Keep Your Bloody Hands Off Benetton
In praise of the yuppie sweater company's sensationalistic ad campaign
By BRAD WIENERS
Whenever the word "Benetton" comes up in conversation, someone always reacts as if they had just discovered an Ebola virus perched on their canape. "Benetton?" they groan. "What a disgusting ad campaign. Sure, it's stunning work, but I just wish it wasn't Benetton. I think it's obscene of them to use AIDS or war dead to sell sweaters."
Here is where I get steamed. I mean, name me one mass media organization that reaches the millions the global yuppie clothing company does that isn't sponsored by corporations seeking brand name recognition. Do the math: there are far more corporate logo moments in a PBS broadcast than there are in Benetton's Colors magazine. As for the commercial networks, they develop special logos and theme music to hype their coverage of atrocities -- e.g., CNN's Gulf War emblem or Court TV's drama-soaked Simpson trial coverage.
Yes, Oliviero Toscani, Benetton's photographer and creative director, may be an arrogant careerist who seized a plum opportunity. And yes, in return, Toscani's raw, flashy photojournalism secures fame for Benetton.
So what? Toscani's work subverts the comfortable advertising ethos. And it's done more to raise consciousness about certain issues than public interest journalism. Example: His photographs of the army fatigues of a youth who lost his life in Bosnia, fatigues sent him by the youth's bereaved father. What other advertiser would pay to have their logo associated with a kid's violent death? After all, you can't buy things when you're dead -- and bloody garments hardly constitute a consumer fantasy. We're not likely to see advertisements for luxury sedans that show a corpse covered by a sheet near the scene of an auto accident with the caption "Be your own road."
The Benetton campaign has broken new political ground. Toscani produced one of the first commercial images of a black African to ever appear in apartheid South Africa. In Paris, Toscani and Benetton sponsored an ACT UP demonstration in the Place de la Concorde where a huge condom was unrolled on the square's phallic obelisk.
And it's not as if the company isn't trying to make a difference. The current issue of Colors has an index of wars being fought around the world and an extensive directory of relief organizations and embassy addresses. An earlier issue delivered explicit information on AIDS and how to prevent infection, all in a format and location appealing and accessible to teenage mall rats.
And the promotional campaign for that issue was one of the most brilliant acts of culture jamming on record: It featured posters, wheat-pasted at street level in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York, of Ronald Reagan with KS lesions, an AIDS-related complication. In Colors, a satiric obituary praised Reagan's leadership in the fight against AIDS. No one would blink, bitch or throw a brick through a Benetton storefront, as someone did in L.A., if Toscani had spent the same cash on a glossy mail-order catalog.
Critics complain that if Toscani really cared about the people he photographs, he'd ask Benetton to spend money on causes instead of his ads. It's a fair point, but it applies to the press, too: the New York Times or the Associated Press send journalists to famine-plagued regions, not rations.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not reconciled to the fact that news agencies have to rely on advertising to sponsor their foreign correspondents and investigative reportage. But until the media world becomes pure of the taint of sponsorship -- I'm not holding my breath -- the Benetton campaign is just fine in my book.
Brad Wieners has written for the Village Voice, Wired, Details, and TimeOut Net.