JOHN THE
OBSCURE ™
By John Ruch
©
2006
No,
Get Off My Ass: Swearing Off
Corporate Culture
A brand new Nike TV commercial,
broadcast during daytime football games, features athletes doing their
masochistic thing while AC/DC’s “Rock and Roll Ain’t
Noise Pollution” starts up on the soundtrack, including the spoken lyric, “So
get off your ass and come down here.”
This didn’t really shock me, but it
occurred to me as I sat there stupidly that it should shock me that TV has reached a point where idiot commercials
by idiot companies can swear (mildly, for now) during daytime—or at least
purchase a swearperson to do so for them.
Just 20 years ago, “M*A*S*H,” one of
the most respected shows in the history of the medium, had to conduct special
pleading to be allowed the use of the phrase “son of a bitch” in a particularly
dramatic episode.
Now Nike, through a rock singer
whose concept of athleticism is managing to have sex after downing a six pack,
can off-handedly tell me to get off my ass.
Ignore my attitude problem for a
moment. I’m not necessarily sure cursing commercials is a problem as a general
theory. I’m certainly not arguing for prudery; the handful of friends who
tolerate me will tell you I’m the biggest pottymouth
this side of our esteemed president. Indeed, cursing commercials actually lends
practicality to my if-I-was-a-billionaire fantasy of purchasing Wal-Mart and
renaming it Town-Raping Motherfuckers, Inc. (Truth in advertising and curses in
advertising tend to go well together.)
But as the same example also
illustrates, I believe that profanity should be presented meaningfully in a
crafted creation. (Not minimized or self-censored, as is usually meant by that
concept, but truly attached to meaning—as I believe everything should be.) Put
me in the same camp as shock jock Howard Stern, whose first proclamation on
uncensored satellite radio (he was censured by the Federal Communications
Commission for talking about things like asses, always with at least as much
reason as Nike) was that he would not swear just for swearing’s
sake, a relevant refusal to become radio’s crass clown.
That’s not to say I’m a Stern fan.
He’s been a leading light in our culture’s dubious equation of the vulgar and
profane with the honest and true. And indeed, that’s exactly the same math
Nike’s ad employs. A once-edgy rock band using mild profanity—how authentic
their shoes must be! I doubt my repeatedly referenced ass would fit in a pair
of their $40 running shorts, so filled with cred are
they. (Never mind that the AC/DC song also instructs us to “throw away your
fancy clothes.”)
There’s no way “ass” was tossed into
that commercial by accident. So let’s consider what profanity means. Speaking
very knowledgably, I would say it comes down to an expression of anger.
Anger can be positive; anger can be
negative. To quote a more philosophical musical source, “Anger is an energy.”1 Anger is,
at least in overt morals, widely reviled in our society with its priority on
complacent comfort. And yet, anger is clearly widespread everywhere from crime
and social unrest to our mania for wars. I presume that anyone who still has at
least an ice-cream scoopful of brains and a limbic-system neuron left intact
spends a significant amount of time feeling anger at the deliberately stupid
and brutish world
In any case, Americans certainly
swear a whole lot.
When those cursing
are ethnic or social minorities and/or blue-collar, that’s when it becomes a
“social problem.” Indeed, virtually the entire history of censorship
comes down to attempts to deny that society might give people something to be
angry about.
A case in point is the 1980s
censorship crusade led by Tipper Gore and carried out by her senator hubby Al,
which was nothing more than an attempt to suppress blue-collar rock music.
Ironically, many of the punk and heavy metal bands the Gores et al. were trying
to kill expressed the very same anti-right-wing stances the Gores and Democrats
in general held. The only difference was the bands were impolite.
Following the 2000 election debacle,
it was amusing to watch Al Gore belatedly learn the value of being angry and
talking back. But he’ll always be at the top of some white-guy food chain; I’m
sure he’d still squeeze the trigger on any given foul-mouthed musician too poor
to give a campaign donation.
Of course, AC/DC was among the
Gores’ prime targets back in the 1980s. In its mildly transgressive
early years, the working-class band wrote songs like “Problem Child” and was
naturally instantly blasted as Satanic and worthy of suppression.
If AC/DC was a threat to the minds
of children back then, surely it must be responsible for every social ill
today, because its songs are now on the regular playlist of every National
Football League stadium. After the Nike ad, the strains of the once-reviled
“Hells Bells” could be heard echoing about the stadium during the normal
football coverage. Also in heavy rotation are the
similarly vilified Guns n’ Roses and Ozzy Osbourne.2
Consider Ozzy.
Long branded as Satanic despite having no Satanic
songs and several overtly, explicitly Christian ones, he was finally neutered
by reality TV (highly profane reality TV, at that). There is nothing mainstream
society loves more than turning a former boogeyman into a pet, confirming its
own sense of power and self-esteem.
Something similar, if less extreme,
is also happening with AC/DC beyond the realm of overpriced, underbuilt sneakers. Not only is the band’s music now use
to pump up football crowds, it’s also on ads for cell phones. The reality
series “Dirty Jobs” uses AC/DC’s tongue-in-cheek paean to hitmen,
“Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,” as a kind of theme song.
This kind of nostalgic branding, of
course, relies on the blue-collar vulgarians
themselves selling out—or at least growing up, becoming less angry and spending
more money. And of course, AC/DC themselves are ultimately responsible, though
they’ve always been about money; even their original, rebel-minded singer Bon
Scott was eager to sing “Ain’t No Fun (Waiting Round
to Be a Millionaire),” and these days all they have to wait for is the royalty
checks in tomorrow’s mail.
In any case, domestication of
subcultures is nothing new to Nike marketing. In an infamous recent case, it
promoted a skateboarding tour it was sponsoring with a poster aping the cover
of punk band Minor Threat’s classic first album, along with the slogan, “Major
Threat.”3
Using a quasi-subcultural
product that actually involves profanity is a new step, but it’s just the next
logical step, an attempt to cut out more of the heartmeat
of whatever subculture is being taxidermied into a
trophy of authenticity. It’s the next phase of hijacking anger, not as an
emotion, but as an ornament of a completely passive, obedient process of
purchasing corporate goods—in this case, from a conscienceless company that
should inspire anger all by itself. (Child laborers in Nike-subcontracted
Indonesian and Pakistani factories aren’t allowed to get off their asses.)
In the end, Gorean
censorship of swearing so nobody hears it and Nikean
pimping of swearing so millions hear it is the exact same thing: an attempt to
manipulate somebody else’s anger, and particularly to strip it of any meaning,
righteousness and relevance.
Thankfully, I don’t need to buy my
anger from anybody. So I can comfortably say that Nike might as well get off my
ass. They’re already long gone from my feet.4
1 “Rise” by Public Image Limited.
2 Likewise, brace yourself
for an epidemic of Satanic rape and murder in corporate shipping departments.
The Fall/Winter 2007-2008 Uline Shipping Specialists
catalogue is offering free rock band T-shirts to anybody placing an order of
$300 or more; the main illustration is of an AC/DC shirt. That’s the band that
was specifically cited among examples of “Pornography in Rock Music” in the
PMRC-staged 1985 Congressional rock censorship hearing (whose insane spectacle
included Al pretending to question Tipper, testifying with all her rawk n fukkin roll expertise).
And yet, the more prominent such bands become, the less any claim of
criminological damage is tenable. Tipper and Al Gore’s son, on the other hand,
got busted yet again in July 2007 on drugs and speeding charges, despite being
insulated from those evil punk and metal albums. What music should we blame for
that? Or could it be that the top source of crime is ambitious, self-absorbed,
rich, boring, political parents who suck total fucking ass—even if they DON’T
SING AT ALL?!?!
And now, watch out for Satanic
ritual old man urination abuse. Judas Priest, another ultra-reviled target of
1980s rock censors—a band that had to defend itself against a PMRC-promoted
“backward messages” fantasy tort—now has its cruising-for-gay-sex song “Living
After Midnight” featured in a Flomax male incontience medicine commercial. I actually thought the
point of Flomax is to be sleeping after midnight, but
hey, the bat-winged piss demon has chosen its devil’s tune and will fly us all to
hell any way it likes. Help, Tipppppppperrrrrrrr!!!!
3
Less criticized was why skateboarders would involve themselves with Nike in the
first place; the “Major Threat” ad was less a rip-off than a car crash between
punk culture and corporate culture as they both raced greedily to the bank.
But, while exploitation can never happen without the collaboration of some subcultural Quisling, I can’t totally blame bands or
skateboarders for such stupid mistakes. They’re ultimately just trying to get
by inside a world corporations like Nike actually create and control. (It
should also be noted that Minor Threat itself used the album art on three
different releases.)
4 July 2007: A commercial airing on cable’s
Comedy Central during the daytime promises the product will “kick your ass.”
The product is a “Monsters of Rock” hair-metal compilation album. This is not
only an example of the continuance of swearing commercials—apparently still
favoring the mild “ass”—but an interesting circling back to music; in this case,
a breed of music that itself was largely an attempt to tame and commercialize
the more hardcore forms of metal. Also airing on the channel is an Alltel ad
that suggests beating someone with a “sock full of wood screws,” an image that
would cause outcry if it was in a video game.
January 2008: A Burger King ad says of the Whopper,
“Anything else is a freakin’ disappointment.” Burger
King, for now, is merely flirting with “fuck.” I don’t. Fuck them, their
families, their friends, their customers, their stupid sandwiches and their
fake rebellion.
Posted