Mass Moralizing by Hopkins Phil

Author:Hopkins, Phil
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2012-07-10T16:00:00+00:00

Of course, the self mirrored is the self as seen by an “other.” In this commercial, it is the self as “othered” that is configured as bound by social conventions. We can be our true selves when we are ourselves for ourselves, not for others as spectacle or mirrored, even though we are always for others, at least in consumer terms, since we are always for ourselves by being other to ourselves as object of spectacle and envy, as is Julia in this scene. This notion melds seamlessly with the offer of all marketing to be ourselves for ourselves by means of giving consumer goods to ourselves, such as, in this case, an expensive bottle of perfume. As Julia turns to look at the room directly with an increasingly disturbed look on her face, we see the lines working like marionette strings, controlling the actions of everyone. The music playing in the background to this point switches to lyrics for the first time, a male voice singing, “I wish I could be . . . perfectly free . . .” Julia looks back into the mirror and sees that she, too, is bound by these ethereal strings. She looks at herself, closes her eyes and smiles, as if making a wish or a decision, and wipes the strings from her arm, shattering them. Almost everyone in the room notices this transformational act, looking at her with keen interest as she walks back through the crowd with new purpose and ascends a glass staircase (to nowhere) opening onto the cityscape with the light of dawn just edging above the skyline. At the top of the stairs, she turns, of course, to be admired, and offers us the famous Julia Roberts smile, the dawn breaking over her shoulder bathing her in light, while the words “Life is Beautiful” appear on the screen and are narrated in French.

The final scene shows us a crystal bottle of perfume, spinning in place to shatter the crystal bonds encircling it, with the words “La Vie est Belle” overwritten and a narrator informing us that “Life is Beautiful” is the new fragrance from Lancôme. In this ad the world is configured as both fantasy and nightmare, although with a decidedly softened aspect of horror. We are invited both to envy and pity the inaccessible dream selves presented as enslaved to convention by crystal bonds of light. Our savior is a celebrity, the paradigm of the fantasy self as envied spectacle, who, according to the mythology of celebrity, is already uniquely herself, and so already wearing angelic white in a world of black, and also harboring resources for more fully breaking free in a way we mere mortals do not. She is our avatar, showing us the way to freedom. There is “another way”! It is not so much facilitated as simply embodied by both Julia Roberts as minor divinity and the bottle of perfume that is in a very important sense interchangeable with her.

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