I want to take a look at the consumer culture of ESPN, especially the marketing for Monday Night Football. The website is http://espn.go.com/ . On the right hand side of the screen, there is a video box. It will likely load a promotional video of some sort automatically. I am especially interested in the one titled “Carmen Electra is Ready, Are You?” There are some interesting applications of several ideas from our reading, but I want to focus on a couple mentioned in the Sturken and Cartwright book.
First, I think the idea of therapeutic ethos is definitely at play here. Consumption as “both a form of leisure and pleasure and as a form of therapy” (197) rings true as we see people (men) transformed out of their everyday hustling, bustling working lives into the spotlight of a professional football game. They are transformed, releasing their tensions from the day as they become the players on the field (interpellation / appellation). The act of “being ready” to watch Monday Night Football means recognizing the Lacanian “lack” of our everyday lives and filling the void by watching the broadcast (and, by extension, becoming one of the participants). The game is presented to viewers “as a fantasy of what their lives could be, and it entices consumers to believe that this life is attainable through the act of consumption” (214).
Despite the lack of evidence of the “use value” of watching a football game, the corporate sponsors (GMC in this case as well as ABC/ESPN) rely on the image they are promoting to spark consumer interest in their product(s) (both the broadcast and GMC automobiles). It is an extremely complex process, as there is not any textually explicit (“buy our vehicles”) advertising, simply the placement of images throughout the advertisement. Even in the post-show spoken advertisement, the comment to “get in the game” and the promise of winning a car take center stage, while any actual description of the product’s value is left out. GMC is just referred to in sponsorship terms. Quite simply, the fact that the GMC Sierra is visually associated with professional football and Carmen Electra (fantasy profession and the sexual appeal) seems to be enough.
I am interested in people’s thoughts about all aspects of the ad and of sports promotion in general as a product of consumer culture – mass media, sex, therapeutic ethos, interpellation/ appellation,….
-Brian
The National Football League is extraordinaly successful in marketing for all the reasons you named and more (gambling is one). I could not find the particular ad you mention either on the ESPN site (which changes constantly) or on the GMC site. But there is plenty to talk about nonethelss.
I want to introduce two other texts. The first is our own Longhorn football Web site: http://www.mackbrown-texasfootball.com/ This site struck me as odd from the beginning. First, it is named for the coach. Mack Brown has been fortunate to avoid scandal and more importantly win, but coaches do come and go. The last five, at least, were fired for losing; the last two had relatively short stays. Second, it looks a lot like the ESPN site, as does the new godzillatron scoreboard. Our coaches get paid big bucks for product placement with shoe and apparel deals. Our athletics department is the richest in the country. Yet not one nickle goes to the library or academics.
The other text is one I just now created of two football games I stumbled upon. I was driving through western Massachusetts two years ago on my way to an art museum and came upon the Williams-Tufts game. A year ago I was in Boston, where I stayed an extra day to watch the crew races on the Charles. Nearby was the Harvard-Princeton game.
Harvard's stadium, built in 1903, is the oldest stadium in the country. In the 1920s Harvard and the other Ivy League schools pulled out of big-time football. The University of Chicago was a founding member of the Big 10 and a national power but dropped football in 1939 to focus on academics.