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Vol 1 (2) 2001
Vol 1 No 2
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Spin, Spin, Spin: Responsorial by David M. Boje
New Mexico State University
pp. 97-101
I will contrast one poet who adores Nike with a guitar poet who
sees tragedy there. Acquenetta Taylor is a Nike fan and Randy
Granger is the critic.
Acquenetta’s poems present a counter-point to our special
theme issue of Tamara on corporate predators. She does not
see Nike as a predator, but rather as a champion of sport, who
keeps it real and has something deep to say to sports fans. She
and I trade much email about her poems:
America has a heart and Nike has won it over through
respect and creditability. There are always competitors,
and there should be. That’s what keeps a company like
Nike going. You know; People in this day and time are into
Truth. Gimmicks and instant gratification simply won’t
cut it. It’s time to tell the people what they want to
hear, and the truth of matter is "Keeping It
Real" like Nike says; "Just Do It!" That’s
what it’s gonna take to stay in the race.
With time being the precious commodity that it is,
Right Now! As we speak "Poetry Is In Motion in
TV /Commercials."
You know! The one’s that leave you with something to
think about. Something deep, with depth. Something that’ll
leave you somewhat spiritually inspired; that’s what I’m
talkin’ about.
Thanks again,
Acquenetta!
Obviously, we do not see eye to eye; I am skeptical of Nike’s
advertising messages. I look at how Nike depicts women and
minorities in sports while employing over 700,000 in sweatshops
throughout the world.
Acquenetta says she hopes Nike will notice her poems, now
published in Tamara, and Nike will make them part of their
advertising legend. In the words of the movie, Matrix, she
wants to plug into the spectacle, not deconstruct it. Acquenetta
wrote to Mr. Harris, the Chief Information Officer of Nike saying:
I was very impressed with the commercial
www.nike.com/mrsjones.
In fact I had registered my vote with the survey, in hope
there were more that shared my sentiments. In any event my
writing you is contributed to my interest in possibly
having two of my poems used as one of your commercials.
I am aware of Nike endorsing several athletes,
and I am confident I have the perfect poem geared to
inflate corporate profits…
Acquenetta!
It is interesting to me, that Acquenetta would sell her poems—her
art—to Nike so that they might increase what I consider ‘predatory
corporate’ profits. Acquenetta seems to believe the messages of
popular culture, without awareness of the factory houses of terror
beneath the spectacle.
Acquenetta’s relating of art to profit, reminds me of the
life of another artist, Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), a
character in John Krizanc’s (1981/1989) play Tamara,
after which this journal is named. I have a story to tell.
Beautiful and headstrong, Tamara de Lempicka enrolled in Academie
de la Grand Chaumiere in 1918 and began her paintings of
unnervingly erotic and (soft) cubist portraits. In the 1920s and
1930s, in an art industry dominated by men, she became the darling
of the European aristocracy. Her abstract and modern style is
widely recognized as the most important in all Art Deco. In a time
of Hitler and Mussolini, Tamara de Lempicka sold her art to the
wealthy patrons. In a time when global capitalism is addicted to
sweatshops, Acquenetta, what are you doing?
Was Tamara at all answerable for her stories and characters
rendered in Art Deco? This is the point that Krizanc is making in
his play. Or does Tamara merely anticipate the postmodern
consumer, who makes icon-purchases without awareness of their
complicity in fetish distribution and sweaty production?
Are we answerable for our own consumptive and artistic choices?
Acquenetta Taylor is also struggling in an industry dominated by
men, not only male poets, by ad men, and Nike buyers for her
poems. She is not yet the darling of Nike, but she needs a wealthy
patron for her art to become known. We are not wealthy, but we do
attract the gaze of the Nike war room.
What about Acquenetta’s two poems? One is inspired by Nike’s
ads about Mrs. Marion Jones, a world-class sprinter. Jones is
featured in ads Nike fashions to be controversial. Marion Jones
was trying to win an unprecedented five gold medals in track and
field, but now the media circles like vultures, as she announces
her divorce from husband, coach, body-guard and trainer—C. J.
Hunter.
The second poem is about Tiger Woods, and his winning of a
Master’s golf tournament. Woods is positioned by Nike in
countless ads to take over the iconic role of retiring Michael
Jordan. Last year, Tiger had to run the gauntlet after a
tournament in Thailand, as 100-sacked employees, did mock him. One
was dressed as a henchman, swinging an inverted Swoosh, like an
ax. Organizer, Lek Junya Yumprasert, observed, "It would take
the workers here 72,000 years of work for Nike on their wages to
make that money." Tiger Woods just lowered his head, ignoring
the signs that read "Tiger Woods putting around workers
rights" and "Tiger Woods please help us."
The second theme, as I read Acquenetta’s messages, is about
Nike’s Mrs. Jones ad series: "why do media and critics jump
on high school basketball players who pass up college to play in
the NBA when nobody seems to be concerned about hockey, baseball
or soccer players who do the same thing in much greater
numbers" (Nike, 2001)? Mrs. Jones according to Nike’s Web
site "asks her listeners why women earn less at the same
game, even though they work just as hard and "their blood is
just as red" (Nike, 2001). Nike says it produces these
commercials in hopes they will raise awareness of issues facing
athletes and sports. There is also a "Join The Debate"
over these ads that Nike has run on Mrs. Jones at
www.nike.com/mrsjones
with two interactive questions:
Question One: "More Role Models" (Chose one
response):
Ø
Like it or not athletes, you are
roles models. Set a positive example.
Ø
Athletes, you get paid to play.
What you do on your time is between you and the law.
Ø
Parents, raise your children.
Athletes, shape up so you can stay on the field.
Question Two: "More For Women" (Choose one
response)
Ø
Women athletes work just as hard
as men. Give them equal pay.
Ø
It isn’t a gender issue. Pay all
athletes according to the money their sport brings in.
Ø
Pay male athletes more than women.
Besides answering these multiple-choice questions, fans can
sound off with an email. Nike attempts to stay right in the middle
of a spotlighted issue it has constructed by its advertising.
"Nike is no stranger to airing controversial ads that foster
debate about key issues" (Nike, 2001). The ad about the ax
murder chasing the woman in the woods, comes to mind.
What about Nike’s adds? Cheryl Cole (1996, 1997; Cole &
Hribar, 1995) has deconstructed Nike’s advertising, and we have
an article Darin J. Arsenault & Tamer Fawzy in this issue
that does likewise. Through its ads, "Nike secures its
patriotic, charitable, and socially responsible public
profile" (Cole, 1997). Nike re-territorializes its identity
through the somatic ads about its role in the life of youth, women’s
access to power, and with heroic figures, such as Tiger Woods,
Michael Jordan, and Marion Jones. Cole’s work deconstructs such
image constructions as the work of corporate power and hegemony.
Hegemony here refers to authorial-power which is taken for granted
and plots are scripted in ways unseen.
Consumers or investors do not know the locations of Third World
factories, nor does one ever hear stories directly authored and
voiced by workers. The Athletic Apparel Industry stands as
gatekeeper, authoring ventriloquist stories on behalf of workers
who remain voiceless. Fans are captivated by the position Nike
holds in popular culture. Cole questions the commodification of
black popular culture.
Nike intensely invested in its image as a
"socially responsible corporation." Nike
exemplifies a new generation of corporations who, at least
apparently, willingly inaugurate, participate in, and
sustain programs designed to address what are
simultaneously articulated as America’s problems. Nike
is seen as a charitable organization concerned with
"giving something back" to American communities.
Indeed, Nike is America’s quintessential postmodern
corporation: a technologically hip and innovative
corporation that prioritizes public issues and cares about
public well-being (Cole, 1997).
And we could say the same about Reebok and their annual
"Human Rights Awards." For Cole, Nike is a postmodern
corporation because it is so virtual: Nike outsources its
production to mostly third world factories whose employees are 85%
female between the ages of 16 and 23; after 23, they are typically
fired, to be replaced by younger and cheaper, more docile
substitutes. At the same time, Nike morphs itself in virtual
image, changing its faciality to be heroic savior of sports-equity
and an end to violence in inner city playgrounds. Please!
Nike invites consumers to become activists in its causes for
fairness in sports, and positioning itself as the rebel, the
non-conforming corporation in an age of conformity. Beneath its
spectacularity, Nike does not address, as Cole (1997) describes
how "America’s urban areas are plagued by problems ranging
from malnutrition, AIDS, drug use, gangs, murders, to teenage
pregnancy, inadequate health care, unemployment, homelessness, and
police brutality?"
How are we to understand the positioning of Nike, Tiger Woods,
and Mrs. Jones in the poems that Acquenetta presents? Put another
way, how does the position of Nike and its icons by Acquenetta
help us understand Nike’s position in popular postmodern
culture? The poems position icons in the collective fantasy of
popular culture, in ideals of competing to win—against all odds—and
the hero’s journey completed with the trophy held high and the
adoration of the masses. Nike is codified in these poems as the
quest, the hero’s journey. Acquenetta wants to become a key
artist in fabricating the national mythic that is Nike,
transcendence through sports. Acquenetta be advised that Phil only
paid $35 for the Swoosh logo, he negotiates deals with
subcontractors so only pennies a day remain for 700,000 workers,
but he did pay Global Alliance for Workers and Communities $7.8
million for some focus group studies.
To me the poems mask a more violent and predatory
hypercompetition, one that oppresses mostly women in sweaty
factory conditions, to compete for the lowest possible wage rates,
to stretch the working day, while presenting a public image of
justice and equity in sports.
To get some sense of this, I turn to the work of another poet.
| Nike
Poem by Guitar Poet Randy Granger
I asked guitar poet Randy Granger if he would
let Tamara publish part of a song he wrote,
called "Flying Home." He told me it
reminded him of Nike’s global business
practices.
FLYING HOME by Randy Granger
What are we gonna do/
They’ve got our children there/
In a factory where/
The Sun will never ever shine/
They’ve got brittle bones/
And the brightest smiles/
Brighter than the sun/
They sing, fly, fly, fly/
Brother fly on/
Sister fly on/Children fly/
We all fly home
Words and Music by: Randy Granger Copyright
2000 granger, r.j.
|
We know that since the Life Magazine expose of soccer
ball stitching in Pakistan (Schanberg, 1996), Nike has moved away
from the pre-teen child labor market. To keep the record straight,
the mean age of a Nike worker is now 16 to 23, with a few who are
13 to 15 trying to pass for older. After age 23, the mostly female
workforce is fired, to make way for younger and cheaper labor. The
stanzas about brittle bones, and where the Sun will never ever
shine, recalls what Marx (1867, Ch 10) observed:
But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf
hunger for surplus-labour, capital oversteps not only the
moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the
working-day. It usurps the time for growth, development,
and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time
required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It
higgles over a meal-time, incorporating it where possible
with the process of production itself, so that food is
given to the labourer as to a mere means of production, as
coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the
machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the
restoration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers
to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an
organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential (The
Working-Day).
Randy Granger and Acquenetta Taylor, are two poets who tune
into Nike quite differently.
Is Nike answerable for its advertising fantasy, its addiction
to sweatshops, and its role in the Society of the Spectacle
(Debord, 1967)? Are artists answerable for prostituting art to
increase corporate wealth? Am I answerable for deconstructing
poems that glorify and vilify Nike competitiveness? Ninety-three
Nike staffers report to V.P.’s Maria Eitel and Dusty Kidd, doing
the bidding of billionaire Phil Knight, and they are ready to
deconstruct anything I say. Nike please publish Acquenetta’s
poems, and to court the activists, make some ironic use of Randy’s
work, and so it goes...spin, spin, spin….
References
Cole, C. L. (1996). American Jordan: P.L.A.Y., consensus and
punishment. Sociology of Sport Journal, 13(4), 366-397.
Cole, C. L. (1997). P.L.A.Y., Nike, and Michael Jordan:
National fantasy and the racialization of crime and punishment.
Center for Cultural Values and Ethics. Dept. of Kinesiology, Women’s
Studies Program, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Louise Freer hall, 906
South Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801.
http://www.hmse.memphis.edu/WPSLC/may1.htm
Cole, C. L., & Hribar, A. (1995). Celebrity feminism: Nike
style (Post-Fordism, transcendence, and consumer power). Sociology
of Sport Journal, 12 (4).
Debord, G. (1967). Society of the Spectacle. La
Société du Spectacle was first published in 1967 by Editions,
Buchet-Chastel (Paris); it was reprinted in 1971 by Champ Libre
(Paris). The full text is available in English at:
http://www.nothingness.org/SI/debord/index.html
Mark, K. (1867). Das Kapital: The Process of the Production
of Capital (Vol. 1). Chap. 10. The Working-Day. F.
Engels (Ed.). (S. Moore & E. Aveling, Trans.) On line version.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm
Nike (2001). Press Release. Mrs. Marion Jones takes on tough
issues in sports. Accessed June 15, 2001 at
http://www.nikebiz.com/media/n_mrsjones.shtml
Schanberg, S. H. (1996, June). On the playgrounds of America,
Every kid’s goal is to score. Additional reporting by Jimmie
Briggs. Life Magazine. 38-48.
Anonymous. (2000, Nov. 14). Tiger Woods faces anti-Nike protest
during visit to Thailand. Agence France Presse,
http://www.globalexchange.org/economy/corporations/nike/france111400.html
web
site - http://www.zianet.com/boje/tamara/