Subject: Victoria's Black Hole
From: Joan Grossman (joangrs@idt.net)
Date: Tue Feb 08 2000 - 15:48:58 CST
A new Victoria's Secret commercial opens with the simple question:
What is Desire? In creamy black and white the camera caresses a
supermodel's full breasts and lips. She mumbles timidly: "I don't
know. What is Desire? Desire could be anything." (How Virtual) But
who cares. It is we who are supposed to desire her. In another episode
of this sales pitch for underwear, another supermodel answers: "It's
complicated. One person always wants the other one more."
Advertising's greatest achievement is to make us feel inadequate.
What is it we desire from technology's gift of cyberspace? Is it the
sense of out-of-body travel that we get from surfing the web and
chatting with strangers? Is it the promise of something greater? I
can't help but feel we are being duped, as the Internet starts looking
more and more like one big jungle of advertising and commerce. Is it
any wonder that porn sites are the most profitable?
We are dazzled and delighted by technology. In any given week I am
exchanging e-mail with Europe, China, South America, and beyond. It
is fantastic and liberating to have so much instantaneous access to
people and information. It is expedient and productive to take care of
business without bodies and their accompanying vapors, bulges, colors,
clothes. It seems that we know less about each other than ever, as we
gather and consume more and more inanimate information. The fluidity
of identity through electronic communication has infitinite
possibilities -- as long we never actually meet. In person, our
inadequacies would spill out of our flabby bodies in no time. The
cloaks we wear in online communication are oddly Victorian.
Like the promise of a high-gloss car commercial, technology makes us
feel that we are taking the healm of the rocket to the future. As we
define ourselves by this unreachable future, we are fabulous. We are
on the cusp of something BIG. And we are grovelling. Everything is at
stake: work, business, lifestyle, identity. What's worse is that we
risk being left behind, alone and inadequate.
Cyberspace makes every illusion possible. (Without illusion, phone sex
might be more effective with the telephone apparatus itself - no need
to bother with the phony intimacies spoken through the wire.) A PBS
News Hour discussion about a recent telecom merger suddenly grabs my
attention. The interviewer asks: "Are these companies creating the
means to live out Desires? Or just creating new Desires?" I am struck
by the notion that we, the users and consumers, are the blackholes of
cyberspace....
to be continued.
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