Abstract One Hundred Years After Its Sinking, the Titanic Holds
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1 LAZULI BUNTING MANUSCRIPT REVIEW HISTORY MANUSCRIPT (ROUND 2) Abstract One hundred years after its sinking, the Titanic holds many in its thrall. If not quite a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, it continues to captivate consumers worldwide. This article explores the myths and meanings of RMS Titanic from a Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) perspective. Employing a combination of historical methods, literary criticism and empirical investigation, it unpicks the meanings of “myth” in consumer research and shows how these myth-interpretations are enshrined in the “unsinkable brand.” RMS Titanic, we contend, is more than a mere carrier of myth, a myth-conveyance, it is an all-purpose omni-myth where manifold meaningful consumer myths mingle, merge, mutate and multiply. So much so, that extant attempts to encapsulate iconic brand meanings – as gestalts, mosaics, doppelgängers, et al .– are called into question. Myths, Barthes observes, are less like abstract, purified constructs than formless, unstable condensations, which are inherently and ineradicably ambiguous. Although brand ambiguity is often regarded as something best avoided, this article argues that consuming ambiguity is integral to unsinkable brands like Titanic. This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only. 2 Myths…are obscure in origin, protean in form and ambiguous in meaning. Seemingly immune to rational explication, they nevertheless stimulate rational enquiry, which accounts for the diversity of conflicting explanations. —K.K. Ruthven (1976, 1) April, according to T.S. Eliot (1922), is the cruelest month. If 2012 is anything to go by, it is also the craziest. April 2012 was the month when the world went wild for Titanic, the allegedly “unsinkable” steamship that sank on its maiden voyage one hundred years earlier (Sides 2012). The centennial of the sinking was commemorated in many cities associated with the legendary White Star liner, not least Liverpool, Southampton, Cherbourg, Cobh and New York (Ward 2012). It was likewise marked by manifold works of popular culture including movies, musicals, murals, magazine articles, museum exhibitions, computer games, iPhone apps and requiem masses (Economist 2012a). The final meal of the first class passengers was on the menu of numerous restaurants; cruise ships traced the route of the iconic vessel, pausing to lay wreaths at the site of the wreck; plans were announced for a full-scale reconstruction of Titanic, which is expected to weigh anchor in 2015; and, sellers of Titanic collectibles slapped images of the ill- starred ship on everything from teddy bears and T-shirts to bath plugs and tea bags (McKeown 2012). Viewed dispassionately, this fixation is hard to fathom. The loss of life on Titanic was miniscule compared to prior disasters and, when set against subsequent catastrophes, the 1912 tragedy barely registers (Eyers 2013). Yet Titanic is still regarded as a quintessential calamity, the model against which human misfortunes are measured (Biel 2012). In the pantheon of mishap, the ship stands shoulder to shoulder with the assassinations of Lincoln and Kennedy (Wade 1986), the Challenger Space Shuttle explosion (Howells 2012) and Titanic’s terrible 21st century equivalent, September 11, 2001 (Pellegrino 2012). For Molony (2012), Titanic is nothing less than the Rolls-Royce of misadventure, an iconic superbrand of the mortality market alongside Hiroshima, the Irish famine, the San Francisco earthquake and the Great Flood of Genesis. Branding Titanic in this way may seem distasteful, bordering on obscene, but it is very much in keeping with the turn to “dark tourism” (Lennon and Foley 2000; Stone 2006). That is, the commodification of sites associated with dreadful deeds and appalling accidents, such as Auschwitz, Chernobyl, Bolivia’s Road of Death and the Killing Fields of Cambodia. It is also, arguably, in accord with contemporary consumer society’s culture of commemoration, where anniversaries are regarded as marketing opportunities waiting to happen (Economist 2012b; Simpson 2006). However, the monetization of the Titanic is more than a manifestation of humankind’s appetite for the macabre, the malignant, the monstrous, the marketable (Warner 1994). It is a prime example of mythopoeia. As many commentators have noted, it is the myth of the unsinkable ship – myths, rather – that has made this dark brand meaningful to millions of consumers (Barczewski 2004; Biel 2012; Cameron 2011; Foster 1997). It is the myths of the Titanic, moreover, that are making millions of dollars for sellers of unsinkable souvenirs, experiences, and cultural representations (Meredith 2012). This paper aims to study the unsinkable brand through a mythological lens. After summarizing the major mythic traditions in consumer research and recounting the oft-told tale of the Titanic – then pausing briefly to consider the ship’s brand credentials – we explain our methodological approach, which is predicated on the principles of Consumer Culture Theory (CCT) in general and “practical” literary criticism in particular. The results reveal that Titanic This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only. 3 isn’t so much a myth, singular or plural, as an all-purpose omni-myth, where manifold consumer myths clash, collide, coalesce and cancel each other out to contradictory yet compelling effect. As a consequence, the brand is ineradicably ambiguous, a ship-shape shape-shifter with something for everyone. Although ambiguity has long been anathematized by the thought leaders of our field, this article argues that disambiguating brand ambiguity is a research quest worth pursuing. In terms of its contributions, our paper responds to Arnould and Thompson’s (2005, 876) call for historically informed analyses of “the commodity form (broadly defined)”. Empirically, it extends CCT’s repertoire to all four composers of brand stories – owners, consumers, influencers and popular culture (Holt 2003) – thereby adding additional instruments to the myth- ensemble. Methodologically, it returns to the corpus of literary criticism largely neglected since the passing of its prime mover, Barbara B. Stern. Conceptually, it contends that extant attempts to encapsulate outstanding brands in an overarching construct – “gestalt,” “mosaic,” “panopticon,” “doppelgänger,” etc. – are meritorious yet misplaced. Paradigmatically, our paper adheres to the principles of the liberal arts, insofar as it extracts enlightenment from a single, stupendous case study rather than a representative sample of Titanic fanatics. And, rhetorically, it maintains that “myth” is a multi-faceted approach to consumer culture, which is overdue careful scrutiny and systematic critique. THE MYTH IN LITERATURE In his compact introduction to the principal theories of myth, Segal (2004) identifies ten academic domains where the subject looms large. These range from religious studies and psychology to anthropology and literary criticism. If Segal were writing his text today, he might be tempted to add consumer research to his list of traditions. As a glance through past issues of JCR (and the ACR proceedings) attests, the corpus of consumer research is replete with myth-lit – writing and theorizing about myth (see Arsel and Thompson 2011; Thompson 2004; Zhao and Belk 2008). When this body of work is examined in detail, it is clear that the M-word is used in several different ways. These differences, admittedly, are only to be expected. Multiple meanings of myth have long been recognized (Armstrong 2005; Coupe 1997) and latter-day literary theory alerts us to the semantic ambiguities in academic and everyday language (Stern 1996; Sutherland 2010). It is useful, nevertheless, to identify the major myth-interpretations, because they help us better understand the mythopoeic propensities of CCT and interpret our Titanic findings. One of the most common uses of the word myth in consumer research – or any other domain, for that matter (Cohen 1969) – is as a mistake, a misapprehension, a misunderstanding shared by many people. Thus Zhao et al. (2010) speak of the myths and misapplications of mediation analysis in consumer research. Muñiz and Schau (2005) note the Apple Newton community’s mistaken beliefs about a replacement operating system. Nuttall et al. (2011) reveal that many advertising research articles are devoted to refuting the fallacies of the field. Scott (2005) exposes the manifold myths of American feminism’s anti-beauty ideology, not least the notion that blondes are overrepresented in marketing’s portrayals of the feminine ideal. Even Arnould and Thompson (2005), in their inaugural essay on CCT, are at pains to unpick four fallacies surrounding qualitative research: namely, that consumer culture theorists study contexts as ends in themselves; that the major differences between CCT and other research traditions are This document is part of a JCR Manuscript Review History. It should be used for educational purposes only. 4 methodological; that the subfield is anti-managerial in ethos and outlook; and, that CCT is characterized by serious character defects including introspection, overstatement, and orgiastic outpourings of self-expression. The success of their attempted demythologizing is debatable, though, since Arnould and Thompson (2007) later refuted the myths surrounding their refutation of the myths surrounding Consumer Culture Theory. A second take on myth treats the