Coming Soon: Product-Placement Novels!

[shadowsource]

UK Author Fay "(She Devils") Weldon is just publishing a novel written for Bulgari, the jewelry company. They paid her a wad to use their name & presence 10 times, but she was so excited that she named the book after them and made the store central to her plot. They're very pleased! You can see where this new line of shite is going to go, can't you? Can't wait for the movie! And the designs! And all the other authors who'll sell anything for more sponsorships and money. How low can our culture go? Tell me. Say something funny. "I'm dying here," to quote pp....

 

[Laurel]

In "Infinite Jest", David Foster Wallace makes up a world where each year is sponsored by a product. One year is "Year of the Depend Undergarment".

That sponsorship thing is pretty tacky, but I don't think our culture is to blame. I think "artists" who sell themselves off to the highest bidder should let the blame rest on their own shoulders.

Then again, I suppose that it is their art and they have the right to do what they want with it.

 

[Thomas Paine]

I have to admit that I did not read it, but didn't "American Psycho" take a lot of heat for being loaded with product name-dropping?

 

[Pokerman]

I can see it now....
COMING IN 2002:

The Coca-Cola Case by John Grisham
"R" is for Reebok by Sue Grafton
Thinner (unabridged edition, with all the previously edited out Jenny Craig references added back in) by Stephen King

 

[KillerMuffin]

I'm sorry, Nike just paid me a wad to write a book. Gotta run.

 

[dza]

You mean like Breakfast at Tiffany's or someone??

damn what DID this world come to in like 100 BC???

 

[shadowsource]

No....

You mean like Breakfast at Tiffany's or someone??

damn what DID this world come to in like 100 BC???

No one paid Capote to write that, or call it that; Holly Golightly could have wound up barfing all over the jewels, or robbing the joint. This is different, and it's going to tilt publishing companies toward greenlighting books with sponsorships, as there will be additional marketing money. Rupert Murdoch's Harper & Row are starting it all, of course, with this one.

 

[livin_simple]

I think DZA has a point

Todays Sponsorship is Yesterday's Patronage.


So form an Artisans Guild and be free to express yourself without outside influence!!

 

[shadowsource]

But, but....

I'm bitching mainly because I just don't see good new work coming out in a way that's very accessible. There's more music, literature, movies than ever, but it just isn't very good. I was trying to address why. When DCL mentioned that there are very few dramatic PLAYS on Broadway, that's what I'm complaining about. And no one bothers to go see good little movies any more, and then the movies don't get into BlockBuster or Hollywood, and they disappear, even if critics loved them. Cool musical acts can't afford to tour the way they used to, so they're harder to see. We are drowning in cultural stuff, but the emphasis on marketing as the true "art" is reducing the quality to a level I find annoying. This is a consumer gripe.

 

[dza]

i couldn't disagree more shadow. This past season show some amazing plays on and off broadway, new stoppard, stones in pockets, Kenneth Logerman's Hotel Lobby was amazing, proof, copenhagen, the list goes on....

accessible books - try anything Jonathan Lethman writes (motherless brooklyn is my fav), Ha Jin perhaps floats you're boat. Is list could be endless btw.

true there is crap everwhere, and tons of it nowadays, but the only reason the olden days seem better, is because the crap gets filtered out. Sallust, Tactitus, any # of Roman critics bitched and moaned the same bitch 2000 years ago -- "oh the kids today" "new art sucks" "what will become of us"