DON'T trust the girls.net

Silly me.

I have realised now that what businesses do, is disguise themselves as if they were ordinary, even rebellious people. They disguise adverts as subversive messages. Sneaky little devils.

The website I put in my post yesterday is a sophisticated ad for a mainstream magazine. And I thought it was some funky girls with a website. (I did notread it closely enough.)

When I pointed out in that same post was that fly posters had somehow managed to put their texts behind bars, I did not realise how close I was to the truth at that point. The poster with 'Trust the Girls' was a taster for the website. An ad made to SEEM rebellious, of the street, urban grassroots etc. It was in fact a kind of railer for a run of the mill mag however.

So that is quite an interesting little cultural/spatial map to trace I think....

By placing the ad with graffiti and making it masquerade as rebellion, it creates a feisty image for the magazine which is actually part of the whole capitalist thing which a lot of the other graffiti is protesting about. By placing the ad in proximity with rebellious stuff, it seemed part of it.



Moreover the ad was also pasted up in a rough way, done on the cheap. BUT it was behind bars. My interpretation of this was that it made it seem like a poster almost brutalised and imprisoned. It looked like the message was locked in, but maybe the bars were to keep prying hands OUT.

I don't find this evil or pernicious. I find it fascinating, sophisticated, and a thing to be on the look out for. It is something to be aware of.
This is the kind iof text we need to teach about and to be aware that positioning, context etc can be very misleading.

Keep your wits about you kiddos.