Affirmation and Disidentification

Abstract

Scholars have argued that from the late 1980s when India started following neoliberal policies, the newly emerging consumption practices have played a central role in restructuring the interrelated domains of erotics, pleasure, politics and national identification. In this article, I build on these studies by paying attention to the understudied problematic whereby branding and advertising practices of multinational corporations’ channel a collective nation through deploying conspicuously objectified bodies as figures enlisting consumer-identification. The popular and award-winning ad-film of Happydent White chewing gum titled Happydent White Palace (2007), which advertises the ‘teeth whitening’ quality of the product by visualizing a hyperbolic scenario of a mouth emitting light after using the chewing gum, is an exemplary case. The closing shot crystallizes the enlisting of identification via objectification: it shows a palace servant perched on a lamp post in the darkness of night, jutting his neck out and lighting up the world around him while insects fly around his face. The brand experience is here affirmed by highlighting precisely the most troubling questions of servile labour and poverty within the nation. The paper explores how this identificatory strategy, one that might be read in relation to disidentification, is also used to affirm brand experience. Using theorisations of branding, labour and nationalism, I argue that in the wake of neoliberalism in India, such an affirmation is possible by making manifest the virtual nation as superflat, a conscious ‘playful’, ‘flattened, self-mocking’ national aesthetic constructed for the commercial market.

Notes

1 The ad-films that I analyse in the article are primarily geared towards Hindi and English television channels and usually screen on regional television channels in dubbed form. The use of language, and the relation between the national and the regional, are complex within this field of advertising, evident in the effort to make manifest the national by playing on difference.

2 Perfetti Van Melle is estimated to be the leader in the confectionary market in India, holding around 25 per cent of market share (Chamikutty 2011).

3 The awards won by Palace include the Grandprix of the Advertising Agencies Association of India; the London Awards 2007 TV Cinematography Gold; the London Awards 2007 TV Confectionery/Snack, Silver; Gunn Report 2007; Cannes Lions 2007 Film Silver. The Happydent White ad-films, especially Palace, also helped the sales of the product, which reports claim has grown ‘more than 55 per cent between 2006 and 2008, making it the fastest growing brand in Perfetti's portfolio’ while the ‘industry growth rate for chewing gums stood at just 18 per cent during this period’ (Nautiyal 2012).

4 Long loincloth, wrapped around the waist and between the legs.

5 Literally ‘gate-keepers’, dvarapalaka refer to the pair of sculptures at the entrance to the sanctum sanctorum of Hindu and Buddhist temples.

6 Light it up, smile!

7 The illumination in the ad-film could also be seen as a spoof on the political vision of brand India highlighted with the coinage ‘India Shining’ in the rhetoric of the economic right-wing. ‘India Shining’ was initially created by the advertising firm Grey Worldwide (India) for a 60-second video campaign highlighting the achievements of the then Indian government led by the Hindu right-wing party, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It later became the central catchword for the election campaign for the BJP in the national assembly polls of 2003–4.

8 A humorous blog commenting on the ‘absence’ of masculinity in Indian cricketers puts it categorically: ‘Sachin [Tendulkar] may be the greatest batsman since Bradman, but he is no Viv [Vivian Richards]. No chest hair, no chewing gum’ (Ashok 2010). In the conversion of the Indian cricket team into ‘Team India’ as a brand, one can see at its heart a masculinization of the team. In an extreme articulation of chewing gum as having potential for anti-social action, one can see the control on chewing gum in Singapore, where it can be sold only ‘as a medical (dental) prescription’ to ensure cleanliness following the Free Trade Agreement (Pang 2007: 27).