Branding the Iconic Ideals of Vivienne Westwood, Barack Obama, and Pope Francis
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PUNK, OBAMACARE, AND A JESUIT: BRANDING THE ICONIC IDEALS OF VIVIENNE WESTWOOD, BARACK OBAMA, AND POPE FRANCIS AIDAN MOIR A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN COMMUNICATION & CULTURE YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO April 2021 © Aidan Moir, 2021 Abstract Practices of branding, promotion, and persona have become dominant influences structuring identity formation in popular culture. Creating an iconic brand identity is now an essential practice required for politicians, celebrities, global leaders, and other public figures to establish their image within a competitive media landscape shaped by consumer society. This dissertation analyzes the construction and circulation of Vivienne Westwood, Barack Obama, and Pope Francis as iconic brand identities in contemporary media and consumer culture. The content analysis and close textual analysis of select media coverage and other relevant material on key moments, events, and cultural texts associated with each figure deconstructs the media representation of Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis. The brand identities of Westwood, Pope Francis, and Obama ultimately exhibit a unique form of iconic symbolic power, and exploring the complex dynamics shaping their public image demonstrates how they have achieved and maintained positions of authority. Although Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis initially were each positioned as outsiders to the institutions of fashion, politics, and religion that they now represent, the media played a key role in mainstreaming their image for public consumption. Their iconic brand identities symbolize the influence of consumption in shaping how issues of public good circulate within public discourse, particularly in regard to the economy, health care, social inequality, and the environment. Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis are also texts used to promote the institutions they represent, and it is this aspect of their public image that illuminates the inherent contradictions between individual and institution underlying their brand identities. Interrogating the iconic identities of Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis reveals how it is the labour and strategy behind the brand that creates meaning in consumer culture. Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis are important figures for analysis because their iconic brand identities transcend the foundations of fashion, politics, and religion, and more significantly, demonstrate how branding as a promotional strategy is not unique to any particular realm or institution but a technique utilized by public figures regardless of the celebrity or elite status associated with their position. ii Acknowledgements A major thank you goes to my extraordinary supervisor, Dr. Anne MacLennan, for all of your mentorship, patience, and the many opportunities you have provided for me since I was first in your class. Thank you for encouraging me to envision and achieve things for myself that I never thought possible. Thank you to my committee members, Dr. Jan Hadlaw and Dr. Steve Bailey, for the insightful advice and support that you have offered throughout my time in Communication & Culture. Thank you to the chair and internal examining members of my dissertation defence, Dr. Markus Reisenleitner and Dr. Kenneth Rogers, for the constructive discussion. Thank you as well to my external examiner Dr. Kyle Asquith for your encouragement and supportive feedback. Thank you to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the St. George’s Society of Toronto, and the Ontario Ministry for Colleges and Universities for their funding to complete this dissertation. There are so many people to thank who have contributed to this experience. In particular, thank you to Dr. Ameera Ali and Daniela Sanzone for all your reassurance and kind words. Thank you to Dr. Steve Jankowski for the helpful weekly discussions in preparing for both of our defences. Thank you as well to Dr. Daniel Sacco for the support and encouragement in the weeks leading up to my defence. Thank you especially to Katie O’Connor, for always being my cheerleader. Thank you to my family – my aunt Annie and my sister Bridget – for everything you’ve done for me, particularly during these last few years. Thank you to my father, Michael, for encouraging me to go to York in the first place. Thank you to my beloved little princess, Elbie. Most of all, thank you to my mother, Nancy. I would not have been able to do any of this without you. iii Table of Contents Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………ii Acknowledgments………………………………………………………………………………..iv Table of Contents…………………………………………..……………………………………...v Chapter One: Introduction……………………………………..………………………………….1 Chapter Two: Icons, Brands, and the Public: Literature on the Cultural Construction of Personas.…………………………………………………..……………………………………..24 Chapter Three: Methodology…………………………………………...………………………..75 Chapter Four: Mainstreaming Outsiders through the Agency of Persona….………………………………………………………………………………………..86 Chapter Five: Discourses of Consumption in Branding Public Good ……………………………………………………………………………………………..……153 Chapter Six: Brand, Identity, and the Conflict Between Individual and Institution.………………………………………………………………………………………229 Chapter Seven: Conclusion: The Persistence of Brand Identities………………………………………………………………………...………………306 Bibliography………..…………………………………………….…………………………….320 iv Chapter One: Introduction Iconic images matter […] They matter because they offer a shared terrain of meaning that remains enormously important. They matter because they are a key site for political engagement. Perhaps, we could even say, their importance to the practice of alternative politics is even more crucial today. In the context of global social movements, enormous political repression and disempowerment, and vast social inequality, alternative political movements need the power of the shared meaning of icon in order to make any possible intervention. This may seem simple; clearly, it is not – the challenges of a shared icon (whether for brand managers or for social movements) are enormous. Yet, the stakes in shared meaning have never been higher. --- Marita Sturken1 Despite the prominence of the idioms ‘icon,’ ‘brand,’ and ‘iconic brand’ in public discourse, very few figures or personas constitute such descriptions, and the terms are employed interchangeably with such frequency that they lose power and meaning. The dissolution of what constitutes an icon and brand by the discourse of consumer capitalism and the intensification of celebrity culture has influenced vernacular understandings of iconography across different social structures and institutions. Developing an iconic brand and identity is now considered a fundamental process undertaken by celebrities, politicians, and comparable public figures in order to establish their social standing within a highly cluttered and competitive environment. Vivienne Westwood, Barack Obama, and Pope Francis are three figures whose histories legitimize their status as global icons surpassing the boundaries of the institutions of fashion, politics, and religion. A critical textual analysis of the imagery that shapes their media representation reveals the influence of shifting social, political, and economic dynamics that are involved in converting Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis’s elite status as cultural icons into powerful iconic brand identities within consumer society. Transforming Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis into a simplified image exemplifies how it is the power behind the brand that creates meaning in contemporary media culture. Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis are 1 Marita Sturken, “The Continued Relevance of the Icon,” Sociologica 1 (2015): 1-2. 1 individuals with unique and complex personal histories, however the biographical details informing their personas are obscured in favour of promoting a simplified brand identity. The symbolic power of Westwood, Pope Francis, and Obama’s brand identities is demonstrated through the authority of the media in selectively framing their emerging image to mass audiences; how Obama, Pope Francis, and Westwood incorporate iconic ideals central to beliefs of public good into their brand identities to negotiate the economic, health care, and environmental crises; and the way in which Pope Francis, Westwood, and Obama’s personal brand identities are utilized to promote the institutions and empires they also represent as cultural, national, and global icons. Supported through symbolic exchange as a theoretical framework and a content and critical textual analysis of key moments that work to construct the iconic identities defining Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis’s media representation, emphasis is placed upon the construction of their iconography and the ways in which their image is based upon, and influenced by, socioeconomic changes in cultural politics. Deconstructing the political orientations and techniques employed by Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis in the construction of their iconography illuminates how the institutions of fashion, politics, and religion operate discursively under the governing conventions of the symbolic economy. The analytical focus critiques the tensions comprising the relationship between individuality and institution, particularly in regard to how it is not only the institutions of fashion, politics, and religion that produce the icons of Westwood, Obama, and Pope Francis, but also the power of