Thursday, April 3, 2008

Back to Business, Literally

"It's like we weren't made for this world, though I wouldn't really want to meet someone who was."
--Of Montreal

It's due time for me to write, and I'd hoped to come at you with some fist-pumping positivity. But all I can think of is how absurd life seems sometimes. Maybe I've just read one too many August Strindberg plays, but still. As far as absurdity relates to my life in general, don't even get me started. But as far as it relates to being asexual, it's true indeed. Sometimes I feel like I've been dropped into some kind of "asexual like me" experiment, where I will one day wake up again with straight privilege and something great to write about. Sometimes I feel like I invest more than I can give in our movement, and the only way to get a break is to do something like go to law school, where, apparently, I wouldn't be able to have any other interests. All this sounds pretty glum, but I was able to find some comfort in a strange place. (And this is where I use the one thing that 4 years of liberal arts education gave me-- the ability to link together unrelated things.) I was studying for my midterm in publicity, and came across this quote:

"Brands can't be all things to all people. Effective marketing is the art of sacrifice..."
(Positioning Puts Branding in its Place, Hiebing)


I find business principles comforting because they're so straightforward. Business has no ulterior motives; its only goal is to make money, and its success is easy to gauge. If we As try to win over the whole world, we may never be successful. But I think that the young, adventurous and disgruntled will always catch our drift. It can be really hard to sacrifice any particular group as a potential audience, but sometimes it must be done. Just like The Art of War and Meditations have been appropriated as business classics, I think Judith Butler's "Question everything" attitude is just as inspirational as Sun Tzu or Marcus Aurelius. She even gets down with branding:

"The power of language to work on bodies is both the cause of sexual oppression and the way beyond that oppression...Language assumes and alters its power to act upon the real through locutionary [click for definition] acts, which, repeated, become entrenched practices and ultimately, institutions." (Gender Trouble 148, emphasis mine)

And I said I wouldn't give you any fist-pumping content...Hee hee...

On a completely (seriously now) unrelated note, I'd like to share some good news with you:
The Sex and the City movie is coming out May 30th! THIS May 30th! I only found that out by reading Vanity Fair over someone's shoulder on the bus (I know, I know). But, could I possibly be any more excited about this? NO. Totally fangirlish squee time: Eeeeeeee!




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But that's a good thing! The young, adventurous, and disgruntled eventually become the old, controlling, and comfortable, and if we get to them in the first place, well, I'd say we'd be doing pretty well.
Strangely enough, most of this was fist-pumping for me... especially the "4 years of liberal arts education gave me-the ability to link together unrelated things" part. Good to know I'll have something to show for it...

Ily said...

VK, I agree, that's a good thing...and I really like your way of looking at it. As for liberal arts, if only I could find someone to pay me the big bucks for that... :-)