Clinamen

In Internet Invention, Greg Ulmer notes the a significant difference between how art and advertising solve problems. Art opens up questions and asks the viewer/reader to think through possibilities. Advertising solves the problem for you:

"The effect of advertising is exemplary of the effect of myth in the spectacle in general: to introduce the actual problems of life, but then to invoke the psychic defense mechanism of fetishism and conduction, by displacing the threatening, anxiety-producing possibilities of the problem toward a sense of well-being, reassurance, safety" (258).

Ulmer asks us to study an advertisement and explore the “alternate paths available that avoid or confront the real social or psychological difficulties touched on by the ad” (261).

The following advertisement would seem to address the “problem” of pollution and energy conservation by offering a hybrid vehicle. However, the real problem it addresses is the smugness of hybrid owners:

Hybrid SUV Commercial
Uploaded by maxsilvestri

The clip attempts to show us how to be a certain kind of image – we can own a hybrid without “talking about it.” Owning a hybrid should not be about showing everyone how responsible you are, it should be about doing the right thing. This ad gives you a specific strategy for dealing with your new found responsibility of driving a hybrid: do the right thing, don’t talk about it. However, what's the real solution here? Is it to remove the smugness? Not really. Instead, it redirects the smugness. Instead of bragging about his hybrid, the father says to his daughter: "I never thought I needed to talk about it." He's smug with his daughter. This ad answers smugness with smugness.

South Park’s “Smug Alert!” Episode (see synopsis at Wikipedia) offers a different approach to this problem:

South Park - 1002: Smug Alert

There is plenty to talk about in this half-hour episode, but let’s focus on the ending. As with most South Park episodes, the kids provide a lesson for the adults. The adults decide that they should not drive hybrids because they cause smugness, and Kyle explains that the problem isn't the cars but instead the people driving them. The parents contend that they just can't do it - they can't drive hybrids without being smug: "the technology just isn't there yet."

The parents seem to fit squarely in the advertising side of things while the kids (as always, in the case of South Park, smarter than the parents) see a more nuanced version of things. The kids think maybe there's a more complicated answer to the question of hybrids - maybe that more complicated answer involves dropping the smugness and keeping the hybrids. This doesn't fit with the mode of advertising that Ulmer describes, a mode that "displac[es] the threatening, anxiety-producing possibilities of the problem toward a sense of well-being, reassurance, safety" (258).

I mean, what's the point of driving a hybrid if you can't be smug about it?