typo

The new deadline for Conference 2002 submissions is Friday 9/20, not Friday
9/19 (typo).

Anyone see the ad on pages 4-5 of the 9-2-02 New Yorker? It's for IBM
ThinkPad/IntelInside. A photo of Lisa Dennison, Chief Curator Guggenheim
Museum NYC. The blurb is "somewhere between surrealism and cubo-futurism",
understated no caps. Totally fucking ludicrous and shameless. Dennison is
shown from a stairway or balcony above, most of the image is of curving gray
walls but with a slice of windows and a white floor with Dennison looking at
a painting thoughtfully, ThinkPad on her lap–art-lebrity ThinkPadding so to
say. (Not that the new karaoke young-meets-old Gap ads with regular
lebrities aren't worse, but different-worse.)

Other text in the Dennison ad: "An optional portable 1GB hard drive that
fits in the palm of your hand. A high-resolution screen that lets you see
things as they are. Intelligent design [bold]. It's just one of the
reasons why some of the world's most successful people choose ThinkPad
notebook computers. Select models feature a Mobile Intel Pentium 4
Processor-M for outstanding performance and mobility. Call 1.877.thinkpad
or visit ibm.com/thinkpad/think."

Then the punch is "ThinkPad: Where do you do your best thinking?"

Reminding me of Goldschmidt's recent comments. Is it illegal to reproduce
an ad on the internet, sans alteration, so as to present it to an audience
as an object of study and critique? Would fair use and/or scholarship allow
one to reproduce the ad for say an art class or media studies class? "Fair
use" too often is just a euphemism for "harmless use" or "insignificant
use".

Another question: what about unpaid product placement? Suppose I made a
film about a very unlikable person, say a corrupt corporate compliance
officer, part of whose character was an obscene fascination with Coca-Cola.
Could I, having bought a case of Coca-Cola, feature the cans in scenes with
the officer, so as to elaborate his character, without Coke's permission?
Could I call the film "Coke Adds Death"? A judge would theoretically weigh
the benefit to society of artistic freedom against Coke's interest in
maintaining a squeaky-clean vibe among say the younger generation of soda
buyers. Then the judge would decide. It's a quantitative judgment, totally
subjective. So even by law, there are no real laws, just like say with
pornography. "Community standards" maybe, which, like the Real, no longer
exist, though we are forced by law to pretend they do.

I recall hearing about–not reading–the novel "American Psycho" by BE Ellis
in which the serial killer was fleshed out by the repetitive use of luxury
brand names. Is that illegal? I'd be curious to know if Warhol had any
trouble using Coke, Brillo, and Campbell's Soup. He was nice to the
products ultimately, and now Coke funds Warhol way heavily, but what if he
wasn't so nice? I recall seeing an artwork at the Allen Museum in Ohio
which was a reproduction of a shampoo ad with text altered to describe
pollution, birth defects, and worker hazards caused by the production of the
shampoo–it was Faberge Organics maybe, some real whitebread shampoo. If
it's legal in a museum, why not on the web?

The facts may be that if I were to scan the Dennison/ThinkPad ad and put it
on my site sans alteration, the real decision would be made by my isp, under
pressure from the ThinkPad people using the DMCA. Which means, you can only
see ads where they want you to see them–if you haven't coined out for the
New Yorker, you can't see the ad.

In practice if someone complains, you're cooked, as we saw in Cloninger v.
Getty. There are no rules or defenses; do anything that someone big
dislikes and you're off the net. So whatever the rules or legalities are,
the decisions are just based on influence, not law.

Be that as it may, if there were laws about this, the Dennison ad is still a
created item, intellectual property, which no one can reproduce without
permission. However as a scholar and artist, I find serious merit in
scanning the ad to my site and posting the url to list. I won't of course,
wouldn't dream of it, but technically it should be legal.

Adbusters does this but I saw a print version of their mag and didn't think
it very incisive or serious–I bet the companies don't care at all if
someone likes to jerk off over a self-subversive mock ad.

I'm also wondering, if Dennison is sitting in the Guggenheim, which is a
publicly funded institution, isn't the use of the space for an ad for
ThinkPad illegal? Same with the Audi commercials in which Wright's building
doubles as a parking garage. I doubt that say a public school could sell
its image without following some kind of regulations.

All in all I'd say the law doesn't matter, just money. That's kind of the
gist of Empire too right? So there's no such thing as law anymore, just
rich and poor, lucky and unlucky, wild west justice, survival of the
fittest. Why this is better than mob rule, I honestly have no idea–I
actually think it isn't. It's rule by aristocratic mob.

In Kubrick's "Spartacus" Gracchus the Republican said "Rome IS the mob," and
in Eastwood's "Unforgiven," Will Munney says "Deserve's got nothing to do
with it", which relates to Hamlet's "who would 'scape whipping?"

Louis Menand has some nice words in the 9-16-02 New Yorker for Zizek, whom
he likes for acknowledging moral ambiguity and for using films nicely to
illustrate his points (i.e. "Welcome to the Desert of the Real."

Typo,

Max

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