File spoon-archives/seminar-12.archive/transl-asia_1998/seminar-12.9804, message 9


Date: Sun, 12 Apr 1998 12:00:37 +0200
From: John Hutnyk <John.Hutnyk-AT-urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
Subject: beer mats


boozer philosophy

________________________

The Cobra, Fosters beer mat scenario.

A bright new moment to soak up your time in the bar. Take a second to
consider the fruits of Empire which brought such delicacies to the
otherwise staid cuisine of England. Consider also the innovation of
design, the ubiquity of messages, the attention to detail.
Significations are ablaze, globalisation appears at its micro-moment,
culture in a mass-reproduced, absorbent, four inch square: there is no
other way to adequately describe advertising other than the ubiquity of
abundance - we got it all here, ready to buy.

It would be bad humour to complain of the new gimmicks dreamed up by the
marketeers of Cobra and Kingfisher beers, but there are reasons to
wonder if the sales pitch of these Indian refreshments isn’t
self-defeating. How many beers can a lager lout down before closing time
and still have room for a couple more alongside the post 11pm balti. The
popularity of a ‘late night Indian’ has been attested to in all manner
of cultural style-watch forums - from the literary world of Jeff Noon
(Nymphomation) to the Eastern Eye curry awards through to the British
Prime Minister’s recognition of the Asian community’s ‘contribution’ to
catering. But isn’t this all a bit of a mythology? Doesn’t the equation
of Asian culture with brightly garnished and turmeric coloured post
booze-up stomach filler mitigate against any recognition of Asian
culture as more than a flavoursome trinketizing accompaniment to
business-as-usual service economy. ‘Good news for Curryholics’ the Cobra
placemat add proclaims. Yet, with humour Cobra beer offers to ‘ventilate
your vindaloo’ and with less gas than ‘fizzy Euro brews’ you can also
avoid any ‘internal argy-bhaji’. The Kingfisher approach avoids the
cheap word puns (formed no doubt through the malicious influence of
waking up in time for one or two lectures in postmodern design during
third year of ad-school) to tell us that Tikka or Balti is not compete
without a lager. Why am I concerned? What can you expect from beer sales
publicity? Its just a beer-mat John. I wonder if I am getting too
grouchy. No surprise that it reinforces all the stereotypes and clichés,
but at least its not a nodding-head Peter Sellers style melodrama...
Well, I get upset at the way Australia is advertised too, even at the
very same time that I laugh out loud at that Fosters’ commercial with
the Kangaroo on skis taking the piss out of pretentious Europeans. The
point is not that I’m left unamused, but that the side-effect of these
cheap jokes is that everything else about the country is occluded, thus
reinforcing all too easy drunken assumptions. And anyway, Australia has
a great many better beers than Fosters (a beer company owned by the
right wing conservative politician John Elliot). But only to keep to the
association of Australia with that symbolic kangaroo (or a koala, or the
Sydney Opera House and so on) is to occlude the less savoury realities
of that society - its racism, the continued expropriation of Aboriginal
people’s land, the profiteering of the mining industry, the war on
Bougainville, its growing class privilege and wealth for some, poverty
for more, and so on. The kangaroo image is also a way of faking and
forgetting the egalitarian element in Australian popular culture, the
refusal of conscription, the ‘fair-go’ ethos, and other aspects now lost
to commercialisation and cheap sentimentality. India too, is much more
than a curry and most people know this most of the time (but not always
after downing six pints in the last half hour before the bell). So, if
our mass media were no more than just a string of crap ads this wouldn’t
worry at all, but these days everything else is sequestered to a few
obscure journals, and Sky Sports, The Daily Mirror and lousy billboards
call the tune. There is a whole world of politics sitting there
underneath your pint, soaking up the spillage. There is no need not to
enjoy the brew, but its reason to stop and consider. Strewth mate, its
globalisation now. And pass us another jar, luv-ji

John


ps. what do you think is going on when you hear people talk about how
they are 'going to eat an Indian'???
-- 


******************************************
John Hutnyk
http://les.man.ac.uk/~msrdsjh/index.htm
University of Heidelberg
Mail: Schiffgasse 4
69117 Heidelberg
Germany




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