Every time a rug is micturated upon in this fair city...

"You've got a conspiracy theory for everything, haven't you?" my brother-in-law asked me yesterday. It might seem that way to those who bear the brunt of my tirades about corporate profits, the interests of concentrated capital and the commodification of culture. But now and again, one finds an example which suggests that one's whole approach thus far has been far too conservative, underestimating the scope of what is involved.
A story in this week's Sunday Times is one such example. The messages underlying such a scheme are extreme versions of what is already pretty widely appreciated: Art is a commodity - that which cannot be marketed carries no value and is mere vanity for the artist. People are commodities, and employment constitutes ownership limited only by time (and perhaps not even by time) so that employers have the right to instruct employees to respond to their employers' whim - to dress as instructed, to eat and drink as instructed, even to conduct their personal hygeiene in such a way that these acts can be marketed. This is allowed to continue because surrounding the realm of culture in a capitalist society is a secret that cannot be mentioned - and could not be taken seriously if it was. The secret is that the "audience" are not the consumers. As with most spheres of life in our society, a product is being sold to a consumer, but the identities of these actors are confused. To clear up the confusion, it is necessary to do the instinctive thing: follow the money. MTV, the New York Times, and Yahoo! do not make (most of) their money from user subscription fees. They make it from advertisers. Advertisers are their major consumers. What, then, is the product being consumed? Our attention. Media outlets engage primarily in selling the "audience's" attention to advertising firms. For this reason, the content they produce is targeted to what advertisers want. And advertisers, who, to use the jargon of economists, distort consumer preferences for a living, want content that will attract their target markets - generally not simply the biggest audience share.

It's a simple enough model, and as it perpetuates itself, it begins to convince audiences that they are commodities, who might make themselves in to "people" if they were to become "famous." Perhaps this is why being famous is being democratised, in the sense that anyone can do it with a bit of good luck. People no longer want to be famous for doing something, but simply for existing. What does this tell us about our society? It suggests that the meaning has been stripped from everyday activities, and only when the mundane is projected on to the arena of celebrity does it become meaningful. Is it not as likely that young women will gossip about the pregnancy of Katie Holmes as they will about those of their friends?
It should come as no surprise that the arena which has been invaded most by these processes is that of the body, sex and love more generally. By appropriating our most private actions, and eroding that privacy, we are made to make the realm of celebrity and branding in to the place where our lives find meaning. If cleaning up menstrual discharge (Tampax etc.), masturbation (Loaded, or any other "men's magazine") and falling in love (the phenomenon of the "heart-throb") are made in to things which can be discussed ONLY within the realm of the brand, then the branding industry has appropriated the only space for the discussion of our most private activities. We are, in this way, forced to surrender the most intimate aspects of our lives to branding. Particularly the first two are matters that one generally does not discuss with others, and certainly not "in polite company," but which are unremarkable subjects to be discu.ssed - perhaps implicitly, but with little real concealment - in advertis and by branding. Objectors are told they are oppressing women if the effectiveness of tampons cannot be weighed in an unconcealed discussion - but who is really oppressing whom when the only place this discussion is allowed to take place is within adverts?

This is why Saatchi and Saatchi making a girl band to do what they want with has implications beyond rubbish music and one too many cola adverts. Branding is not something which interrupts our leisure time, appearing as irritating adverts fragmenting television programmes, or billboards we glance at when we have a spare moment to look around. It is much more invasive - it teaches us how to desire, and what to desire, and it forces us to participate in the process, but at the same time sets controls over the possible outcomes. It is a serious threat to what we understand as "freedom". Our hopes for a better future for humanity rest on understanding how these processes work in order that they might be challenged. A rather presumptuous, self-serving argument, one might suggest, but it seems to me that the role of intellectuals in such a process is starting to diminish considerably, and for this reason, I would rather urge everybody to consider and to engage, to reflect on their own lives and situations, than to send the tired message "we're trying to figure it out - when we have, we'll tell you the answers in words you can understand."