SP International :: Publications

Chapter 6

The unbearable lightness of commerce

Dear Archie, In what year were the floodlights erected at Ayresome Park?
Marc Wilkinson, Age 14, Stokesley
Archie replies:
Well, I rang the P.R. department at the club to see if they could help with your query. Unfortunately, the girl who answered didn't know exactly what Ayresome Park was, although she was very keen to "offer me a corporate sponsorship package, tailor made to meet my hospitality needs."
– from Fly Me to the Moon, Middlesbrough supporters' Fanzine.

"Give us back our Ajax!"
– reader's letter in De Volkskrant

In the Spring of 1966, in the Mauritshuis, an art gallery not a stone's throw from the Parliament in The Hague, a major exhibition of Vermeer's paintings attracted visitors from all over the world. the interest in this unique event was so overwhelming that a special system had to be devised to keep people moving, and all in the same direction, so that nobody stood so long in adoration before the canvasses that others would be denied the opportunity to get into the gallery before closing time.
As you might guess, a great deal of the money for the exhibition was provided by sponsors, and naturally enough a special opening party was held with a VIP tent and reception, graced by a visit from Her Majesty. The VIPs could therefore look at the pictures at their leisure, before the great unwashed would gain admission.
For some, this wasn't enough. Harry Mens, the multi-millionaire and Liberal Party supporter had, despite his money, recently failed to be elected to Parliament. The next best thing was to hog the show across the road. For the trifling sum of £10,000, Mens hired the whole of the exhibition, VIP tent included, for an entire evening, sending out invitations to his friends and business connections in the Netherlands and abroad. In the shadow of the Parliament he would show its members just what money could buy.
Whether Harry Mens knows the first thing about paintings is not recorded. In the age of neoliberalism it is no longer of any importance whether the guests of honour at an exhibition have any knowledge of art, or even any interest in it: the only thing that counts is the money that they bring in. And as the sponsors and everyone involved in this world knows, modern business won't work without goodwill and the very finest goodwill is that which you can buy. So everybody ends up happy. Well, perhaps not quite everybody.

Hip, hip, hooray for the sponsors

Throughout recorded history art has always, of course, been `sponsored' by the powerful. Roman emperors had themselves immortalised in marble. Italian composer Claudio Monteverdi wrote many of his most important works for the Venetian Doge, while the leaders of the German Reformed Church of his day likewise made J.S.Bach's prodigious output possible. Both the bourgeois revolution of the 17th and 18th Centuries and the industrial revolution which was its consequence created powerful new forces and individuals who in their turn hired artists to underscore their own greatness.
Our own century is no exception to this pattern. Hitler commissioned the architect Albert Speer to design monumental works to embody Nazi supremacy; and no French president has left office without first enriching Paris with some remarkable buildings. In the Netherlands `old rich' families such as the Kröller-Müllers have given handouts to many a poor artist, but the newly powerful have also not been slow to rise to the occasion. Amsterdam's social-democratic administration between the wars had the town beautified by sculptors and architects of the Amsterdam school, while the commune of Hilversum raised urban architect Dudok to international renown. In the '70s, thousands of artists produced hundreds of thousands of paintings and sculptures thanks to the BKR, the artists' section of the welfare state. Across the Atlantic, the visual arts flourished initially, during the Depression, under the sponsorship of the New Deal Works Progress Administration, and later, in the fat years of the 1950s, with the support of big business.
It is therefore only to be expected that the arts in our own time have become dependent on the generous gifts of firms like Robeco or DeltaLloyd in the Netherlands, BBL and Generale de Banque in Belgium, Carlsberg in Denmark or Sainsbury's supermarkets in England. The public contribution to theatre is increasingly, in many countries, of less significance than that of private corporations. In the popular arts, festivals can afford to hire bigger, more expensive bands if, above the site, flags, balloons and giant video screens promote a bank, a soft drink or a brand of trainers. If some ageing hippies are upset when they see David Bowie advertising Pepsi Light, too bad: it's just a typical case of `not keeping up with the times'. The new generation of rock and rollers is happy to drive round in a Volkswagen Golf Rolling Stone. And so one well-known brand name helps another well-known brand name to increase its market.
Is all of this quite as innocent as it might appear? Why is it that so many people find all of these brand names which are continually pushed down their throats so annoying? What can be the cause of that thinly veiled popular anger that ignites at the sight of the sponsor's blazered VIP guests making their way to the hospitality tent? Is it all mere misplaced nostalgia for a mythical sponsorless golden age? Or is it perhaps something more reasonable, more important, less easily dismissed?
We are entitled to expect, nay demand from the state that it takes care of our cultural heritage, takes part in the promotion of culture whilst doing nothing to hinder its development, and that it helps to open people to new, unfamiliar things. The extent to which this is dependent on the profits of corporations, on a willingness to invest in art that depends entirely on opportunism, threatens in the short term the intellectual health of the people. Due to these means of finance art and culture are becoming ever more dependent on commerce, offering the government an excuse to withdraw still further from yet another vital area of our social lives. Under these circumstances it has become impossible to devise an integral vision of any long-term development.

The insatiable hunger for more, different, better

When, a few years ago, the Royal Dutch Football Association, decided that henceforward the first division would be called the PTT Telecompetition, surveys showed that around 60% of the population were squarely opposed to any such change. Of course, the name was changed despite this opposition, because what the people want counts for little against the power of money. And so the Netherlands followed the path carved out, predictably enough, by the English Football Association, with its Coca Cola Cup (previously known as the Littlewoods' Cup, previously known as, bizarrely, the Milk Cup) its Freight Rover Trophy, its FA Cup "sponsored by Littlewoods" (the world's oldest football competition being too holy to have to undergo the humiliation of an actual name change) and its Nation-wide League.
People tend to balk at such things when they are first introduced, but they eventually get used to them. Once, however often it changed its name, the (English) Football League Cup was known to all supporters as the "League Cup" pure and simple. Now everyone except a diminishing number of die-hards calls it the Coca Cola Cup, and no-one laughs. In the Netherlands, a few years on from that hostile survey result, it seems that people have become accustomed to their football competition's new name: a clear majority no longer have any objection to the PTT Telecompetition. Time therefore for another step further; bring on the Amstel Cup.
The fact that people come to accept these changes is both an advantage and a disadvantage from the point of view of the sponsors. The point of advertising is to attract attention, and because of this the marketing expert 'creatives' are continually on the lookout for new ways of drawing the consumer's eye to the brand names of their clients' products. If advertisements on players' shirts are scarcely noticed, then bring in moving advertising hoardings that run the length of the field. If these prove annoyingly distracting to spectators, then perhaps the centre circle is an attractive option. In Italy the groundsman mows the sponsor's name into the grass; in England they imprint it on the nets.
From seats specially reserved for sponsors in the grandstand, to luxurious executive boxes, there is no limit to the commercialisation of football. In Belgium there is now a special VIP-programme that typifies what is becoming a universal phenomenon. Anderlecht's richer supporters can arrive at the stadium two hours before the match; they are served lunch, can then watch the game, and afterwards stay on for another hour or so to enjoy a drink accompanied by live music. They arrive before and leave after the ordinary fans.
That sponsors now bring whole plane-loads of personnel to European cup finals; that they can fill entire sections of the stand at important internationals with their clients and suppliers; that they leave whole rows empty at big tennis tournaments because the corporate hospitality tent is more interesting than the first four sets of the five-set final, nobody thinks anything of. If you find the empty seats a sorrowful sight, then you're a romantic and hopelessly out of date.
Then of course there are the media. No happier triangular relationship exists than that between sport, business and television. The sums that this holy trinity is able to generate and to pump around border on the unimaginable. For the rights to the Olympic Games in Atlanta (where the British 100-metre runner Lynford Christie wore contact lenses with the sponsor's logo imprinted on them, which may have been why he was later called out for two false starts) the American station NBC paid $0.5 billion. All that money had to be earned back by the sale of pictures of the games, but more importantly by the sale of advertising time. Calculations assumed an income of twice the outlay.
Of course, all of this money must come, in the end, from the consumer's pocket. Advertising costs are paid for when we buy the product, but things do not stop there. Gradually, major sporting events are being taken off the universally available terrestrial channels and put on to the far more expensive and exclusive cable and satellite services. Moreover, these channels are now beginning to introduce pay-as-you-view, with hefty charges for single sporting events.
Sport is the distorted, funhouse mirror of society. Developments scarcely noticeable in the broader society are blown up to absurd proportions in the world of sport. That's true for things like vandalism and drug use, but it applies above all to sports' finances. The income differences between rich and poor are nowhere so extreme as in sport. Whilst the ordinary player in the lower divisions of top football playing countries will often earn as little as or less than the average industrial wage, internationals at clubs like Arsenal, Milan or Real Madrid earn hundreds of thousands of pounds. Ajax's budget in 1980 was around £2 million. By 1996-97 it was ten times that amount.
The more money dominates, the less willingness there seems to be to allow a portion of it to find its way into the community as a whole. This is true for the top football clubs, who do not like to see too much of the profit from the absurd amounts now paid for TV rights go to their smaller rivals. It is also true of individual sportsmen and women such as tennis player Richard Krajicek, who fled to Monaco just before his taxes fell due. The case that perhaps best illustrates this lack of solidarity, however, is that of the former international star Marco van Basten. In an interview in Italy Van Basten saw fit to make a number of negative remarks about unemployed people in the Netherlands. Dutch people, to summarise the views of the young multi-millionaire, are lazy and lackadaisical. That Van Basten, if he had been a building worker with a bad back rather than a footballer with a dodgy ankle, would have had to live on a basic level of benefit was apparently beyond the power of his imagination.
There's nothing so very strange about this. It is easy to lose sight of reality if, as is so often the case with our top sportsmen and women, you have already by the time you are twenty entered a world where millions are spoken of as if they were hundreds. The world of sport and business allows us to see where the free market leads to whenever it is carried to an extreme. A crazy race for `more, better, different', a race with very few winners and many, many losers, a world of vulgars who must call themselves VIPs, and of fathers of tennis players who hide their beloved daughters' millions from the tax-man.

The commercialisation of school and playground

The commercialisation of sport is nevertheless a relatively innocent phenomenon. Much more serious is the irresistible invasion by business of the world of young children. Children are even more susceptible than are adults to the hidden persuaders of advertising. While most older people are able to resist the ridiculous dictatorship of fashion, children often lack the ability to do so, going through a period of their lives in which they are inclined to copy the behaviour of others. Most of all they want one thing: to belong. They are often insecure and shy, still seeking their place in the world, their opinions and their future.
It is this uncertainty into which the manufacturers of shoes, clothes, diaries, watches and bags sink their claws. "If you want to fit in at school, if you're going out with friends, then you must buy product X" is the advertisers' hidden message. What is important is not that the children buy the stuff, but the fact that children use branded products as a standard through which they will judge and sometimes condemn each other. Children who haven't got the right trainers, the ones that cost perhaps £100 a pair, don't count. A few years ago in some schools in the Netherlands the term Zebra-kind (Zebra-child) was all the rage. The word was made up of the names of the cheap clothes shops, Zeeman and Wibra. Zebra-kind was a term of abuse for children whose parents were not prepared to shell out huge sums of money for a shirt with a crocodile on it.
It is this sort of madness that drives many parents to despair. Who wants their children to be teased or bullied at school just because of their clothes? And of course, it isn't just a matter of clothes, or footwear; there are also `game boys', mountain bikes, roller blades and all the rest, toys which are often very expensive and which children can no longer appear in public without – at least if you believe the advertisers.
neoliberal ideology offers no solution to this problem. Indeed, it would like it not to be seen as a problem at all. The market for trainers and toys must be like all other markets, never contracting, always expanding. So ever more areas of life become commercialised, from the cradle to the teenagers' bedroom, from the toddlers' birthday treat to the school party.
The newest business opportunity of all is right there, in the commercialisation of school activities. Isn't it kind of Mars, in exchange for a few flags and posters, to put money into sports days? Could we not give the canteen a nice face-lift if we could only find a sponsor? And why shouldn't we change the name of the school to, for example, Esprit College, if an injection of finance from the eponymous clothes shop is received in exchange?
The possibilities are gigantic and still nowhere near exhausted. Where the state forces schools to survive on smaller and smaller budgets, business stands ready to fill the gaps with every conceivable form of sponsorship. Need computers for your classrooms? We can help. The gym could do with sprucing up? Leave it to us. So, in the Netherlands, we have seen the supermarket chain Albert Heyn sponsoring numerous new canteens, McDonalds paying for badly needed new classrooms, Postbank financing television schools programmes and educational materials distributed by Shell, Lego and Coca-Cola. In 1995 alone, total sponsorship money amounted to £10 million.
Of course, things could be worse. In the United States, that sponsors' Valhalla, a manufacturer of audio-visual materials offered free of charge a large quantity of apparatus for a schools' TV network, provided the school signed a binding contract committing it to accepting two minutes' advertising on the network each day. Around 10,000 schools signed up. The Netherlands is not America; but who would have guessed ten years ago that we would allow sponsorship in our schools at all? If we are unable ourselves to control such things, then we can hardly shake our heads at the example of the United States. What happens there, happens in Europe five years later.
The growing influence of sponsorship in education is a typical example of where the dichotomy between private wealth and public squalor leads. Firms are currently so overflowing with money that they do not know what to do with it, so they invest it in the creation of corporate identity. If schools offer them a chance to reach the (future) target group in an environment which is above suspicion then they are quick to grasp the opportunity. That this contributes to the gap between schools in rich and those in poorer areas, no one seems to mind. In its acceptance of the results of the enormous differences between parental contributions – varying from next to nothing to hundreds of pounds a year – the state has long tolerated such inequality.
University education has also not escaped the malign touch of the long arm of commerce. Increasing amounts of private finance have found their way into the system. `The entrepreneurial university' has taken the place of the university as a free space for thought and study, and academic freedom is ever more subordinated to the demands of business and industry. Instead of the university producing graduates who can marshal an argument, analyse, and think independently and coherently, what is now on offer is an education for people who want to make a career as quickly as possible and earn a lot of money. Where is the will to elevate people? Where are the intellectuals who are still not afraid to stick their necks out, for whom the search for truth still has some meaning? A nation which no longer has the will to invest in its own intellectual élite is sounding its own death-knell, as it is if it produces an élite which has not the slightest sense of responsibility towards the rest of society.
In 1996 the University of Amsterdam produced a report which concluded that there was "already evident a gradual privatisation of scientific education and research." Far from concluding that it was high time that this process was resisted, the report proposed that academics ought to fill the gaps appeared in university finances by accepting assignments from private corporations. When the University of Nijenrode decided in 1993 to bestow an honorary doctorate on Albert Heyn, the Netherlands' biggest grocer, André Klukhuhn of the State University of Utrecht had this to say:

The university is becoming ever more a business-minded and rationalised institution in which potentially profitable knowledge is on offer. The time needed for reflection, to read about things that are not directly work-related, to discuss with other students and lecturers, this time is wholly absent, and it is this pure grocer's mentality that threatens wisdom.

Why did Klukhuhn, and a very few others, remain so many voices in the wilderness? Is there really remaining so little feeling of attachment to the independence of science? Who are the universities actually educating? And where is all that engagement and commitment that characterised earlier generations of students throughout the world? Talk of the reduction of study time, higher fees and replacing student grants with loans. All or some of which are currently taking place in most countries of the developed world – have clearly obscured students' vision of what is really essential: reason for the governments which instigated these attacks to be doubly happy.

The twilight of public broadcasting

In 1992 a hitherto important frontier was at last transgressed: for the first time in the Netherlands more than 10 billion guilders – around £3.4 billion was spent on advertising. By 1995 this had risen to almost 12 billion guilders, almost a fifth of which went on TV ads. Spending on this form of `consumer information' continues to climb ever higher. In 1989 144 commercials a day were broadcast. By 1994 the number had reached 726, and the average viewer was seeing 26 advertisements daily.
Of course, compared to many other countries these figures are paltry. The average British viewer of commercial television will see more than 26 ads during the three slots that begin, interrupt and end the average soap or sitcom. US programmes are interrupted so frequently that they come close to revealing the terrible truth. For the broadcasters it is the programmes provide an unwelcome break in the flow of commercials, not vice versa.
Apart from the sheer quantity, the quality is worthy of one or two remarks. Few TV ads in any country exhibit an excess of good taste. Every year they become more crude and brutal, showing less and less respect for the viewer. Meanwhile, the clients and producers themselves have discovered that viewers are growing increasingly irritated by their efforts. Their response has been to advertise advertising, trying to promote the idea that commercials are necessary and beneficial: "How do you think these fine programmes are paid for?"
True enough, programmes are increasingly paid for out of the revenue from advertising. But what else does this mean but that the viewer pays for them? And if it is the viewers that pay, why should they not opt for a truly public broadcasting service? In the UK the venerable BBC feels so threatened by the advance of neoliberalism that it now makes its own ads, promoting the way in which its programmes are produced and financed. A number of clips from leading programmes are shown with a caption that says that these `unique programmes' are linked to a `unique' system of financing, public funding.
It might be reasonable to ask whether anyone ever asked for all these commercials, whether anyone really enjoys the fact that their children are bombarded with ads specially directed at them. Who in Belgium, for instance, demanded that the state broadcasting system began to carry ads?
The problem is that commercials accept no limits, no other criteria than the answer to the question: will it bring in money? Once again, laissez-faire, laissez-passer is the golden rule. No one dares to turn round and say: enough! This is as far as it will go! Meanwhile, the broadcasting companies increasingly feel the need to adapt their own programmes to the standards set by the commercials. What do you mean, television also has a duty to inform and educate? Viewing figures, that's the criterion, for both broadcasting bosses and the advertisers.
Is this then a plea for élitist television, for programmes in which no one is interested? Not in the least. It is a plea for quality and against the overkill of sentimentalism, the casual vulgarity, the superficiality, hurry and carelessness that characterises so much of the current output.
The American social critic Neil Postman wrote, in 1985, a book about what he termed the 'mind numbing influence of television'. The book, which has since become a standard work, appeared in Dutch under the title Wij amuseren ons kapot ('Entertaining Ourselves to Death'). Postman had this to say about American television:

The average length of a shot on network television is only 3,5 seconds, so that the eye never rests, always has something new to see. Moreover, television offers viewers a variety of subject matters, requires minimal skills to comprehend it, and is largely aimed at emotional gratification (…) American television, in other words is devoted entirely to supplying its audience with entertainment.

Not that Postman has anything against entertainment. On the contrary, he wrote,

Show business is not entirely without an idea of excellence, but its main business is to please the crowd, and its principal instrument is artifice. If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty, but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether

This also goes for news programmes. He gives the example of the McNeil-Lehrer Newshour, describing its approach as follows:

The consequence is that Americans are "better entertained and less well-informed."

From a survey that was conducted immediately after the so-called Iranian hostage drama – when a large number of US embassy staffers in Tehran were held hostage for several months by supporters of Khomeiny – it appeared that despite the obsessive media attention, less than 1% of the American people knew what language was spoken in Iran, what the word "ayatollah" meant or what religion the Iranians followed. Postman's opinion was that there are three things expected from TV programme-makers: your programmes shall demand no previous knowledge; you shall not make it difficult for the viewer; and you shall avoid thorough explanation like the plague.
Of course, this has far-reaching social consequences. As Postman writes:

In America the fundamental metaphor for political discourse is the television commercial. The television commercial is the most peculiar and pervasive form of communication to issue forth from the electric plug. An American who has reached the age of forty will have seen well over one million television commercials in his or her lifetime and has close to another million to go before the first Social Security check arrives. We may safely assume therefore that the television commercial has profoundly influenced American habits of thought.

The way in which US presidential elections are conducted confirms what Postman says. Superficiality increasingly wins out over depth, sensationalism over analysis and emotion over sober re-election.
Postman draws an unusually sombre picture, but that is not to say that his message should not be taken as a warning worthy of being heeded. A warning not to give in to the forces whose only use for modern means of communication and information is the pursuit of their own short-sighted financial interests and who take no interest in the human or social consequences of their actions.
Charles Groenhuisen and Ad van Liempt warn in their book Live! about the "power, the blunders and the opinions of TV news programme makers" which are creating a new division between "an `upper' layer which is informed and an `under' layer which zaps away from information." The latter group gains its information increasingly from `real-life' TV programmes and sensationalist `documentaries'. "But these programmes," Groenhuijsen and Van Liempt write, "do not have informing people as their primary aim. Entertainment and sensation are of prime importance. In itself, there's nothing wrong with that. The danger lies in the mixing of fact and fiction." Journalists become entertainers and news entertainment. Groenhuijsen and Van Liempt, themselves journalists, caution that in the near future this could have major implications for the way people see the world. They write:

The generation growing up now sees the past and present ever more through the spectacles of television. It is their principal if not their only source of information about the outside world. Reading about politics, culture or history is becoming, amongst ever larger groups of people, a rare activity.

As is so often the case, as far as the media goes we in Europe are adopting American practices. It would be naive to think that this will simply change, certainly given the liberal zeitgeist. We are already offered programmes that allow us to see live coverage of terrible accidents. Too bad, their makers believe, if they get in the way of ambulance personnel and ignore the right to privacy of those involved. Such behaviour is also, of course, likely to have its effects on standards of conduct in the broader society.
The speed at which the commercialisation of the media is proceeding is matched only by the snail-like response of those guardians of the public order, political leaders. No one seems to be exactly burning to find a real solution to the problem. But how could it be otherwise? Anyone wanting to answer the questions the problem raises would at least have to have a clear idea of the state's responsibilities, and it is just such a vision that is missing from government across Europe.
It would, of course, take courage to reform broadcasting. If we were to have, say, two or three public channels, in each country, without advertising, it would not solve all our problems overnight. But such an innovation would place broadcasters in a good position to choose whether to stop adjusting to the standards set by their commercial rivals and return to their roots, or adapt themselves more fully to the commercial milieu and leave the serving of the public interest to others. Such a model would make the true situation transparent and draw a line under what has so far been lost. It offers the last possibility of constructing a dam to hold back the deterioration of the television medium into a kind of intellectual deficiency.

Enslaved by business

Whenever you question the growth of sponsorship and advertising you are likely to hear the same argument, that the many pleasures of modern life would simply be unaffordable without them. This is of course senseless. Only a few years ago every cage in the zoo had its own notice that told you about the way of life and area of distribution of the animals on display. In this way children learned how the Siberian tiger was threatened by extinction, how old a gorilla can grow, and so on. Now other notices have appeared: "These young monkeys were adopted by Kampen Family Butchers"; "This Indian Elephant is sponsored by Kodak." But has entrance to the zoo become cheaper? On the contrary, the price has rocketed.
Similar developments have affected museums, art galleries and theatres. The rooms might now be named after computer-makers, life assurance companies or supermarkets, but despite this the entrance price keeps increasing. Sponsorship has not stopped the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels or the Victoria and Albert in London from ending their policies of free admission.
Is there perhaps then a noticeable improvement in what's on offer? This is, to say the least, doubtful. Of course there are more mega-exhibitions such as the Vermeer discussed above. Witness the queues outside such events, whether in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam or London and you will realise that not to have visited the latest of these `vitally important' exhibitions has become social death in certain circles. The recent Paul Delvaux retrospective in Brussels was booked up for several weeks in advance, despite an exorbitant admission price. The excellent and extensive collection of his works which hangs permanently in the same museum and which can be seen for £2 can almost always be viewed in a leisurely fashion in a sparsely-populated gallery. And if more international stars come to the concert hall of your capital or regional centre, then you can be sure that not only will the prices of tickets be prohibitive, but that half of the seats will be taken by the sponsors' guests.
The real reason for commercialisation is clearly then one of ideological choice, a choice against the state and in favour of the market. As a result the whole of our culture, from pop music and sport to paintings and opera, is given over to the laws of the market and thus to a one-dimensional, conformist, commercial banality that we simply, of course, have to tolerate.

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“Enough” Contents:

• Index
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 The wondrous rebirth of liberalism
• Chapter 2 The death of social democracy
• Chapter 3 The disempowerment of the people
• Chapter 4 Poverty in the midst of plenty
• Chapter 5 The assault of the market
• Chapter 6 The unbearable lightness of commerce
• Chapter 7 A question of civilisation
• Chapter 8 The United States of Europe
• Chapter 9 The spectre of the world market
• Chapter 10 The inevitability of an alternative
• Preface to the 2006 - updated edition
• Chapter 11 Ten years later, in the Netherlands
• Chapter 12 2006: Another world is possible
• Chapter 13 New optimism