distressed at a born-again Christian . . .

JHALLY: I'm more distressed by the born-again Christian (laughs). . . Your analogy is right on. I'd like to ask her exactly what about Nike made a great difference in her life. Part of it I can understand because the culture tells us that redemption comes through objects and she just happened to choose the one that, for the moment, is everywhere. Her reaction is not totally off the wall, although it is extreme.

TWITCHELL: What separates her and the Yuppie with his Polo pony?

JHALLY: Not much. There's a wonderful new book out called the Overspent American by Juliet Schor . . .

TWITCHELL: [laughing] Don't tell me you liked that!

JHALLY: I thought is was great. It talked about how people go into debt for these things without the satisfaction that is supposed to go along with it. Goods have always been used to demarcate groups. A lot of defenses of advertising come from that notion, "Oh, people have always used products in this way, products have always had symbolic dimensions, what's wrong with advertising as long as we don't lie," etc. Part of being human is connecting through objects. That in itself is not what's interesting. What's interesting is the context within which these things appear. That's what analysis is for . . . Advertising says you are what you buy. Religions offer other conceptions of identity . . .


"Advertising can be powerful even if it never sells a product."

TWITCHELL: Where do you see power existing in a religious world? If power in the consumer world is with the producer or corporation . . .

JHALLY: In the religious world, power comes from the church.

TWITCHELL: I see the power more from the congregation than behind the pulpit. And the analogy with advertising is a valid one: Consumers travel through ads looking for meaning and purpose; so, too, the congregation forces the pastor to behave in certain ways. You say the power is with the Vatican or Madison Avenue, whereas the power really is in the supermarket aisle or church pew.

JHALLY: I think power is in both places. You can't look at one or the other.

[I asked Sut to state briefly, in closing, what he thinks can and should be done about advertising's monopoly of the culture.]

JHALLY: Cultural change takes time. The Left needs to see culture as a place where we have to battle. And we have to build new institutions that will be able to battle in that field. I'm trying to do it through Media Education Foundation as one start. Of course, there's a risk in engaging in advertising because the language may take you over. But there's no other choice right now, that is the language of the modern world and we've got to use it.