Subject: Viridian Note 00018: the Viridian Model Family Key concepts: propaganda, self-referentiality, model family Attention Conservation Notice: Propaganda theory, and pretty good theory, too. Lacks specifics. Links: http://www.bespoke.org/viridian/ Entries in the "Big Mike" Viridian Design Contest: http://www.pinknoiz.com/graphics/bigmike.gif http://www.spaceways.de/BigMike/Mike.html http://weber.u.washington.edu/~r1ddl3r/bigmike.html http://powerbase-alpha.com/bigmike http://rampages.onramp.net/~jzero/ http://www.well.com/conf/mirrorshades http://www.57thstreet.com/viridian/ http://www.ioc.net/~bini/bigmike.htm From: steffen@eskimo.com^^^** (Alex Steffen) Bruce: Big Mike is cool. I'm personally eager to have a microbe mascot gracing the many consumer products of which I have need. However, to be serious about propaganda, we need an Everyman-Hero figure, and, especially, a Model Family. I once did a college paper analyzing common propaganda motifs regarding lifestyle and culture. The "model family" is a major propaganda motif because it works. People are absolutely dying to be told what their lives ought to be like. This comment is not meant to asset my own moral or intellectual superiority. It's human nature. We learn by modeling the behavior of others, not just in childhood, but throughout our lives. In the absence of strong models in our direct experience, media supplies them. There's an interesting intensification of this process going on in contemporary culture, for three reasons. First, we have many more fundamental choices than our recent ancestors, in the cultural, career and consumer worlds. It's harder to make up our minds. Second, our systems of aesthetic judgement and moral instruction have broken down. Who sets the standards for artistic beauty? In 1900 you probably could have named ten people in charge of the job. Third, there is intense propaganda competition between companies providing lifestyle accoutrements. They compete so intensely to advertise their way into our worldview that the concept of a noncommercialized human life has disappeared completely. In short, people are starved for a vision of the good life. Viridianism could give this to them, flat out. However, we live in an age of irony. A frontal, 20th- century-style propaganda assault (like those used by the Nazis, Stalin and Henry Ford) won't work. We can't simply proclaim products to be cool. People have to be let in on the joke, allowed to realize that they are participating in a social mores change movement. What's cool about Viridian luxury is not just that it's more beautiful, fun and classy than the way that mere proles live. Not is it about the heady rush of self-love you get by being a good eco-citizen Earthling. Viridianism about understanding sustainable design, fashion trends, and propaganda as a participant as well as a consumer. You become both subject and observer, in a healthily ironic and self-referential way. So the Viridian Model Family, unlike the model family of the New Deal agricultural agitprop films, is not merely the symbolic vanguard of a better way of life. They understand how odd and amusing this concept must be. They crack jokes to the camera as we learn how to live our self-aware, hedonistic eco-lifestyle. We respond in real time and craft the script as we go. Alex Steffen (steffen@eskimo.com) (((bruces remarks: Point taken. So who are these people, and what do they look like? How do they feel, and what do they mean?)))