[Marxism] Lexus coopts Philip Glass and Lucinda Childs

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

I guess that everybody is aware of how big corporations appropriate
underground or avant-garde culture to hype new products. The Ramones'
"Blitzkreig Bop" is used by Anheiser Busch and AT& T, while William S.
Burroughs once showed up in a Nike commercial. Before Tom Frank became the
resident expert on red state America, he used to write about this
phenomenon in the pages of Baffler. The articles were collected in the
aptly named "Commodify Your Dissent".

After watching a Lexus commercial on TV lately
(http://cache.ultramercial.com/d/001-232/lexus_flash.html), it became
obvious to me that the ad agency was borrowing from Philip Glass and
Lucinda Childs.

For a comparison with Glass's music, play
http://www.glasspages.org/dance3.au from his "Einstein on the Beach", which
was an minimalist performance piece choreographed by Lucinda Childs. Her
style has been described as follows: "Childs developed her own special
style which aimed neither to make shock waves, nor set trends. Her
trademark has always been a sort of choreo-mathematics, repetitive movement
sequences that are arranged in intricate geometrical patterns, that if
observed overhead would give a kaleidoscopic effect."



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