Selling the sun: Mediascapes, ideoscapes and the globalized contest over the greening of
BP
It gets rid of gambling debts, it quits smoking
It’s a friend, and it’s a companion,
And it’s the only product you will ever need.
—“Step right up,” Tom Waits
The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.
—Sister Outsider, Audre Lourde
For graphic designers, the intersection of art and commerce has been the site of
conflict since the first artist went to work for an advertising agency at the end of the 19
th
century (Frascara, 2001; Bogart, 1995; Heller, 2001; McCoy, 2001). What began as a
conflict over design-as-craft vs. mass production has become a crisis today over the role
of communication—and graphic designers as communicators—as part of globalized
consumerism.
The critical concept of “authenticity” best describes the quality that artists who
had gone to work in advertising felt they were losing (Hardt, 1993). Etzioni (1968)
describes “authenticity” as “where responsiveness exists and is experienced as such” (p.
620). The formal contest over the meaning of mechanized communication ranges from
Benjamin’s (2001) attention to “the undermining of aura and authenticity” to
Baudrillard’s (1983) postmodern concept of “simulacra,” at least. In more contemporary
terms, the present discussion will approach the same problem with reference to concepts
of globalization explained by Appadurai (1996, 2002) and Giddens (2000).
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