Gucci’s Fake Not Collection as contemporary U.S. myth (a Barthesian blog post)
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This book has two determinants: on the one hand, an ideological critique of the language of so-called mass culture; on the other, an initial semiological dismantling of that language: I had just read Saussure and emerged with the conviction that by treating “collective representations” as sign systems one might hope to transcend pious denunciation and instead account in detail for the mystification which transforms petit bourgeois culture into a universal nature (Barthes in Mythologies 1957).
The cultural work done in the past by gods and epic sagas is now done by laundry-detergent commercials and comic-strip characters (Ibid.).
In the United States in 2020, the news is alternative, … and now Gucci is producing and promoting a collection that renders the fake real.
1.
Describe context: Real white on black violence, real structural injustice, real illness and death at elevated rates… and a luxury line that celebrates (or is this reappropriation of …?) the “fake.”
2.
What happens when the fake gets branded? What does it mean when the fake gets sold back to us at hyper-inflated, luxury-line prices? Use Marx’s idea of “the fetish” to unpack/answer this.
Show how Gucci’s Fake Not “playful line” reinforces the positionality of today’s super elite. What does it mean to buy a Gucci brand (real) fake Gucci at Gucci prices? — What does the consumer tell the world about him-/her-/their-self by participating?
Show how fashion bloggers, in their reviews, only see “playfulness” and wittiness, how they fail to see the insidiousness of this campaign at this moment in time. !!!
Show how this “playful line” further undermines science and truth in the present.
3.
Analysis of the black body in the image above (what color are the bodies of those who sell “real” fakes on the streets of Florence, Italy where Gucci is headquartered? Or on the streets of Paris where high fashion is headquartered?). How does the body of the model in this ad function just as the body of the Algerian child soldier on the cover of Match magazine (use this essay in Mythologies as my template, cite it here).
Analysis of the yellow lettering, and the juxtaposition of the words “FAKE” and “NOT.”
Analysis of 90’s-style, fake collage with the tape showing (as seen in the ad / image above).
What do these elements signify and how, exactly?
Can I argue that the retro / 90’s-style collage *tells* viewers something about timelessness or out-of-time-ness? Is this a harkening back to the age of multiculturalism?
Does the materiality of the tape, intentionally visible, suggest a materiality (and related, an authenticity) to the “fake” when, and perhaps only when, it is manufactured by Gucci — thereby suggesting that Gucci deserves the prices Gucci attaches to things, regardless of what those “things” are? (Here connect to and cite Piero Manzoni 1961 “Artist’s Shit”)
4.
Conclusion: What does the FAKE NOT Collection do to BLM? To Covid conspiracy theory and theorists? To MAGA? Etc. What does it mean to pretend to be playful (as a strategy for selling handbags for thousands of dollars) at a time like this?
INSERT SOMEWHERE ABOVE: facts on the increased polarization of wealth in the past 6 months (cite Marx on “the race to the bottom” and the polarization of wealth in a capitalist economy).
Sources to come back to:
