The Rhetoric of My Office

This year, for the first time ever, I have my own office at the institution where I teach. Having to choose things to hang on the walls and deciding which books would need to come from home to sit on the bookshelf in my office was a new experience for me. So, as I added things over the course of the first semester, I became aware of just how conscious I was about the choices I was making (I don't know why that should have been surprising to me, but it was). Mainly, I was aware of how aware I was (meta-awareness?) about what these choices would communicate about me--my preferences, philosophies, and even my teaching style. My office is, as it turns out, a rhetorical device. This, I admit,  rather juvenile realization was re-enforced when a student came into my office for a conference, sat down on my hand-me-down love seat, looked around for a few seconds, and said, "I'm judging you by the things on your office." It is (and I told him so) appropriate for him to have done so. This is because my office communicates definite messages, some purposeful, some haphazard, about me as a teacher and as a person.

There are relatively obvious, and certainly purposeful messages being communicated through the things I've hung on the walls. I expected these things to be an expression of the way I see the world, the things I care about, and ultimately the ways that I wish to be viewed. These include Warhol themed nick-knacks like a calendar with a Warhol quote and Campbell's soup cans designed after the famous Warhol paintings (an interesting inversion in which the actual Campbell's soup brand drew inspiration from an artist who drew inspiration from their own graphic design). I added these art themed elements to go along with the one wall hanging in my office that I didn't go out and find, which was a poster print of a Kandinsky painting. I chose this poster out of a stack of things hanging around which had been abandoned by previous faculty. These things included a lot of classical themed stuff (Shakespeare stuff, mainly). I chose the Kandinsky piece because I prefer the modern over the classical, the pop over the cultured, the deconstructive over the refined. I added to these pieces a Dali style melting clock I bought at Hobby Lobby, so that my office is full of references to Modern art.

In addition to these, I hung a TOMS shoes flag (which the company smartly includes in the purchase of every pair, with a note encouraging buyers to take pictures with their flags in the exotic places where they where TOMS shoes. A bit of marketing brilliance). I also have a concert poster from a Cake concert, which is printed using vegetable based dyes on recycled paper, and which explicitly says so on the bottom of the poster, a Kurt Vonnegut themed piece of graphic art, and a poster sized copy of the mural at 826 Valencia, a youth literacy center in San Francisco. These all operate to give the office a sort of pseudo-hispster vibe which is in keeping with the way I see myself and wish to present myself--a hopefully unpretentious, socially aware hippy type guy, disguised in preppy clothes.

Of course, these things aren't very big and the office is actually, despite all these accoutrements, relatively sparse. I haven't changed the wall color, so the office is a drab, institutional off-white. The pictures on the wall are of relatively uniform size and are hung in a more or less straight line around the office, and I have, for a member of the English faculty, relatively few books on one rather cheap book shelf (which was already in the office when I moved in). I have only 45 of my own books in my office, all of them Comp/Rhet themed. This is compared to the many hundreds I have crowding our office at home. I also have a couple binders of research articles and some small books left on the shelf by a previous tenant. Though these decisions were not purposeful, they do communicate an understanding of my own position. I am contingent faculty, on contract for one semester at a time. Though the English department and I are happy with each other, and don't plan to break up any time soon, it is nevertheless possible that any one semester could be my last (especially since we keep getting our budget cut). And even if I remain on board, the university could hire a tenure track faculty member who needs the office, and so I could be shipped down the hall to share with another adjunct. So it would be rather presumptuous, and possibly a waste of time to pound too many holes in the walls or to haul too many books up the stairs. These decisions were not really purposeful, and so perhaps they're not strictly rhetorical, but there is a clear connection between these decisions and my own understanding of who I am. Thus, understanding my position provides a proper lens for understanding my decorating decisions.

This piece admittedly serves little particular purpose other than giving me something fun and interesting to think about. But it does provide an example that indeed there are many texts that can be analyzed outside of those we think of an technically and traditionally academic. Indeed, applying this type of analysis to other, larger forms of space commonly reveal important lessons about the politics of space, the symbology of urban/suburban design, and the assumptions that guide the way we live and move in our environments. These types of analysis, in short, teach us a great deal about ourselves.

Nike Celebrates [Under?]Achievement

We all know what sneaker commercials are like. A freakishly talented celebrity super human performs amazing feats of strength or skill, usually against either a minimalist silence or against an expensively produced, raucous rock song.  Time will likely be slowed so that we can appreciate the agility and poise of our Superman, as flash bulbs momentarily silhouette his amazing physique. Then, in close up, we see his shoes. And on the shoes, the swoosh, or the swish, or the basket pattern, or some other form of highly recognizable iconography. And maybe we're supposed to think, "it's gotta be the shoes that make him fly." Or maybe we're just supposed to see that he's wearing these shoes, so they must be the best.

We all know this commercial, because it's every commercial. Through these ads, companies exploit our own wish to be great by showing us those who truly are and then drawing connections between that greatness and their product. NIKE has been a master of these type of ads at least since the introduction of their Air Jordan line in 1985. A prescient example of this style is this early commercial for the Air Jordan I.

In this example, we see all the genre conventions that have come to typify sneaker ads (Spike Lee's internal rhymes and Looney Tunes character cameos have, thankfully, fallen out of favor). We see His Air-ness on an outdoor court, alone of course, like a tragic Greek hero. The soundtrack is silent, save for the sound of a jet engine, throttling up before take off. As the pitch of the engine rises, so too does Jordan, flying through the air in slow motion, assuming the pose that became the apparel line's universally recognizable logo. Finally, as he slams the ball through the hoop, we hear a thunderous echo, and we hear Jordan ask, "who says man was not meant to fly?"

The ad hardly talks about the product at all. We don't hear anything about how light the shoes are, how springy the heels, how solid the ankle support. Instead, we are shown only the very epitome of greatness, followed by the simple statement "Air Jordan. . ." NIKE sees no need to sell us the product based on its merits. They needed only to connect the shoe to Jordan's greatness (a connection Jordan was all too happy to help make. He was fined $5000 every time he wore the shoes in a game because they did not fit uniform standards. If he's willing to pay so much money to wear the shoes, they must be good.)

Because this strategy is so well known to us all, and because it is so tried and true, NIKE's 2011 "Find Your Greatness" campaign might be a bit of a surprise. This is because the "greatness" the ads in this campaign celebrate are nothing like the greatness that we would associate with a Michael Jordan (or even his counterfeit copy, LeBron James). The "Jogger" ad, which might have been the most memorable ad of the campaign, provides a good example of NIKE's much different kind of greatness.

This ad shares a few noticeable things with it's 26 year old predecessor. It's remarkably silent; we hear nothing but the sound of crickets at dusk and the crescendo of footfalls on asphalt. It features a human being in solitude. This seems to be the mark of discipline. The characters in these commercials are still out working, alone in their determination, while others have gone in.

And yet, there is one profound difference in these ads. As he gets closer to the camera, it's clear that the lonely character in the "Jogger" ad is not Michael Jordan, the world class athlete--the best to ever play his sport.  Rather, he is a morbidly obese fourteen year old from London, Ohio named Nathan. He runs awkwardly and sweats profusely, but he's catching up to the camera, which is also moving along the deserted road. And, as he runs, a voice proclaims that ". . .greatness is no more unique to us than breathing. We're all capable of it. All of us."

The brilliance of the ad is that it celebrates the un-athletic, the un-talented, the banal. What's more, it calls it "greatness." So, these ads present NIKE apparel, not as the apparel of the elite, winning championships and MVP trophies, but as the apparel of the kid, winning a battle against himself and against his own body. Greatness in these ads isn't the super-human talents of the superstar. Greatness is a kid having the courage to change the direction of his life, against all odds and against the doubt of others. This, perhaps ironically, makes the ad very powerful, because it celebrates the Everyman. It speaks to the consumer that doesn't want to be a superstar, but instead wants to be healthier, wants to live without being ashamed, wants a date to prom, and it says, "we've got the apparel to support that, to support whatever 'greatness' means to you."

Duchamp: Post-Modern Forerunner; Practical Jokester

In 1917, while in New York, French artist Marcel Duchamp bought a urinal from an iron works company, signed it "R. Mutt" and called it "Fountain." The piece (if indeed it is one) has been considered a practical joke, but has also been taken quite seriously. Duchamp added the piece to his collection of found art objects which he had titled "Readymades." In 1915, Duchamp began displaying every day objects in artful ways in order to critique the adoration of art and the artist. Though there is as much playfulness in his movement as there is philosophy, his concept of found art, and his statements behind it pre-figured important post-modern ideas, a few decades before post-modernism became all the rage in Europe.

With his found art movement, Duchamp intended to question what defines art. Where does craftsmanship or utility end and where does art begin? What makes one piece of white earthenware featuring graceful geometric curves art, and what makes another a urinal?

Duchamp, who was critical of artist worship, played with the notion that by signing something and putting it in a gallery, one elevates it as art. This is particularly true if the signature is that of a well-respected artist. In fact, what allowed many 20th century artists to experiment with deconstructive styles was that they were already accomplished artists. Picasso's cubism might never have been accepted if not for his more traditional early work, his almost Classical Rose Period, and the aesthetically pleasing Blue Period. But, because he was who he was, he was able to experiment. People would expect the sometimes childish looking work of cubism because it had his name on it.

Duchamp seemed to recognize this ability, and he purposefully questioned this by simply signing every day objects, and placing them in galleries, knowing that folks would therefore call this work art.

This suggests then that the label "art" is arbitrary. The fact that "Fountain" was critically received as art (it was, in fact, named the most influential art work of the 20th century in 2004), suggests this. It's acclaim clearly had nothing to do with the graceful, arching lines of the urinal, or the pure white color, or the perfect classical geometry of its shape. If this were so, it would have been the original craftsman who made the first of these who would deserve credit as "artist." Instead, Duchamp signed a pseudonym on it, included it in a gallery show, and it was art, simply because the right person (Duchamp) put it in the right place (a gallery).

This attack on the arbitrary nature of art is decidedly post-modern. Duchamp questions to what extent art is art because it has some intrinsic quality, or to what extent is art art simply because someone decided that it was. In this way Duchamp is, in 1917, already doing what post-modern thought would do just after World War II, decades later.