Episode 242: WAM The Art and Craft of Resublimation.

April 23, 2024

Central Thesis

Advertisers perpetually co-opt and distort genuine desires and counter-cultural movements, a process Jim terms "subversive resublimation," to perpetuate consumerism. True utopia can never exist because companies are always looking to re-sublimate even movements of counter-cultural revolution.

Key Arguments

• The Great Refusal Was Never Completed: Jim discusses Herbert Marcuse's concept of a "great refusal" of mass media and commercialism. He argues that this refusal, though inspiring to the counterculture, ultimately failed because human nature abhors a vacuum of ideas. People need shared beliefs and opinions, so attempts to abolish public opinion are futile.
• McLuhan's Embrace of Media: Jim introduces Marshall McLuhan's idea that media are "extensions of man" and that the key to changing the public is to use advertising. He illustrates this with McLuhan's re-purposing of a jingle. This suggests that resisting media is less effective than strategically using it.
• Repressive Desublimation vs. Subversive Resublimation: Jim explains how subversive messages inevitably get turned around. Using the example of Timothy Leary's "Turn on, tune in, drop out" slogan and the song, "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" (originally "I'd Like to Buy the World a Home"), Jim shows how counter-cultural ideals are often co-opted and repackaged by advertisers to sell products, a cycle he calls a perpetual turning back and forth between depressive desublimation and resublimation.
• The Deceptive Nature of Advertising: Jim claims advertisers are essentially "liars" by profession. Their job is to persuade people to do things they wouldn't otherwise do, implying a manipulative aspect to advertising.

Notable Passages

• "Advertisers will tell you that it just has to be this way. Online publishing must be supported by advertising, and advertising has to take the form that it does. You have to remember, though, when you're dealing with advertisers, that advertisers are liars."
• "Intellectual freedom would mean the restoration of individual thought, now absorbed... by mass communication and indoctrination."
• "Marcuse called the process of converting sublime ideas to similar sounding ideas that undermine individualism and enforced conformity... repressive desublimation."
• "Just like McLuhan's jingle and Leary's later motto. Detournement is subversive re-sublimation."

Rhetorical Approach

Jim builds his argument through a combination of personal anecdote (his experiences with handmade crafts), historical examples (Ken Kesey, Herbert Marcuse, Timothy Leary), and cultural critique. He employs satire and mockery (especially in his parody of the "I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing" jingle) to expose the manipulative tactics of advertisers.

Connections

References Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tim Wu's The Attention Merchants, Jerry Mander, Marshall McLuhan, Annie Hall, Herbert Marcuse, Timothy Leary, Episode 83, Episode 146, Episode 211: Back To Basics.