Jon writes:
>A few people have said how they like to see bands
>advertised or don't mind the lost pet signage, but
>when it comes to advertising for jobs or weightloss -
>yuck, I want no part of that. Could it be that band
>ads and to an extent, lost pet signage, are of more
>interest to a working/middle class person. They have
>the leisure and income to support the arts and own
>pets.
Well, perhaps this running-dog oppressor of the poor can't recognize his own
motivations, but no, that's not my paradigm.
Handmade garage-sale and lost pet signs are clearly from people in our
neighborhood; industrial, mass-produced Lose Weight Now and Diet Pill signs
clearly aren't. These folks can afford to advertise - they own 800 numbers,
can produce thousands of signs, and pay others to put them up. They're just
trying to get a free ride by disobeying the law that limits visual
pollution.
And the argument that these signs target the poor is, in my humble opinion,
silly. You have to have money to afford Diet Pills (exercise and watching
what you eat is free), and many of the Make Money Fast ads are for people
with computers - and we all know how classist those things are!
If I'm making a distinction, it's between the local & the grassroots, versus
an obvious mass-produced non-local phenomenon.
>I think this breakdown of appropriate and
>inappropriate snipage is a breakdown between
>acknowledging the poor, and not acknowledging the
>poor. We of the self-appointed middle (or the trendy
>acknowledgement of being working class (for the kids))
>do not even want to consider that our neighbors are so
>un-savvy that they have no better way to get a job or
>diet-plan than to get it off a pole.
The only motivation we can truly know is our own - ascribing motivations to
others is highly speculative and therefore usually wrong. Plus, the
motivations we ascribe to others probably reflect our own biases more than
anything.
Personally, I'd argue that it's wrong-headed and condescending to champion
ads for likely scams (lose weight with a pill instead of diet and exercise,
make big money stuffing envelopes) as empowering the poor. These ads are
mostly about exploitation. Empowering the exploiters is no way to help
anyone, least of all the most vulnerable in our society.
David Brauer
King Field - Ward 10
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