Page 33 - Ruminations

31. Branding irony

As a means of identification, branding may have come, if not full
circle, then into an ironic caricature of its earlier use and signification.
Examining these changes requires disentangling the implications of
ownership and membership, the primary attributes of branding.
Permanent disfigurement of the flesh by cutting, burning and
tattooing began with mankind both as social animals and as owners of
domesticated ruminants and human slaves: identification simple,
brutal and permanent. In more advanced pre-modern societies able to
produce or trade for textiles and personal adornment, group
membership by visual means became the province of fashion.
Those citizens of large political entities reduced personal physical
alteration for other than aesthetic or religious reasons to a minimum
(ear piercing, circumcision, selective epilation); only livestock and
lower status humans (criminals and slaves) were involuntarily
mutilated. The latter’s membership in society was negatively defined as
pariahs by such branding.
Industrialization brought mass-produced goods to market in a
money economy. Manufacturers of packaged goods sought to protect
their products from imitation and establish return customers by
creating commercial brands: graphics and nomenclature denoting
authenticity and uniformity. Branding indicated ownership rights for
producers and consumers, as well as status or class membership for
purchasers. People figuratively brand themselves by their possessions,
recognizable by their peers.
Despite alienation from the source of branding, most of humanity
accepts and embraces corporate control of personal identity via media
manipulation of desire. In the 1960s, youth rebelling against that
ownership of membership temporarily disrupted the economy by
rejecting branded products in a bid for individual expression and
consumption.
The advertising industry responded by selling goods paradoxically
as conferring freedom; but that is not social membership. Youth
solved this by a return to cutting, burning and tattooing. Each person
thus feels he owns his brand, while corporations continue business as
usual. They don’t care if the marks they skin are marking their skin:
the real branding proceeds apace.