Preoccupied: Regarding a Troubling Advertisement

 

Let's talk about irony. Let's talk about this ad, which confronted me the other day while I read Climbing.

In the ad, Five Ten's “Occupy Yosemite” tagline aims to associate the company with the revolutionary Occupy movement. We all know revolution and social consciousness moves product: think Che Guevara t-shirts, children of ex-hippies wearing Urban Outfitters, LiveStrong bracelets, etc.  Choosing Yosemite is significant, too, as the Valley was the proving ground for some of the most counter-cultural climbers in the history of the sport.  (How counter-cultural those climbers actually were is debatable, but people like the Stonemasters are nevertheless seen as the epitome of untainted, "authentic" climbers).

So, it's obvious that Five Ten is trying to co-opt the Occupy movement, which is just wrong.  But Five Ten's products have nothing to do with upending the inequality that Occupy is confronting.

Now, if Five Ten were its own company, the ad might be nothing more than a bit of cheek.  But now that they're part of the sportswear behemoth that is Adidas (€11.99  in revenue in 2010), the ad is the epitome of hypocrisy: a company that's part and parcel of neoliberal capitalism trying to sell product by invoking the very forces that would see it fall.  Ouch. 

To open a whole 'nother can of worms, the other problem with the ad is that Yosemite is already Occupied by a bunch of citizens of the U.S., the government of which invaded and forcibly removed the indigenous people who previously inhabited it. Many factions of the movement have problematized the word "Occupy," noting, for instance, that European settlers forcibly installed themselves on the land that's now Wall Street — the “Wall” refers to the barrier they erected to keep natives out. How would this ad come off if it read “Occupy Ship Rock” or “Occupy Devil's Tower,” two places where climbing access has disrupted indigenous rights? Of course most of our country is occupied in this sense, but the barb of irony is particularly sharp in the National Parks.

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Well, what're you gonna do?  At the end of the day, this particular ad doesn't make a difference.  It's just an indicator of the relationship between climbing, media, and advertisement.  But that doesn't mean climbing itself has lost its spirit or any other such doomsday-speak.  You're just better off looking for that spirit at an actual crag rather than in a magazine.