This week I choose to engage
in pink-ribbon slacktivism. I first explored BMW’s controversial “The Ultimate
Drive” campaign, which promises to donate a dollar to breast cancer research
for every mile that you test-drive a BMW. This campaign became a controversy in
2006 when the media scrutinized BMW for selling a product (in this case a car)
that knowingly pumps carcinogens into the environment, while appealing to
consumers as a company that cares about breast cancer. In this case, it is hard
to ignore that BMW has lobbied hard in the past to allow the use of several
known carcinogens in gas and car manufacturing. So—here we have a company that
allegedly contributes to the environmental risks of developing cancer, while
simultaneously promoting a feel-good campaign that aims to stop cancer in its
tracks. This inverted logic makes it hard to untangle the motives behind the
breast cancer-corporate care nexus, and reminds me of Beck’s discussion on the
production of invisible risks in a risk society and how networks can both
reveal and obscure the connections between production, consumption, and social
change (in “The Logic of Wealth Distribution and Risk Distribution”). It also reminds me of Berlant’s notion
of “slow death” and how we try to ameliorate a situation without changing the
underlying problems, i.e. mitigating the proliferation of carcinogens in the
environment by changing the way we use cars.
But I do not mean to
critique BMW for participating in a campaign that certainly raises awareness
and money for an important cause. On a side note, it astounding to consider how
much money campaigns like “The Ultimate Drive” collects each year ($800 million
in total), and how nearly impossible it is to figure out where this money
actually goes. Nevertheless, what I do mean to critique is how BMW’s
advertising makes you feel like the cure is right down the road. That is, it is
in the way companies like BMW market breast cancer awareness through the use of
marketing collateral decked out with pink ribbons, pink balloons, pink roses,
pink everything. Not only does this lead to the hypervisibility of cancer, but
also a political and social aesthetic that conveys a very rosy situation. Known
as “Pinkwashing”, the use of pink by industries to build good will, sell their
product, and cover up their own complicity in the problem ultimately obscures
the complexity of the social cause, while capitalizing on hope and obfuscating
the connection between cancer and profit. Furthermore, Pinkwashing renders
invisible certain forms of suffering, death, grieving and pain in breast
cancer’s national, illness narrative in exchange for transferring affect to a
feeling about a business.
The pink-ribbon movement
shares similarities with the Kony 2012 movement in the way that they both
mobilize a civic-minded, but ultimately passive ideal of empathy and collective
action. While it is certainly a nice gesture to display a pink-ribbon on your
car, it is unclear whether such an act is actually helpful or harmful to the
broader social goal. In other words, is it ethical to support a political aesthetic
that bathes us in positive energies, that has been appropriated by arguably
manipulative corporations, that blurs the line between collective passivity and
collective passion, that prefers pink femininity over the tough warrior
narrative, and that avoids talking about the frustrating and terrifying nature
of cancer and cancer research? What does the pink ribbon represent, if not an
impasse that makes impossible a more elegiac politics, or a space for grieving
and pain in the way we respond to breast cancer as a national wound? The pink
ribbon movement also reminds me of Kony 2012 in the way that it is incredibly
difficult to totalize complex, political situations and explain issues like
breast cancer to the lay public without oversimplifying the problem. Instead,
it seems much easier to build an aesthetic movement that is consumer-friendly,
smartly branded, and affectively contagious with the potential to go viral. Lastly,
the pink ribbon movement also reminds me of TextMob and how “success” can be
thought of not in terms of outcomes, but in terms of the communities the
movements create. From the sea of pink has emerged a robust and ubiquitous global
support community for breast cancer sufferers. From cancer walk-a-thons like
Relay for Life to CSR initiatives like “The Ultimate Drive”, the support is
overwhelming. And it is easy to become a community member. For example, October
is national breast cancer awareness month, and this year, the “I like it on the…”
campaign went viral on Facebook as people posted provocative statuses to raise
awareness about breast cancer. But what does this accomplish in terms of
outcomes, besides creating a diffused, low-stakes and potentially receding
community of slactivists?
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