Tuesday, October 20, 2020

The Woke-Washed and the Vote-Washed

 Neoliberal capitalism never dies, much less fades away. It just keeps right on reinventing itself and gaining strength, even as the world collapses around it.

With millions of Americans in increasingly dire straits due to the federal government's failure to provide even a modicum of renewed relief in one of the worst pandemics in human history, you'll be happy to learn that Facebook is here to help. Its billionaire CEO Mark Zuckerberg just ostentatiously forked over another $100 million to help keep the polls open next month,  ensuring the "safety and efficiency" of ballot-casting.

He also has recently financed a study which concludes that the way for corporations to help disabled, sick, overweight, elderly, gay, transgender, and racially marginalized people is to use more of them in their advertisements. The more that an oppressed population group can be used in commercials, the higher the profits will be for corporations like Facebook, which are absolutely loath to pay taxes that would help fund social programs and Covid relief for the people who need help the most.

Neoliberal "woke-washing" has, of course, gained a whole new head of steam since the police murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement. It is a novel way of keeping capitalism-spawned systemic racism and record economic inequality - and the resulting social unrest - under strict control, so that the rich can get even richer as they pretend to care. The public relations message is this: it's not a living wage, guaranteed health care, food and housing that people need. It's recognition. It's either seeing others who look like you on TV and in social media ads, or it's getting the chance to appear in one of these commercials yourself to sell stuff that makes rich people and corporations even richer.

But lest you get too far ahead of yourselves, remember that your very first acting job is to vote, to elect the politicians who will help the rich get richer. Vote-shaming marketing campaigns are fine. But the Facebook CEO is going that extra mile in directly funding the election of politicians who will do Facebook's bidding. Woke-washing and vote-washing have joined forces as the most important weapons in the Zuckerberg arsenal, to defend him both against future antitrust suits and to combat the widespread criticism of Facebook's political ads and other nefarious marketing, surveillance and propaganda operations. 

As much as acknowledging that the United States is a full-fledged oligarchy, albeit one that still requires the occasional rubber stamp of legitimacy from the unwashed masses, Zuckerberg writes:

“Voting is the foundation of democracy. It's how we express our voice and make sure our country is heading in the direction we want. Priscilla and I remain determined to ensure that every state and local election jurisdiction has the resources they need so Americans can vote.”

To help nudge the country in the direction that he wants, Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan had already sent $250 million  to Chicago's Center For Tech and Civic Life, before upping the ante by another hundred mil last week. This organization's board of directors is a bipartisan mix of private equity moguls, former campaign operatives, McKinsey consultants and neoliberal think tank leaders. Its executive director, Tiana Epps-Johnson, founded the Center and financed it with the help of a generous Obama Foundation "fellow" grant. She said she will use the $350 million donated by Zuckerberg to disburse Covid protective gear and extra hazard pay and hire temporary workers - aid which the Trump administration refuses to provide to help ensure that more voters show up and local elections can run more smoothly.

Joe Biden, vice president under philanthrocapitalist and media mogul Barack Obama, has been a vocal critic of Facebook. The keyword here, of course, is vocal. Because as much as they deign to remind us every four years that "we" have a voice, it's still their money that talks.

Okay, so now that you've mailed in your ballot, already voted in person or at least made a plan to vote, you can finally lean back and relax by going online to be pressed to Buy Stuff. Even if you are poor, you still can feel a little better watching people who look like you trying to sell you Stuff that you can't afford. And if you can't afford Stuff because you have no job, no savings and can't even make the rent, an acting gig in a new slew of Woke-Washing diversity commercials might just be in your future.

Facebook recently commissioned the Geena Davis Institute to conduct a survey whose results claim that 70 percent of respondents want to see more diversity in online advertising. (Geena Davis is a Hollywood actress who started the Institute after her own acting jobs dried up due to systemic ageism in the film industry. Among her corporate endeavors is the annual film festival in Bentonville, Arkansas, bankrolled by the hometown Walton billionaires of Walmart.)

The Institute's Facebook study revealed, among other shocking things, that "even though 19 percent of Americans have some sort of cognitive, emotional or physical disability, only 1.1 percent of (advertisement) characters did." 

I doubt that the mass despair engendered by Covid alone, and the government's criminal neglect of same. could possibly have factored in to these results, given that a CDC study recently revealed that a not-insignificant percentage of the US population is now so depressed as to be suicidal.

But be that as it may, for according to the Facebook press release just published in Adweek:

It’s everyone’s responsibility to speak up about bias and stereotypes. All brands have an opportunity to step up, not only through increased presence of underrepresented groups, but through portrayals that are more authentic and empowering.

And it also may lead to better business results. In a Facebook analysis, we found that campaigns with more diverse representation had a 90% likelihood to be more effective at driving ad recall compared to campaigns with single traditional representation.

Thanks to Facebook's largesse, the Geena Davis Institute study coordinator is able to conclude:

I’ve observed that not only is eliminating harmful bias in advertising the right and responsible thing to do, it can lead to better results. I’ve even seen studies showing that creative with more diverse representation can boost stock price. As a general rule, I believe what’s good for our society is good for brands!

She got it a little backwards. Because the first tenet of neoliberalism is that when something is good for brands, only then can it be deemed to benefit "society." Societal good is a marginalized person being displayed and noticed for the ultimate profit of the user. A marginalized person is mainly being valued as a commodity and a marketing tool.

Just as Madison Avenue once used only young sexy women to sell everything from cars to mouthwash, so too can the ad industry now use marginalized or "exotic" people to sell any number of products. The Institute tells Facebook exactly what the ethics-challenged Zuckerberg paid them to suggest:

 Get specific in your briefs, scripts and casting documents—include gender, race and sexual orientation. Consider using an intersectional lens even if (and especially when) it’s not related to the brand or the message of the campaign. (my bold.)

Intersectionality pays! If a transgender person is selling a Chevy, be sure to mention their identity bona fides along with the misleading mileage stats so that the audience may feel more smugly tolerant as they shop for the latest gas-guzzler.

Advertisers can even combine woke-washing and vote-washing with good old fashioned green-washing.  For example, if a physically challenged actor is shilling for Exxon-Mobil, the theme of the script can be that even disabled people have the god-given right to be an Energy Voter and breathe in the sublime air of freshly fracked gas. The subliminal message to viewers? You cannot possibly champion disabled people and support the Green New Deal at the same time. You should wash all that angry knowledge about the oil industry's criminal role in climate change right out of your brain.

The possibilities for malign oligarchic intersectionality are as stratospheric as Mark Zuckerberg's vast tax-proof wealth, and as deep as the poisoned oceans, and as unrestrained as the greedy reach of capitalism itself.

6 comments:

  1. Valerie Long TweedieOctober 20, 2020 at 7:40 PM

    I agree with everything you wrote, Karen. The disenfranchised and working poor have been suckered into believing that hope is around the corner. They are being thrown crumbs. I often look at America and think about Third World Countries where demagogues convince the population that their lives will improve and they won't always stay the underclass if only they put the demagogue in power - who immediately becomes a dictator and turns on them.

    Like many on the Left, I lay so much of the blame at the feet of the Democratic Party. By selling out the working and lower middle classes, they have left them with nowhere to turn for political representation. No one seems to acknowledge their pain and their dilemma. They just want a little home, in a halfway decent neighborhood with decent schools for their kids, a job that allows them to pay their bills and some security when they retire - oh yeah, and decent medical care if they get sick. They are not asking for a free ride - They want to work. But the rug just keeps being pulled out from under them. These people are not critical thinkers - because we are not allowed to teach critical thinking around politics and history and economics in the schools - so they are swept up by someone who at least recognizes their problems and acknowledges the unfairness of their situation. If the DNC doesn't change and realise that their base isn't Wallstreet or the Multinationals - they will only lay more groundwork for demagogues of the future.

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  2. Do these new woke ads get wide distribution or are they sent to the laser precision targeted market segments that have been developed through the facebook metadata collection? I mean are they sending the same message to Trump supporters who hate women, people of color, LBGTQ, poor, disabled and other oppressed segments or are they only sending them to the people that they know will respond favorably to such messaging? They can do this, you know.

    Meanwhile, Geena Davis, my gosh. I have come to the point of being allergic to celebrities. I keep them out of my life as much as possible and it's working out pretty good. The rash is going away.

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  3. I am reading a collection of essays in Eula Biss's "Having and Being Had." She writes about Walmart paying her and her husband $8,000 to use their house to shoot a Walmart ad (note, the author and her husband are not African American):

    "We don't own anything from Walmart but that doesn't matter because Walmart furniture is moved into the house, Walmart curtains are put up, and some Walmart prints are hung on the walls in Walmart frames. A white set designer and a white director work to create an authentic African American interior. The commercial, they tell us, is going to feature an African American grandmother serving a holiday turkey.

    Next door, in the house just like ours, lives an actual African American grandmother, the wife of a retired postal worker. We're getting paid to have our house made over to look like what a set designer imagines their house looks like so that Walmart can try to sell things to people who look like them."

    Bob, in self-isolation in Wyoming
    (where the number of active COVID-19 cases has doubled in my county in the past 10 days)

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  4. This year, contrary to my arguments of previous election years against voting for the-lesser-of-two-evils, I am voting TLOTE. Why? Because the current administration is run by insane heartless criminals. Never has a US administration carried on in an insane heartless criminal manner without interruption for four years. Heaven help us if it is to be eight years. The Trump crowd is not venal and dishonest; it is insane, criminal and heartless.

    I need not count the ways all over again since January 20, 2017. Because the NYT just sent out another of their “Breaking News” items, which is the only thing I need to prove that “insane, criminal and heartless” is no exaggeration. Here’s the headline intended to provoke loathing of this administration:

    “The parents of 545 migrant children separated at the border by the Trump Administration still haven’t been found, court documents show.”
    https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/us/migrant-children-separated.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20201021&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=headline&regi_id=48169905&segment_id=41766&user_id=080735a79f9c39779f392d51a8dab7d6

    That is outrageous.

    Hey, Zuckerberg, get on the transectional bandwagon. Advertise these lost kids while selling diapers pinned on them. And can you also set aside a couple of your stand-tall computers (you have banks of thousands) to reconnect these parents and kids?

    Even if the government or some do-good outfit pays for DNA tests and scouts-in-the-field as practical steps to reunite child (some of whom didn’t even know their family name when separated) with parent or parent with child successfully, those kids are traumatized forever. Maybe the separated parents are dead or fear making waves that will only make the situation worse, which is not unreasonable, given the Trump Administration’s record.

    Someone with a background in child psychology could probably spell it out more clearly in cool professional jargon. The word ‘outrageous’ is all I can manage.

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  5. @Jay-Ottawa

    I can manage two words: "The Hague"

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  6. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/10/26/facebook-google-twitter-trump-244191

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