JLO63O, 4/21

In class we talked about Hook’s notion of ‘Otherness.’ We looked pictures that exploited and commodified other in the Benneton clothing advertisements. I looked at these photos and advertisements, and in our discussion I could not help but be reminded of the Althusser’s notion of “There is no ideology except but the subject and for subjects” (45). Many theorists this semester have talked about the subjective relationship of hierarchy. The totalizing metanarratives of ‘they, them, everybody else’ is a subjective ideology.

“It is within the commercial realm of advertising that the drama of Otherness finds expression” (370).

The Other, unexpressed, is difference. Without commercial commodification, the notion of the Other would just mean different from the normal. But with the commercialization, the Other is expressed and is now not ‘different,’ but rather normalized as the Other. The notion of being ‘Other’ is much softer than the notion of being ‘different.’ Though it is not ideologically postmodern to view difference, the separateness is inevitable in hierarchy. Here, we see the moral and ethical dichotomy of being exploited and viewed as Other, or not being exploited and being viewed as different.

OOOoooOOOooo similarly stated that she was confused if commercialization of the other was a good thing because it endorses the idea of unity, or a bad thing because it exploits people from other countries. On the one hand, the idea of unity means that there originally has to be separateness. Although they may be recognized for it, I do not think that the intent behind fashion companies such as Benneton is to unify cultures. The intent to unify would not make sense for companies like Bennaton because they are gaining capital from the difference of the Other. To unify would go against the attraction of their clothing. So to rephrase this, the mission of clothing companies like Benneton is not to unify, but to objectify! To say that Benneton’s mission is to objectify sounds silly because they are revolutionizing the way fashion and cultures combine; but we remember that nothing is truly revolutionary because at the moment it is avant-garde, it is pulled back into the mainstream and normalized in culture.