What is signified by this image? Victory. Liberation, The raising of the flag, the Star Spangled Banner of Freedom. It's the good guys coming in and making the world safe for democracy again, conquering some repressive evil. It's World War II, the nation, America coming together and struggling against insurmountable odds, taking the thought-to-be-impenetrable fortress of Iwo Jima. Liberty, democracy and freedom all come at a cost, it's a struggle, and it takes more than one to maintain it.
It's a powerful image, one that most everybody recognizes, but as we move further and further away chronologically from the moment this picture represents, it becomes abstracted, and a floating signifier, Most 60 yr-olds could tell you a lot about what this picture, and the event it "recorded," meant in the context of World War II, and all the meanings it signified. But what would most 15 yr-olds say about this image?
By losing its specific contex, the image of Iwo Jima has become a sign for victory, freedom and liberation, the triumph of the democratic way of life. But when it is reused, as is here, it enters the second-order system, the realm of myth. So what is the myth being created in ad? What has happened to those meanings from the first image?
The democracy of the first image is about freedom. Freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to take part in shaping the structures that form our lives, Freedom is won through struggle, you pay the price but it's worth it. Freedom is a collective phenomenon, it is only achieved through relations, through the concerted efforts of people. The original image shows the interdependency of people, and how freedom, democracy and our nation are rely upon that.
But what about the second advertising image? What kind of freedom does it represent? It is not the freedom to control the shaping forces of social life. They have essentially given up that freedom. Their freedom is the freedom to buy, to choose the clothes that free them from the "trends" of the masses. Freedom refers to the ability to be individual. To be free is to transcend trends, be individual -- and everyone can do this because we have colors and sizes for all.
There is no struggle in this image, They almost seem to be trying to hold the flag down, as if it might float away, instead of struggling to put it up. There is little effort involved in this new kind of freedom. It looks like fun. Freedom is a style, not a struggle. Even the dog comes along. These kids didn't struggle for freedom, they got it by virtue of being members of a consumer society, if you got the good fortune of social class standing, you are assured the freedom of the market. You pay a price for this freedom but when it is a style, you don't pay for it in terms of emotional Investment or not even directly from hard work or physical labour, The price you pay is strictly monetary. You don't work for or struggle for or fight for this kind of freedom, you buy it. And there is no evidence of struggle to obtain money. It all seems to come with ease,
But there are inherent contradictions in this. Be individual by joining the camp. We have colors and sizes for all, so we can all be the same "individual." Here they are addressing the adolescent need to individuate oneself, and they are saying you can be an individual by being identified by a group who is identified as being individual, Being individual then, ever) becomes a style, it does not mean being different but rather means having that look that says, hey I am different, I am an individual, where as true individuality would be being able to be identified as no one else but yourself,
And the pledge of allegiance. How has that been changed? They no longer pledge their allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, they pledge themselves to the style of Camp Beverly Hills. Allegiance shifts from a bond based on the lived reality of social relations to style, a language of promises of relations, or of fantasy. The flag was a signifier for the ideals of the nation and the struggle and social relations that brought it about. The flag stood as a "sacred" symbol of the nation-state as a totem group -- and this is what people pledged allegiance to.
Style signifies that a person is a "Beverly Hills" person, and that the person embodies principles that go along with that image, and this is the new pledge. What are these principles? "Always comfortable, above trends, individual. We are no longer anything so humble as under God, but rather as "above trends." Being under God was a binding moral force of our nation. Supposedly, we are ideologically all one in the eyes of God. Being above trends is an ideal of individuation, of elitism rather than democracy. And a small elite group is bound by their exclusivity. Rather than a group of people sharing common goals and values that bind us and make us indivisible, Camp Beverly Hills hails us stylish "individuals." There is no real binding of people to people that was implicit in the original pledge of allegiance to the nation, there is only binding to the corporation; the corporation that provides the label identifies us as exclusive members of a special totem group.
And corporate allegiance promises nothing like liberty and justice for all, for all people. All that this corporate allegiance promises is that there will be commodities to fit all individual body types and personal preference for color, it you can afford to buy their clothes. Not a very moving statement for most of those who lived through a time where the pledge of allegiance probably had very real significance, like the 60-year olds I envisioned looking at the picture of Iwo Jima. But for those who this ad aims at, those who have never-known struggle and who think of freedom as a credit card, it might be as powerful a statement.
written by Noreen Nakagawa