 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
 | |
|
|
Click here for information about the 2001 Schmio Awards. | |||||||||||
Never can say good buyA band of merry scholars, writers, performers and activists celebrate the worst of advertising, consumerism and the American way with the annual Schmio awards, an alternative to the ad industry's Clios.By JOSHUA TANZER So at the end of a hard day, it'll be Miller time — Mark Crispin Miller time, in this case. The NYU prof and author of several books on media culture is the emcee of the show, which he sees as a much-needed antidote to the proliferation of more pretentious awards banquets in and out of the advertising industry. "I think that the quantity of self-congratulatory events is awfully . . . self-congratulatory," Miller says.
The event was originally called the "counter-Clio" awards until the real Clios complained about the disrespect to their name. That's when "Amusing Ourselves to Death" author and NYU prof Neil Postman, who emceed the event from the beginning, "was sitting in his office trying to think of a new name, and he said, 'Clios, Schmios,' and that was the name," recounts Miller. Past Schmios have poked fun at the likes of Time Warner for a campaign "celebrating the sad fact that we can't get away from them," and one can only speculate (with the actual envelopes being kept under high security) that this year a similar award might be bestowed on Doubleclick.net for its plan to keep tabs on most everything you do on the Internet. But this year's panel — which includes columnist Arianna Huffington and "Church of Stop Shopping" pastor Reverend Billy — will not only skewer wrongdoers but also laud some deserving alternative-media heroes including Ralph Nader, the group Commercial Alert, and the coalition that won approval of low-power FM "microradio," sometimes known more jauntily as "pirate radio."
So where's the beef? Well, the serious idea behind the Schmios is one written about by Miller, Postman and others such as former award presenter and Village Voice columnist Leslie Savan: that advertising plays a largely unexamined role in shaping our consciousness, and what's really being sold is a false vision of life, the idea that a mascara can make us beautiful, a car can get us laid, a credit card can unlock our dreams, a drink can help us "be like Mike." There's no commercial that tells us, "Our beer makes you fat," or "You don't need a new car this year," or "Eat your broccoli." Did you ever see a commercial for not buying something? People still lack perspective about their relationship with the mass media and the consumer ethic, Miller concedes, but he sees signs that the Schmio crowd (to which one might add freewheeling activists like the Reverend Billy, Charles Kernaghan's National Labor Committee and Adbusters magazine) are starting to make people think twice. "I think that there has been over the last two years or so a very striking upswing in public unease" with the media, he says, citing the backlash against the news media during the Monica Lewinsky extravaganza, and criticism of programming and ads aimed at children. In focus-group sessions, "when you ask people, 'How do you like television?' they say, 'Oh, it's great,' " he says. "And then when you show them the ownership charts and tell them that they pay almost nothing for the airwaves, . . . it was like something clicked in their heads and they felt free to say how they really felt." | |||||||||||
| |||||||||||
|
OFFOFFOFF.COM • A GUIDE TO ALTERNATIVE NEW YORK Post a comment on "The 2000 Schmio awards" | |||||||||||
