The Bookworm: No Logo
No Logo, by Naomi Klein. 502 pages. Picador. 2000.
Last night, while the Republicrats were playing their broken records once again, I sat on my porch with a pint of Millstream Oktoberfest and polished off the last 50 pages of No Logo. (Finally!) And though No Logo has many worthy quotes to lead this post, I decided to include one of the last paragraphs of the book since it is such a contrast to last night’s “debate”:
It’s fitting that the figure that comes closest to a bona-fide movement ‘leader’ is Subcomandante Marcos, the Zapatista spokesperson who hides his real identity and covers his face with a mask. Marcos, the quintessential antileader, insists that his black mask is a mirror, so that “Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel… In other words, he says, he is us: we are the leader we’ve been looking for. (No Logo, p. 455.)
Provocative, no? It basically sums up my thoughts on last night’s debate (which I had to make myself read about in today’s CRG).
It has been a long haul with No Logo. I started it sometime around the Fourth of July. Last night, when I finished it, was exactly four weeks shy of Halloween. The last couple months have been pretty busy and reading took a backseat. Frankly, it was relegated to the rumble seat, which is why it took me so long to finish No Logo.
Needless to say, much of the tenth anniversary introduction and the first 150 pages or so are a little fuzzy since it has been such a long time since I read them. However, the premise of the earliest chapters stuck with me. Klein begins No Logo by outlining the history of marketing and the rise of brands. She discusses their adaptations to market influences (especially after the so-called “Marlboro Friday,” when the brand was declared dead), the rise of super brands such as Nike, and their slow and steady invasion of previously unclaimed and often public space (e.g., the sponsoring of art and music festivals, Channel One and other advertising in schools, and corporately sponsored town centers and entire villages). She emphasizes corporate synergy, how important marketing and brand creation became for companies, and how they shed their manufacturing costs (by outsourcing to contractors and subcontractors) to funnel more and more money into marketing and image maintenance. Companies like Nike and Apple (sadly), she said, no longer manufacture products. Instead, they are simply just brands; they are essentially just organizations of businesspeople, investors, designers, and marketers. In between, Klein highlights the ever evolving tools of marketing, cool hunting, and shifts in demographics.
Then she dives into the meaty economics and politics. Outsourcing, the explosion in temp and home work, export processing zones, sweatshops, child labor, political and economic collusion, McJobs, and brand dominance (regarding — as you can probably guess — Wal-Mart and Starbucks). Incorporated into each was the affects on the little guy, economies at large, and the backlash to each. But as the book progresses she focuses more and more on the culture jammers and activists countering intrusive marketing and corporate control and outing the labor and environmental atrocities of major corporations. Klein believed it represented the initial stage of a groundswell of change.
Yeah. No so much.
Though it is still regarded as, according the to back cover, “a cultural manifesto for the critics of unfettered capitalism worldwide,” No Logo is a little dated. It hit bookshelves just a month after the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. Though much in the book is still relevant today (made evident by last night’s “debate” and our ongoing economic malaise), I could not help feeling that Klein was overly optimistic. In a conclusion written after 9/11, she recognized that the game had changed; much like during the Cold War, we were presented with the “great narrative: chosen men, evil empires, master plans, and great battles. All are ferociously back in style.” The mythmakers and jingoists placed the anticorporate protestors on the side of terrorists and laissez-faire capitalism and neoconservatism reclaimed control in the naughties. Corporations are more powerful than ever; in the United States they have basically been granted personhood and now have the ability to influence and buy elections (though they have been able to do that to politicians for a while). Marketing is more pervasive and ubiquitous than ever, consumers have fewer choices, and cronyism and corporate welfare are now synonymous with economic development. The public sector has been eviscerated, unions have become powerless, and the solution always seems to be privatization. And nobody is protesting sweatshops and athletic apparel contracts on American college campuses. Things have changed and the radical elements Klein highlights are still largely on the fringe — at least in North America. Fat, old, white men still call the shots.
Nonetheless, No Logo is a very interesting, provocative, and disturbing read. At times it is boring, and I often questioned whether Klein was reporting or offering her personal interpretation (which I thought was permissible given the facts and evidence she does provide). It was worthwhile, especially having heard about the book for years.
Words I learned/am still unfamiliar with: All definitions are courtesy of my MacBook dictionary. Centurion: “the commander of a century in the ancient Roman army.” Semiotics: “the study of signs and symbols and their use or interpretation.” Carbon sink: “a forest, ocean, or other natural environment viewed in terms of its ability to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.” Anorak: “a waterproof jacket, typically with a hood, of a kind originally used in polar regions.” Naff: informal British term for “lacking taste or style.” Petulant: “(of a person or their manner) childishly sulky or bad-tempered.” Cri de Coeur: It is French for “cry from the heart” (which I knew; thank you, years of French class), but it symbolic meaning is, “a passionate appeal, complaint, or protest.” Experiential: “involving or based on experience and observation.” Coeval: used as a noun to mean, “a person of roughly the same age as oneself; a contemporary.” Hackles: “erectile hairs along the back of a dog or other animal that rise when it is angry or alarmed.” Academe: “the academic environment or community; academia.” Aspartame: “a very sweet substance used as an artificial sweetener, chiefly in low-calorie products. It is a derivative of aspartic acid and phenylalanine.” Pyrrhus: “(c. 318–272 BC), king of Epirus c. 307–272. After invading Italy in 280, he defeated the Romans at Asculum in 279, but sustained heavy losses; the term pyrrhic victory alludes to this.” Sanctimonious: “making a show of being morally superior to other people.” Ersatz: “(of a product) made or used as a substitute, typically an inferior one, for something else.”
