Meta

When did we all go meta? As a culture, we’re all worrying about the presentation of the thing rather than the thing itself. I don’t know if this is new; I’m too young. But it seems very strange to me.

Maybe I just know of bunch of examples recently, and only the cocktail had me feeling its effects, so maybe I overrate the strength of this phenomenon. But, here are the examples that provoked my interest: Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, some reality TV show, and retail anthropology. Each of these examples is from completely different realms of our culture, so I think they illustrate the ubiquity of this phenomenon.

Take the Bhutto assassination first. Of the newscasts I saw of the event—I saw quite a bit but I’m not some sort of genius about this—the first reaction was, “What does this mean for US policy?”, which is a substantive, understandable question to ask, but then, the second was, “What does this mean for the US presidential race?” with the focus being on who would benefit most. One particular incident within the story shows what I mean best: naturally, each of the candidates had to put out their reactions to the assassination, and media advisor David Axelrod handled Obama’s. Axelrod’s argument was basically that the war on Iraq distracted from Pakistan policy, and so Clinton was in some ways responsible for the failure of Pakistan policy that led to Bhutto’s death (massive paraphrase here). The immediate reaction of the assorted pundits was to proclaim that it hadn’t “resonated” and that Zbigniew Brzezinki should have delivered the argument.

So note what’s happening here. The focus here was not on the argument, but on how the argument played, and moreover, who would’ve best pitched said argument. It was a discussion over the theatrics of the reaction to a very important event. It was not a discussion over the event itself, or even whether Axelrod’s interpretation of the event was a worthy or valid one. Instead, it was what people were likely to think about the event. And there’s no necessary link with how an argument is perceived and how true the argument is (throw in clichéd Galileo example, right here; for a more modern flavor, George W. Bush’s existence as important human being). The two important things, Bhutto’s death and the correct interpretation of its meaning, were lost for where the actor should have stood to deliver his oration.

Again, arguments about an actor’s placement on the stage underlay the second example, which is the reality show advertisement. Don’t rely on me to reproduce the title, but I can reproduce the pitch: help millionaires find love! Which should be a winner of a show, seeing as it combines America’s two favorite themes: money, and fucking (uh, I mean love—the matchmaker says to one of the male millionaires, “You should know that one of my rules is no sex”, which prompts a crushed shock on the part of the millionaires). What the matchmaker appears to do is not only select the woman that’s appropriate for the millionaire—with some criteria as, intelligent, but also, not a gold digger—but also present the millionaires in an attractive package. The most hilarious example was the matchmaker trying to get a pudgy, bearded, stumpy millionaire to dress in one of those leather-jacket and deafeningly loud shirt combinations, but the most revealing moment was when she, the matchmaker, found a stripper pole in her male client’s house, and basically got him to move it because it looked awful. It did, obviously, but there was no point about the type of dude who gets a stripper pole installed in his home is probably facing some real, non-cosmetic issues blocking his way to love (which is the stated aim of the show) other than the mere presence of a stripper pole. Of course, this is merely me surmising on the last point, but since it fit into the broader pattern of the show, I don’t think it’s that unreasonable a leap.

Cosmetics, appearances control retail. Anyone who’s walked by any Abercrombie and Fitch anywhere has immediately suffered ear damage from the pulsating music playing within. Obviously this is part of the image of Abercrombie. But so many more details other than that have been thought about and controlled: the placement of the mannequins, where the jeans are placed (in the back, because people come to buy jeans, so that that way, you walk to the back and are tempted by all the other goods in the store), and so on and so forth. These moves are less about the product itself than how we present the product.

Certainly the presentation of a product, or anything for that matter, is important. I won’t show up to a job interview anytime soon in ripped jeans and a dirty shirt. Or, in the case of, say, stores, the presentation of making your product accessible and good-looking is similarly worthwhile. But it seems that, too often, the energy devoted to the presentation starves the content of the product; certainly, years from now, I won’t care about how effective Axelrod’s presentation was, and will care about what our foreign policy ended up being.

But I think we’re convinced of our self-worth already. There’s a good reason “Be Yourself” is the most common, most clichéd advice people give to guys struggling to land dates. It’s meant to be reassuring, sure, but it’s also meant to indicate that you’re a wonderful human being already! If you just change the packaging a little bit, you too (with your essence unchanged) will enjoy your rewards. What’s so wrong about this idea are the small truths it contains.

We are affected by these tactics subconsciously: going meta, worrying about the presentation, is a clandestine attack. So it can be worthwhile to worry about how we come across and what would be the best way to win friends and influence people. But, as with so many things in life, it’s a question of degree. We plan, we strategize, we live in our conscious. Because of that, the rational forms a big part of our life, and so we must be prepared to make our arguments to the rational, rather than the irrational, parts of our selves. Otherwise we’ll all be rehearsing how to stand on stage, and not what we mean to say.