An Anecdote from Melissa - The day I became Naomi Klein

In the summer of 2004 I was at a social justice retreat at Camp Arowhon in Algonquin Park. We were playing an ice-breaker game on the first day where people were all given labels on their backs of the names of people, normally people use celebrities, but in this case it was social justice advocates, environmentalist, lefties, grassroots leaders, revolutionaries etc.

So there I was in a large group of about 100+ people mingling while asking yes or no questions to gain some clues about the person’s name that was affixed to my back. And people were asking me questions about who they were supposed to be. There was David Suzuki, Ghandi, Maude Barlow, Augusto Boal, Martin Luther King Jr. and so forth. I seemed to know everyone in the room. After asking multitudes of obvious questions about my person, such as, “is this person a man?” or “am I dead?” or “is this person on tv?”, I was still drawing a complete blank.

About 45 minutes later everyone but me had guessed who they were supposed to be. Being kind social justice people, many people wanted to help me solve the mystery. I had a cluster around me trying to give me hints. One whispered “She’s a writer”. I heard from someone else, “She wrote No Logo” . And someone else said, “Her husband is Avi Lewis”. Nothing. Nada. I had no idea.

Desperately, I was shrugging my shoulders and feeling a little sweaty. My eyes were darting around anxiously looking for an exit, a bathroom perhaps. I felt that I was not making a great impression on these people and I was hoping to network with many of them over the course of the retreat . At the time, I couldn’t remember ever feeling so stupid. The answer seemed so obvious to everyone else. I finally admitted to everyone I didn’t know who I was representing. A group in unison groaned the answer, “Naomi Klein”. They sounded just as frustrated with me as I am of them. I could of sworn that I thought I saw someone roll their eyes (I think that’s when I learned that do-gooders can be such snobs sometimes).

So, yea… the game doesn’t exactly work if you didn’t know who the person was, but from that moment on I thought that Klein was definitely someone I should know, especially since I was in my “social justice advocate” phase or what my friends call my green period. I’m glad we were able to read No Logo in the course as I never did get to read her. As soon as I got home from that social justice retreat I went to the library to check No Logo out. Sadly, it was taken and there was an 8 month waiting list! I kind of got busy with life and forgot to read the book. After that small and humbling experience that summer, I will NEVER forget who Naomi Klein is, that she wrote No Logo, and that she is an important contemporary writer who has many fans amoung the social justice circles.

Melissa's Moral Meter Logo

So that's my logo. Hope Dane likes it. I noticed that he uses a lot of black and white line drawing images along-side bright punches of colour. I wanted a logo to reflect that. The Meter text has a computer-ish vibe to connote the "analytical and scientific" aspect of measuring. "Moral" is chunky and eye-catching, but the "O" is a different font (magneto) because I wanted it to look like a head with hair in order to give him a slick personalty since he is so bold as to expose himself.

I wanted to try to put a meter aspect to the logo by adding tics to make it look like a vector graph, but it was just to visually busy. So instead I centered the man in the middle of a 3D empty space because I wanted to represent a universe where he could be potentially position anywhere once the moral meter was performed. The image of the man is split in two for the same reason, that he could go either way morally. Having the "M" for meter represent sexuality of the man provides a moralishness as sexuality and its expression is a common subject in moral debates, although it's not the only one.

Sarah's Moral Metre Logo

Alicja's Moral Meter Logo!

Melissa's Remix

Remixing was a lot of fun...Some of you may or may not be familiar with the brand, but it can be found in most health food stores in the city.

Some of my challenges were:

1) that the product-line of Seventh Generation is not as well known as the mainstream brands, so I had to rely on text to convey much of the content

2) Seventh Generation is one of the few companies out that seem take social responsibility seriously. I felt a little traitorous revealing their darker side with major help from our reading. At first glance, they appear to be authentic transmitters of a necessary and needed messages. Yet, the spectacle still exists. And what a spectacular spectacle! IF they are not simulating the need for their product, they are busy comodifying the "revolutionary" identity right or even commodifying indigenous culture by means of hard-core appropriation. To top it off, they actually use grassroots, subversive, and SI-esque media tools, such as blogs, videos, and theater activism to name a few, to even though they are a national brand selling at Target locations since 2004 (and probably soon to be walmart). And of course they promote their products as the only alternative for the the necessity of survival, such rhetoric Sadie Plant warns us about. And we all know that Baudrillard says once the message is taken up by the media, the true message is watered down and/or eviscerated.

3) Some products are not as great as they could be in an ecological way, although work their PR people/mini consciousness industry diligently try to deliberatively sway consumers. This is why I used the tagline: Think about the true ecological costs. It's one thing to go into a store and pay more for an eco product and think that you are a guilt-free ecowarrior. What about using vinegar and elbow grease in your toilet instead?? Also, they sell disposable paper products and diapers. How about use a reusable rag or diapers? It seems that despite best attempts to convince people otherwise, Seven Gen values CONSUMPTION over CONSERVATION and SUSTAINABILITY. Many of their plastic bottles are not made from recycled materials. They do not use the most social responsible shipping methods due to locations of distribution centres (they say they are working to improve it though and have recently added more rail lines). Also, they even settled a dodgey lawsuit out of court over whether there diapers were actually chlorine-free or not.

In the end, they got some great messages and products -at least far better than 99% of everyone else, but there is still insidiousness afoot. Although it seemed a like a last and desperate hope for my quest in actually finding a authentic consumer product within this capitalistic system, I can now go home to my natural mint smelling house at the end of the day and feel nothing but meaninglessness.