Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Monday, February 20, 2012

The Pitch of Ru's Pitch

Not a comment on Ru Paul qua pitcher, have no fear.... it's just that Eric and I were watching Dragrace and Untucked this evening and we were chuckling about how Ru's self-promotional ubiquity on the show (her portrait everywhere, the name-dropping and snippets of her singles continually, the ready-to-hand product placement in every nook and cranny) really does put even Tyra to shame, and yet somehow neither of us are the least bit annoyed by it, whereas the self-promotional flogging of nearly every other celebrity we can think of is like fingernails on a chalkboard even when it is far less incessant than Ru Paul's. I wonder what might account for that? It isn't just that we find Ru Paul comparatively likeable and appealingly intelligent as celebrities go, though we do, since we like, say, Jane Lynch easily as much and yet find her shilling fairly unbearable; and it isn't that Ru Paul manages to market herself in a satiric sort of way since of course lots of celebrities try that sort of winking nudging mode of self-promotion and manage only to seem smarmy and awful (even Kathy Griffin, and we love her anyway). Maybe it is the specifically camp dimension of Ru Paul's marketing schtick that makes it palatable -- certainly I fondly recall to this day Carrie Donovan, Morgan Fairchild, and Magic on one of the few actually successfully campy commercial series, for Old Navy (often imitated never duplicated, including by Old Navy). I think camp must be hard to do in marketing because it is not sarcastic but ironic, not ambivalent but fully invested, not opportunistic but aggressive in its enjoyments. Almost all advertizing is kitsch, but camp probably feels like a very threatening aesthetic for the suits and pocketbooks.

No comments: