“Rose-coloured resurrection” The ”musemification” of athletes
by Tanner Morris
This section in summary touches on the effect modern civilization has on the uncovering our display of older objects that do not hold significance with us in particular. The excerpt that I believe to have the most correlations to my project on sports graphics is when Baudrillard notes the affect of museumification. “ just as with ethnology playing at surrendering its object the better to establish itself in its pure form, so museumification is only one more turn in the spiral of artificiality”(pg.23). To apply this philosophy to the marketing world of sports graphics, substitute “ethnology” in the quote for “global athletic brands” and “surrendering its object” for “surrendering its athlete”. Museumification which is basically the act of putting something on display for an ulterior motive coincides with the act of marketing something/someone for profit. Baudrillard states that this process of taking something out of its original context kills it for its true meaning and its intent of preservation. When a big time corporation like Nike picks up an athlete like they did with Michael Jordan and advertises one of his specific talents for profit, it inadvertently kills the image of the person as a whole. Not necessarily a bad thing in this case but highlights another instance in which people claim something or someone to advance the image of their self.
the action of marketing an object immediately gives the object a new meaning and new tag. It is interesting how you use Jordan shoes as an example. Sometimes we get too familiar with the newer meaning of a thing and gradually forgetting the origin. This helps me understand better way Baudrillard says "the meaning of historical assets is not important to us", because we redefine the meaning of things at anytime we want. Anything we say can be true, just need to promote it.
ReplyDeleteIt almost makes me think of the museum effect, I really like that example. I can think of other ways that we market people all the time. It takes away the individual image and transforms it to back their company image.
ReplyDeleteYou really have a great example. And the company does not only kill the image of the person but also turns him into a commodity, in my opinion.
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