bonfire of the brands

• Ancho: 13 cm
• Alto: 20 cm
• Fecha de lanzamiento: 24/07/2007
• Plaza de edición: LONDON
• Año de edición: 2007
• ISBN: 9781841959870
• Encuadernación: Tapa blanda
• Idioma: CASTELLANO
• Editorial: REBEL INC.
• Nº de páginas: 310

Este libro ha sido escrito y pretenece a Neil Boorman

What do you do when you wake up and realise that your life has been an empty pursuit of the superficial and the trend-driven? That your identity and value systems are based upon a brand hierarchy of your own creation? On 17th September 2006, in Finsbury Square, East London, Neil Boorman burnt all his branded items. The ones that wouldn't burn, he destroyed with a sledgehammer. The event was the culmination of a long process of self-examination, and of the brand-dominated world in which we live, recorded in a popular and controversial blog online. As a product of a generation that has been sold to since birth Neil examines the social, historical, economic and psychological ways in which brands have gripped our society, as well as documenting his personal trials and tribulations as he tries to live a life without brands. How will he cope without a hit of his Crackberry? Will he feel naked without his Nike, Gucci, and, of course, Marlboro? How do you make our own toothpaste?

As a sort of 21st century follow-up to Naomi Klein’s ‘No Logo’ (which I’ve started a million times and enjoyed but for some reason never quite finished)(lazy and inevitable comparison btw, sry) ‘Bonfire of the Brands’ gives a running countdown of the lead-up to and aftermath of Neil Boorman burning and sledgehammering like 90% of his possessions — his bid to escape the constant hum of the capitalist telescreens and consequent near mental collapse. I read it pretty much in one sitting (very unusual for me) and appreciated it at the time as a compelling read, but the more I think about this book the more I realise how good it really was and I want to talk about it because it seems odd that nobody else seems to be.As someone who’s been using the same piece of crap payg for four years and who hasn’t consciously sought out a clothing capital-b Brand for over ten now, who in fact curdles away from anything obnoxiously logo’d even if I otherwise love it (sup River Island), I thought this would be a fascinating kind of soft-social-science memoir/cultural overview with ultimately little to teach me about my own habits. Especially in light of the neo-Batemanesque opening, ‘I am a half-eaten apple, a polo-playing horseman and a snow-capped mountain. When I am at work, I like to be thought of as a free-thinking creative. So I use an Apple Mac, which is what all the cool, artistic people seem to use. My polo shirt, made by Ralph Lauren, is common among council estate kids and I wear it to make me look just a little bit tough. All day I drink Evian water, not because it tastes especially nice, it’s just that the label makes me feel healthy and, well, special. I am a white, lower middle-class Londoner, an ABC1. As a brand consumer yourself, you should be able to guess all this just by looking at me.’ For the most part, for whatever reason, perhaps due to my being plus-sized out of most shops on the proverbial high street, this all is a language that largely evades me, and having worked in big box retail for a lamentable number of years I feel generally aware of (albeit far from immune to) the power of packaging and presentation. But it goes without saying that I bought this book because of the cover. It goes without saying that I, like Boorman, have found myself scrabbling around in the designated kitchen drawer, already late leaving for work, searching out ‘the right bag’ to cart my sandwiches in. It goes without saying that I find myself buying Napolina over Trattoria Verdi because the label seems more… something.But I wasn’t looking for some potted reminder that a tin of tomatoes is a tin of tomatoes is a tin of tomatoes, and thankfully that wasn’t what I got. As fantastic as the weaving of his research on advertising and the psychology of consumption absolutely was — particularly chilling to read the ‘black ball corner pocket’ predictions and prescriptions of mid-century industry analysts, particularly Maser’s 1924 call for the necessary manufacture of a new consumer mentality: ‘People must be trained to want and desire new things … man’s desire must overshadow his needs’ — it was the story of Boorman’s rapid deterioration that hooked me. Images of him scuttling around the streets of London dressed all in scratchy black, carrying his belongings in dangerously thin unmarked plastic carriers from the corner shop, clinging desperately to his beaten-up copy of ‘Ways of Seeing’, drinking tap water from pub bathrooms, have been stuck in my mind for days now. So far alienated from the culture around him that he can no longer conduct a conversation with former friends, unable to experience the social world he was once a part of as anything other than a system of codes and coded messages, repeatedly warned by his counsellor (another great narrative string) not to take this project too far, he begins to question the very nature of reality, of sanity, and of what constitutes and legitimises identity. What happens when we strip back our personal ideology, when we reject the ideological norm as handed down to us, sanctioned by all around us, when we go off-grid? Can we maintain relationships (even a sense of parsable self) when the cultural lingua franca is not just lost but, literally, burned through? In short, this is some sci-fi irl shit.At first I wasn’t a massive fan of the narrative style, the days being counted off with some arbitrary thought or topic ostensibly «du jour», but shortly it made sense as a construct, stopping the whole thing being too preachy or confusing (Boorman’s reading around this topic really is both extensive and dense, and frequently cited). Considering this book was published in 2007, I was quite disappointed that the internet as a whole new kind of capitalist problem was almost entirely glossed over. Facebook was just taking over from myspace around this time, youtube was still fairly new, twitter and tumblr were on the way, everyone was moving to gmail. Boorman got rid of his tv, his smartphone, he talked a little about pop-ups (lol), but was he still googling? I mean the book originally started out as a blog, so. I understand the probable reasons he didn’t want to Get Into It (lack of viable research sources, a whole new can of worms, some generational (in)difference) but it’s still a shame. I was also a little disappointed that Boorman didn’t fully explore the more facetious ad campaigns of recent years. Though touching upon the paradox of not believing in the «promises» of an advert while still buying into the product/brand (a prime example being Lynx), he didn’t really offer a viable explanation for this, and I think there’s a lot still to be said about the use of humour and sarcasm in selling. Why does it work for some brands and not others? What is the psychological implication of our being charmed by, essentially, cruelness? Generally I’d have liked to hear more about our personal interaction with advertising, some expansion on Boorman’s passing remarks that ‘there is no ‘them and us’ in this scenario, no shadowy organisation seeking to control our lives’, that ‘we consumers remain complicit in the business of supply and demand.’ I feel like that’s another area that hasn’t been explored enough, and I’m growing weary of hearing those who are somewhat savvy about consumer capitalist techniques (not least myself) whine about how manipulated our lives are without doing much to change things, even on an utterly personal level. No matter. This is a really great, funny, affecting memoir, and a brilliant starting point (avec extensive introductory reading list) for exploring contemporary radical theory. And/or changing how you see e v e r y t h i n g