Bohemians, The Glamorous Outcasts - Elizabeth Wilson

I decided to read about Bohemian culture a little more as I thought the documentary I watched on this topic was very relevant to my essay. It turns out that this movement is a really good example of what we are seeing happening today with hipster culture. It is about the idea of not belonging to anything, but then this is latched onto by consumer society and this lifestyle becomes marketable. As soon as it becomes product and purchasing based, the true values of the movement are diminished. It also connects strongly to how our subconscious needs as human beings are tapped into by brands to target us as buyers. 

p2

… ‘an early bohemian was, an isolated eccentric. The fully fledged nineteenth-century bohemians, on the other hand, belonged to an identifiable subculture.’

• Same concept as the hipster, doesn’t want to be a part of a subculture but inevitably becomes part of one when enough people do the same. 

p3

‘He or she embodies dissidence, opposition, criticism of the status quo; these may be expressed politically, aesthetically or in the artist’s behaviour and lifestyle.’ 

• Speaking about trying to be different in an attempt to make some sort of change. The second part of this quote is the most important as it states that this notion is expressed in some ‘buyable’ areas like aesthetic and lifestyle. These link to products. 

p7

‘The bohemian myth revolves around a central problem of authenticity.’

• Use this to link to hipster handbook. Seems like a modern repeat of the bohemian movement. 

‘Culture was becoming a commodity and society demanded the artists should bow to the laws of the expanding market.’

• Art as a business. This could maybe be used in introduction to introduce the topic of bohemia and how it links in to my argument.

p9

… ‘if bohemian values have really penetrated mainstream society’ … ‘are we all bohemians now’?

• When everyone becomes it, is it a thing anymore? Evolving and getting one-up on the previous. This could link to the Callaghan illustration, specifically the Wholefoods argument. 

p11

‘Bohemia was above all a quest, less an identity than a search for identity, less a location than a utopia.’ 

• Link to Maslo. Self betterment/actualisation. Is it ever reachable? If not then there will always be new things marketable to make people think they can get closer to it. 

p72

‘eccentric characters’ [were] ‘sometimes so original that their lives became works of art in themselves.’ 

• Lifestyle! This links to virtue signalling. Using your lifestyle as a form of display. 

p73

‘Many bohemians simply poured their creativity into the’ … ‘art of living.’

• Same as previous. See which quote would work best in the text. 

‘It was above all a home for black sheep and rebels.’

• This is how it begins, with people who are different. This is before it becomes a marketable idea. Then it is for anyone. 

p75

‘bohemian values leaked into the mass culture of modernity.’

• If I use this I will need to explain modernity. The idea of the quote is very relevant to how corporations sell culture back to us. 

p82

‘The 1960s’ [was] ‘when Bohemia met mass culture in a more wholehearted marriage of madness’

• This quote could spark a whole new section to my essay which I don’t think I need to go into. There are many examples in the 60s that would be relevant but I feel this may take my argument off track. 

p160

‘Some bohemians gave their surroundings a symbolic meaning.’ 

• Use to speak about my practical work in chapter 4. Contextualisation of my work. 

p161

… ‘the bohemians by ‘making a statement’ with their style of dress, were doing only what everyone else was doing. To adhere to the rules of polite dress was to signal your commitment to the good manners of a gentleman; it therefore followed that to flout them was both to commit a real social transgression and to announce a different inner individual truth.’ 

• Using your personal image to get across what you believe in. People speak with material things.

p162

‘the bohemian artist looks unkempt’ … ‘he was telling the world of his defiance, of his dissent from bourgeois values and of his poverty therefore as a moral value rather than an economic condition.’ 

• Same as previous. Using your image to get across the values and opinions you have. It is also showing your place within society - it is the beginning of making poverty ‘desirable’. 

p221

Malcom Cowley - ‘the commercialisation of Bohemia was apparent in Greenwich Village soon after 1918’ … ‘bohemian lifestyles were essential to the way in which more and more aspects of life were marketed.’ 

• Could draw a parallel between hipster and bohemian culture. Alternatively use in chapter 2 as an example of how lifestyles become commodities. 

p227

Cyril Connolly - [artists and intellectuals had become] ‘culture diffusionists, selling culture for a living’

[there became a point where bohemianism] ‘was dead’ [and the original bohemians like painters and writers] ‘could no longer afford la vie bohème.’

• This introduces the problem of commodifying lifestyles and values - it voids the initial movement. It turns it back on itself and diminishes the value of the intentions of that movement. 

p234

‘where are the young bohemians?’ … ‘All swept up in a youth culture that doesn’t differentiate between art and entertainment.’

• This quote is in reference to today. Could this be used in the conclusion to give an idea of the state we are in now?

p246

[Postmodernist theorists may argue that individuals are] ‘in search for belonging, a question less of ‘resistance through rituals’ than of ‘conformity through rituals’.’

• Link to Callaghan and Maslo - in an attempt to better yourself and resist the ways of consumer society, you end up being pat of it because consumer society tries to sell you a way out (which doesn't exist).

p247

‘This does not mean that the desire to change society has disappeared’ … ‘It does not follow that youth culture is concerned only with ‘distinction,’ with an empty kind of coolness and hip devoid of political aspirations.’ 

• Connect to Callaghan potentially?
• Or use in chapter 4 to explain that people today still want to make a difference to society, they just feel like this can be done through buying. 

p248

‘it is most unlikely that the desire to create a different and more authentic life will ever disappear.’

• Use in conclusion to explain that this will never go away. The cycle of commodifying social issues will continue as long as the desire to live a ‘caring’ life exists. 

The Market - Edited by Natasha Degen

p25

‘The connection between certain useful objects and the sense of pleasure has become so well established for the species through inheritance or some other mechanism, that the mere sight of these objects becomes pleasurable even in the absence of any utility.’ 

• I like the concept behind this quote and I think it does relate to my topic. If you replace the word pleasure with meaning/value it makes sense that even if a product is pointless, it doesn’t matter because people will still think it is doing good. I am not going to use this quote though because it steers my argument onto a bit of a tangent. 

p156

Kruger - ‘I shop therefore I am’ 

‘consumption as the hallmark of identity’

• Buying values - use to support this argument (Klein’s selling an image statement). This quote states that as much as brands produce this image, consumers never fail to buy into it. 

p160

Philip Morris - ‘It takes art to make a company great.’ 

• Can be used to support the argument that art can inspire change and that art can influence people. 

p168

… ‘it was not until the twentieth century that artist proposed a more analytical engagement with the context of art and began radically to question the socio-political and economic structures of the art system.’

• Art as a business. Having a conscious as an artist. Link this to Congdon quotes about money and responsibility for society and making a difference. 

The Hidden Persuaders - Vance Packard

p11

Evan Evans ‘Remember, two things make good advertising,’ … ‘One, a good simple idea. Two, repetition. And by repetition, by God, I mean until the public is so irritated with it, they’ll buy your brand because they bloody well can’t forget it.’ 

• Link to Naomi Klein’s aggressive advertising statement. 

p21

James Rorty ‘figure out what they want, promise ‘em everything, and blow hard.’

• Empty gestures, shameless lies. Connect to quotes about how consumers are lied to. Maybe connect this directly to H&M advert to explain how they have figured out that women crave acceptance of diversity and they have played on this in a very obvious way. 

p31

…’channel our unthinking habits, our purchasing decisions, and our thought processes by the use of insights gleaned from psychiatry and the social sciences. Typically these efforts take place beneath our level of awareness; so that the appeals which move us are often, in a sense, ‘hidden.’ 

• Connect to Benetton advert and unconscious bias. 

'The result is that many of us are being influenced and manipulated, far more than we realise, in the patterns of our everyday lives.’ 

• This could be used to explain the contextualisation of my product range in chapter 4. Using this theory of manipulation in my own work to get across a message. 

p53 

Dr. Dichter ’contends that any product not only must be good but must appeal to our feelings “deep in the psychological recesses of the mind.”’

• This could link to the unconscious bias explanation or about tapping into the psychology of self confidence etc in the H&M ad. 

‘sell emotional security or go under’

• This could be used in relation to Maslo’s heirachy of needs. 

p57

‘People’s subsurface desires, needs, and drives were probed in order to find their points of vulnerability. 

• Definitely relevant to the H&M advert! Could also link in to Callaghan section and Maslo. 

p65

Research Director, New York Advertising agency - ‘People have a terrific loyalty to their brand of cigarette and yet in tests cannot tell it from other brands. They are smoking an image completely.’

• Selling an image. People believe what they are being fed by these brand images, the concept of brainwashing and powerful advertising. Could be used in chapter 2 if appropriate.

Cant Buy My Love - Jean Kilbourne

At this point in the writing of my essay I am only doing research that I know is relevant to my topic. Instead of reading around my topic I am reading with my essay in mind and am picking out quotes that I can see will be relevant to my current argument. In my feedback it was suggested that I need more supporting quotes for some of the statements I have made so this is what I intend to find from this point onwards.

p11

Deadly Persuasion (Jean Kilbourne) - describes the USA as ‘the United Stated of Advertising’. 

She ‘explores the commodification of our lives’ … ‘all over the world’. 

• The quote about commodification of our lives could be used in the introduction to help explain the overarching theme of my essay. Alternatively it could be used to help explain my practical work in chapter 4. 

p13

‘We are led by ads to expect transformation via products.’ 

• Link this to empty gestures idea. Promises that are unrealistic to be met. Also links to how we are lied to in advertising. 

‘Ads also steer us away from what really makes us happy: meaningful work, authentic relationships’…

• A shift in priorities. Connects to the idea that consumer society makes us care more about products than people.

p26

‘Our need for social and personal change and power is often co-opted and trivialised into an adolescent and self-centred kind of rebellion.’

• Links to Maslo’s heirachy of needs, we have a need to better ourselves. 

‘advertising turns people into objects’

• Good quote to use in chapter four to explain the concept of my practical work. 

p27

‘Advertising encourages us not only to objectify each other but also to feel that our most significant relationships are with the products that we buy.’

• Targeting emotions, selling values. This could be used to link to the H&M case study.  

‘The most effective kind of propaganda is that which is not recognised as propaganda.’

…’the most skilful propagandists of our time are not working for dictators.’ …[they are working for brands.] 

• The second part of this quote could be used to support the Klein quote about aggressive advertising. 

p27/28

‘They are to use all of their powers of persuasion, explicit and implicit, to sell a particular product. That’s all! No moral, no obligation to any other set of values.’

• Include this in description of Road to Hell. It opposes the idea of a scale and directly states that the creative has no responsibility. 

p29

‘One certainly doesn’t have to be an alcoholic or any kind of addict to have suffered from a sense of emptiness. Our materialistic culture encourages this because people who feel empty make great consumers. The emptier we feel, the more likely we are to turn to products, especially potentially addictive products, to fill us up, to make us feel whole. 

• Connect to Laura Callaghan illustration, the way fads and self-betterment is marketed to us. 

p31

… ‘a culture that is entirely materialistic, that co-opts spiritual values and movements for social change and uses them to sell [consumers] jeans and cigarettes.’ 

• Again, connect to Laura Callaghan image. Her image is full of products that supposedly are going to better her life, but the general fact is that she is surrounded by products. This is enough to prove that the concept is a gimmick. Buying products in the hope of buying a lifestyle. 

Individual Tutorial 5

Summary of Feedback Sheet

• Structure needs refining. 
• Good use of theories within practical work. 
• Find some branding and marketing strategies to use in writing (chapter 4).
• Logical argument.
• Good evaluation of sources to develop ideas. 
• Practical research is developing well. 
• Theory and research based, practical work is taking shape. 
• Very good organisation.
• Structure needs more work. 
• Resolutions taking shape. 
• Virtue signalling - making a 'socially responsible' product marketable to an audience.
• Range and product - a packaged lifestyle. 
• I can use quotes in my introduction, just don't go into depth. Use it to say who, what how and why. 

Additional Feedback from Tutorial

• I only need to focus on one issue now I have done the experimentation and realised that one has a lot more potential than the others. 
• The imagery I have made for the dementia issue is the most 'me'. The other two concepts seem a little forced and it shows that maybe I'm not as comfortable working in these ways. 
• Pete suggested making work that explains the issue I am getting at with my practical but I still think the proposed product range shows my idea in the most effective way. I don't want to be having the same problem I have faced other years when I find myself just illustrating my essay. I want to use what I have learnt from my research and put this to use in the creation and contextualisation of my own imagery. 
• Could I do primary research? Yes, when I go home for Christmas I will be able to get some photographs and potentially talk to some dementia care staff. I feel like this will be quite primary research based anyway as I already have a strong personal understanding of the issue but I suppose this is hard to evidence.
• Extra things to research - Marx, neoliberalism, environmentalism, pre-traumatic stress, community breakdown, marketing theories. 

Response

I feel a lot better about getting on with my practical work now I have a focus for it. I think the next step for me is to see how my sketchbook work can be translated onto products, learn from this process and start to develop my idea into something stronger. 

I know that my essay needs to be edited a lot, especially the sentence structure and the tone that I write in. I am going to focus on getting all these extra snippets of research in place and then go through the whole thing and continually revise it to the point where I am happy with the way that it is written. I understand what Pete means that I need to make statements rather than forming unnecessarily long sentences that effectively say the same thing. 

I also need to carry through the theories from my main theorists through he whole of my essay and not just in chapter two. This will show that I do have a coherent argument and it will also help me to show synthesis with my research and my reflective practice. 

Contextualisation of Imagery

This is an extension of my previous post. If I do decide to go ahead with three ranges, maybe they should all have images in the same format to make the application onto products a structured and systematic process. 

The main point of my practical work is the commodification of the imagery I produce. I feel like the brief I have at the moment needs altering to simplify it a little as at the moment there are too many messages flying around which is confusing the final outcome - I feel like it definitely needs revising. I need to talk about this with Pete in my tutorial to get some feedback on my ideas and see if he agrees that it would be best to make things a little simpler. 

Practical work thoughts

This was me trying to figure out this project, trying to narrow down approaches, processes and make some decisions about aesthetics that would be appropriate for each issue. While planning this out I realised that this task might be too big for the time I have available. Like I said before, would it be best to choose one and do it well? This is something to discuss at my tutorial.