The international beauty company Clarins recently announced the launch of a skin product called Expertise 3P, which they claim will protect consumers from the damaging effects of inescapable electromagnetic waves that emanate from televisions, computers, cellphones and pretty much everything else in our techno-centric society. When I first read about this, I was flummoxed. After all, as Clarins’ press releases are quick to point out, ‘electro-magnetic waves can penetrate through walls’. Right through the fucking walls! I don’t think Superman can do that. So can someone please tell me how a 3.5 oz bottle of ‘protective’ mist selling at $40 a pop is going to save me from this insidious electromagnetic terror? In spite of this fuzzy logic, Clarins reps attest that Expertise 3P is flying off the shelves and I can believe them. Like the news media and every politician in existence, the business of beauty has latched on to the best racket going: the mass production of fear.
All of us live in a fear factory. In addition to the phantom horror of electromagnetic waves, we quite rightfully dread global warming, trans-fats, gun violence, the avian flu, SARS, nuclear proliferation, corporate downsizing, creeping ugliness, hatchet-wielding serial killers, the spread of AIDS, the spread of disco fever, natural disasters, terrorism, erectile dysfunction, and so on. Life presents us with a smorgasbord of unsavory possibilities, altogether too many of which regularly swim through my mind before seeping out one ear or the other. While I take a certain pleasure in laying the options out in a veritable menu of menace, some certainly seem more plausible than others. And some, many of the more sensational, seem constructed specifically as a means to profit on consumers’ panic and their morbid fascination with what is most ghastly, like rows of commuters craning their necks to see the ten-car pile-up, to bear witness to the outline of another person’s body shrouded beneath a white sheet.
Who profits from public fear and from the voyeuristic desire to watch those fears play out - from a safe and passive distance? Corporations like Clarins, for example, have no problem making money based on these fears. Expertise 3P is but one of the many flavors of snake-oil sold to men and women in attempt to profit from insecurities surrounding ageing, health and attractiveness. The news and entertainment media routinely exploit our shared anxieties as a means of engaging and entertaining audiences. If a person’s only exposure to the outside world was through 20/20 and CNN reportage, he or she could be forgiven for believing that life was a 24-hour anxiety attack. After all, “if it bleeds, it leads,” and networks prefer the blood to gush, spurt or pump rather than to trickle. Finally, and perhaps most disturbing of all, is the way governments routinely play on public terror as a means of controlling and diverting the energies of their citizenry.
None of these contentions are really revelatory to anyone. Fear has been big business for a long time, driving the urge to accumulate money, possessions, relationships – from an evolutionary perspective, the instinct to survive at any cost. Fear can be a positive emotion and it can motivate us to act in the best interests of ourselves, of one another and of the world around us. But I contend that perhaps the purveyors of fear have been too successful in selling their product. We live in a world where the Threat Level never dips below “Elevated,” as represented by an eye-stinging shade of yellow. I can’t imagine a contemporary politician proclaiming as Franklin D. Roosevelt once did, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself”. Nowadays, all too frequently it seems that the only thing we don’t fear is Fear and that itself is something to be afraid of. In conclusion, don’t fucking be afraid of electro-magnetic waves or getting older or zooming on jet planes to beautiful and exotic locales. Be afraid of the fascists who want you to be afraid, and then go do something about it. Or I don’t know, I guess we could all just douse ourselves in Expertise 3P and huddle under our coffee tables in the fetal position.
Who profits from public fear and from the voyeuristic desire to watch those fears play out - from a safe and passive distance? Corporations like Clarins, for example, have no problem making money based on these fears. Expertise 3P is but one of the many flavors of snake-oil sold to men and women in attempt to profit from insecurities surrounding ageing, health and attractiveness. The news and entertainment media routinely exploit our shared anxieties as a means of engaging and entertaining audiences. If a person’s only exposure to the outside world was through 20/20 and CNN reportage, he or she could be forgiven for believing that life was a 24-hour anxiety attack. After all, “if it bleeds, it leads,” and networks prefer the blood to gush, spurt or pump rather than to trickle. Finally, and perhaps most disturbing of all, is the way governments routinely play on public terror as a means of controlling and diverting the energies of their citizenry.
None of these contentions are really revelatory to anyone. Fear has been big business for a long time, driving the urge to accumulate money, possessions, relationships – from an evolutionary perspective, the instinct to survive at any cost. Fear can be a positive emotion and it can motivate us to act in the best interests of ourselves, of one another and of the world around us. But I contend that perhaps the purveyors of fear have been too successful in selling their product. We live in a world where the Threat Level never dips below “Elevated,” as represented by an eye-stinging shade of yellow. I can’t imagine a contemporary politician proclaiming as Franklin D. Roosevelt once did, “There is nothing to fear but fear itself”. Nowadays, all too frequently it seems that the only thing we don’t fear is Fear and that itself is something to be afraid of. In conclusion, don’t fucking be afraid of electro-magnetic waves or getting older or zooming on jet planes to beautiful and exotic locales. Be afraid of the fascists who want you to be afraid, and then go do something about it. Or I don’t know, I guess we could all just douse ourselves in Expertise 3P and huddle under our coffee tables in the fetal position.
No comments:
Post a Comment