Helpless Consumption:

An Investigation into the

World of Simulacra and Product Placement
By: Timothy A. Mahr

Once I ordered a sirloin steak and a chocolate
sundae, but everything was so cunningly disguised on the
table that I mistook the chocolate sauce for gravy and
poured it over the sirloin steak.
from The Catastrophe of Success
~Tennessee Williams


According to Robert McChesney, the type of product placement that is most
commonly found in Television and in Films takes place when a product is woven
directly into the story so it is unavoidable and its message can be smuggled in when the
viewers guard is down (McChesney 147). Katherine Neer, Senior Editor for
HowStuffWorks, discusses in her article how to judge whether what you are consuming is
good product placement or bad product placement (Neer 2). Her use of good and
bad isnt in reference to the product itself, but how the in-film ad fits into the
production so that it merges with the natural flow and feel of the film. By using examples
from popular films, Neer goes into some detail about how the product being marketed
needs to be placed seamlessly into the shot and fit nicely into the context of the scene in
order to be effective. Her examples include both good uses and bad uses of product
placement showing that if done poorly, the ad can be distracting which could result in
annoyed audience members. This certainly can harm sales and defeat the initial
intentions of the advertisers. The questions to ask are, When is the viewers guard ever
fully up? and, Does good product placement work regardless of viewers high
defenses (as generally planned by the ad agencies).
To explain the background of my inquiry, product placement has evolved from a
boisterous and cumbersome act (Neer gives us one of the first examples in cinema; The
African Queen, when Gordon's Gin paid to have Katharine Hepburn's character toss
loads of their product overboard), to something graceful and stylish such as the Audi
concept car, RSQ, which was built especially for its role in I, Robot (2-6). There is a
reason for this development in technique and approach to product placement. And the
reason seems to be commonplace as to why the obviousness of product placement has
come to this particular point in its development.
Advertising agencies are aware of the ever-growing common knowledge,
products dont just exist in visual media productions, but instead these product-images
actually have marketing purpose. Some of these companies are willing to pay a lot of
money to gain control of a script, while other companies are rumored to have been giving
away their products in order to be used in scenes requiring specific equipment, i.e.
computers, appliances, etc. (edibleapple.com). Seemingly, the most widely discussed
reason for an evolving advertising market is that consumers will become disinterested or
desensitized if exposed to a particular technique for too long. This concept has been
explored and discussed by several theorists. In fact, the study of Consumer Society and/
or the Information Age has gotten so vast, that there are somewhat broad continuing
conversations of intrigue based on the sociality and cross cultural/political/economic
impacts of the existence of advertisements put forth by theorists like Jean Baudrillard,
just as there are sub-sub-cultural studies based on the finer details of this (now) global
marketing schematic (note: both labels stated above, Consumer Society and the
Information Age, include advertising and product marketing as a sizable attribute). An
example of such a study would be Helene Brembecks focus on McDonalds brand
birthday parties. This intriguing inspection will be discussed later on in the essay.
For now, we should focus on defining some of the terms that apply to the global
society so that when we hone the detail of our focus throughout the essay there can be
some consistent nesting of ideas and key concepts. Consumer Society can be roughly
described as a society (for the time being, devoid of culture) being surrounded by a
multiplication of goods or objects. Baudrillard describes that there has been a mutation
in the ecology of the human species (Baudrillard 32). That is to say, Baudrillard (here,
in his 2001 essay) is confessing to his point of view as it has trained itself on Hyper-
culture (Hyperreality) and its information consuming landscape. His observations point
out that the concepts of environment have changed because, though world population
growth has increased since the 50s (along with advertisement density), we are at more of
a chance to distance ourselves from other individuals (in presence) and grow closer in
proximity to objects that may or may not be networking tools (32).
The individual that is born into this society must be absorbed by the culture that
surrounds him/her for it is this culture (locality) and its (perceived) relationship to the
global perception (status) which will effectively weigh in on his/her decisions while
participating in the surrounding Consumer Society. Baudrillard breaks down this
abstraction by using the homo economicus analogy (as described by logician Alfred
North Whitehead) which includes an anecdote of an individual born into a Society of
Affluence (38-9). And with this, Baudrillard can show us the application of the
individuals ideology, that is if the individuals ideology happens to be generalized
capitalist standards. Nonetheless his example, which turns out to be a Lacanian reading
of a Kantian philosophy, is effective for the means of his discussion. And for the benefits
of my discussion, I shall adopt Baudrillards reading of Whiteheads postulate and state in
Baudrillards terms.
The human fossil of the Golden Age, born in the modern era out of the
fortuitous conjunction of Human Nature and Human Rights, is gifted with
a heightened principle of formal rationality which leads him to:
1. Pursue his own happiness without the slightest hesitation;
2. Prefer objects which provide him with the maximum satisfaction.
(38-9)
With the understanding of the kind of individual that we are considering as our
model in place, we may momentarily tighten our iris deeper into the Consumer Society to
unveil an issue that is demanding of our attention. For the progression of our inspection,
let us turn to Masud Zavarzadehs 1991 political analysis of cinema. According to
Zavarzadeh, [the hegemonic class, gender, and race groups], whose values and ideas
constitute the cognitive environment of a society manages to represent its interested view
of reality as the real itself and thus endow it with inevitability (Zavarzadeh 95). With
this said, one can see the harm this insinuation of Hyper-culture could produce for a
people, or at the least, a peoples chances to have control over what they find pleasurable.
Baudrillard has discussed the limit of art (a limit of pleasure and expression) by
pointing out the transcendence of representation because of the continual use of image
(Baudrillard 338). The Hyper-Culture we experience now has one image-meaning spread
into many different categories at once, carrying with it an infinite number of
connotations. The mere image of, say, a cow, can and is used to form cross-cultural/
political/historical/economic meanings and instances at the same moment defying the
notion of instance.
One can consider object representation to be abysmally blurred existing only in a
breathing, pulsing, movement; coming slightly into focus as quickly as it is being drawn
back out again. And with the representation failing to stay in one form or one meaning
for too long, it no longer is in a constant state of hail, but now this hailing has become
only a particle in the abyss of image-meaning (Althusser 321). Now, as we are full time
subscribers to the multitude of meanings that have been hailing us (remember the homo
economicus), the meaning drags us along the outer rim of its blurred edge (which is
immeasurable due to the objects disappearance), as both the meaning(s) and we are tied
to the reality that is disappearing before us, occasionally comforting us with new editions
of the real. This is the hallucination of reality as the display window, the
advertisement, the manufacturer, and the brand name here play an essential role in
imposing a coherent and collective vision, like an almost inseparable
totality (Baudrillard 34).
Now that weve expanded the couplet of reality and non-reality (real reality), lets
put this concept back into a mediated perspective. Philip Green puts dominant ideas back
in the hands of its (their) creator, cinema and television. There is a type of impossible
ideals that are fed to a viewer through theatrical presentations (often mistook as
reenactments or actual-event-reality) and Green tells us that it is cinema and network
television [that] follow the same pattern of framing [these] impossible ideals against a
social backdrop [making] them the only credible reality (Green 107). According to
Green, our pleasures are stretched by our beliefs and our beliefs are formed by what we
visually consume. Take for instance, what has happened in the kingdom of Bhutan since
industrialized colonialism was popularized in the sixties, and the television was
introduced less than ten years ago (current.com). Since the introduction of television
(along with it came American networking and programming) there have been gangs,
violence, and children are fighting in the schools, and this is all relating back to (but not
proven) what the children are viewing off the television (wrestle-mania, violence-
glorified music videos, etc.) (current.com). These children are familiarizing themselves
with the pleasures depicted on television, though these pleasures include unsexing
women and violent gang related outbreaks. The kingdom of Bhutan has always (over the
last century) followed a somewhat utilitarian state of functioning. Starting this year, a
democracy (modeled after the American representative democracy) will take its hold in
Bhutan. And by using the Benthamian example that Green points out, it would cause
more pain not to explore pleasures (no matter how synthetically created), so the people of
Bhutan have no choice but to flee the pain brought by resisting change and keeping their
traditions, and to move in the direction of these negative and, to the people, counter-
intuitive pleasures.
As for another example of this loss of control over the pleasures felt and the
impossible ideals sought by the homo economicus, I will continue to bend focus,
moving the light from a newly absorbed culture (Bhutan) to shedding it now on a well
established niche in the Consumer Society. In her Article, To Consume and Be
Consumed, Helene Brembeck allows us to sit in on a childs birthday party. Unlike the
conventional pangs of hosting a party, the McDonalds brand birthday celebration is
designed to alleviate the hassle of, well, just about everything a parent would have to
consider while planning and executing a well-groomed party for their son or daughter.
Brembeck investigates the world of the McChild from the viewpoint of one of
the observers, strategically placed outside of the play area (which she often refers to as a
showcase, considering that its designed to be an advertising diorama for other parents
[potential clients] to consume) (Brembeck 86). Brembeck covers the party from
beginning to end, calling it an ordered [inter]relational event (67). She includes in her
detailed analysis that the party she observes, takes place in Sweden. Remarkably, her
descriptions are not unlike those found in American McDonalds restaurants. She does,
however, mention that in India, there is a Jungle Book 2 themed party, in which the
party takes place in a real jungle, and the children get to ride on a real elephant (while
pretending to be the main character from the story, Mowgli) (71). This could never be
the case in America, the insurance would be too high. Though it deserves mentioning
that the reference to the real image-meaning displayed here, is the most efficient and
complete simulacrum of the object(s) origins and therefore is fulfilling the exact purpose
of product placement. This particular example touches on a new (rumored) concept that
entails the study of product placement in real life (daveibsen.typepad.com).
Though we cannot control the growth of such dominant ideals being the
breakdown of what we once could consider real reality or original existence, nor can we
rely on the technological advancements to safely glide us to the next plateau in which we
can freely find our own pleasures within ourselves by exploring the uncharted territory of
being, but we can (momentarily) have an opportunity to consider what we are consuming
and (partly) what we want to participate in while blanketed by the light of the streetlamp
of Consumer-Society. I see that there is currently no better way to summarize my point
of view, but I will hand the conversation over with a finishing quote given by Jean
Baudrillard during one of his last interviews before his death.
[] the digital is not a sign, but a signal []
The interplay of signs in language through their differences is what
allows for signification. In digital technology, this type of interplay is
gone. It doesnt coordinate, it concatenates signals. It is information: you
can move about it in any direction because there is no longer any
mediation. There is an immanence, an immediation of things. Thats what
is new. It isnt the death of reality since reality as a whole passed into the
sign. The sign absorbs reality. Images devour reality. (Baudrillard 11)







Works Cited

Baudrillard, Jean. Consumer Society: Selected Writings 2
nd
ed.
Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Pgs. 32-59.

Baudrillard, Jean. The Murder of the Sign, Consumption in an Age of
Information. Cohen, Sande and L Rutsky ed. New York: Berg Press,
2005. Pgs. 9-17.

Baudrillard, Jean. From The Orders of Simulacra in Simulations. P.
Beitchman. Tr. (1983). Printed in Postmodernism Pp. 338-40.

Brembeck, Helene. To Consume and Be Consumed. Little Monsters:
(De)coupling assemblages of consumption. New Brunswick:
Transaction Publishers. 2007. Pp. 67-86.

Green, Philip. Cracks in the Pedestal: Ideology and Gender in Hollywood.
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998. Pgs. 100-16.

McChesney, Robert W. The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics
in the 21
st
Century. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004.

Williams, Tennessee. The Catastrophe of Success. The Glass Menagerie.
United Kingdom: Methuen Publishing Ltd. 2000. Pp. 99-105.

Zavarzadeh, Mas'ud. Seeing Films Politically. New York: State University of
New York Press, 1991. Pp. 91-112.


Online Works

Christof. Lost in Democracy. Current.com. 2009. 05.02.09.
< http://current.com/items/88884836_lost-in-democracy.htm>

Neer, Kelly. How Product Placement Works. Howstuffworks.com. 1998-2009.
05.02.09. <http://money.howstuffworks.com/productplacement6.htm>

The Significance of Apples Product Placement. Edibleapple.com. 2009.
05.02.09
< http://www.edibleapple.com/the-significance-of-apples-product-placement/>

Jaguar's Product Placement Strategy, Where real life blurs seamlessly into
advertising. Daveibsen.typepad.com. 2009. Created: July 03, 2006.
05.02.09. <http://daveibsen.typepad.com/5_blogs_before_lunch/2006/07/
jaguars_product.html>