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Crociate contro la superficie. Scuola di Francoforte, puritani e femministe cazziano capitalisti, cattolici e veline usando più o meno le stesse parole.
“… To such critics, form is dangerously seductive, because it allows the sensory to override the rational… An appealing package can make you believe that Nazis are good, or that colas are distinguishable... The very power of aesthetics makes its value suspect… “In advertising, packaging, product design, and corporate identity, the power of provocative surfaces speaks to the eye’s mind, overshadowing matters of quality or substance oiling the machinery of gratification and instant desire”… “hedonism, is the world of fashion, photography, advertising, television, travel. It is a world of make-believe”… Frankfurt School Marxists Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer… in commercial products… see ornament and variety not as goods that we value for their own sakes but as tools for creating false desire… Women’s fashion and fashion photography exemplify the same falsehood as advertising: “this task of selling illusions, the persuasions of the witches’ craft”… Preachers warned against women’s makeup, which “takes the pencill out of God’s hand,” defying nature and divine will. “What a contempt of God is this, to preferre the worke of thine owne finger to the worke of God?” exclaimed one writer condemning cosmetics… Naomi Wolf advocates “civil rights for women that will entitle a woman to say that she’d rather look like herself than some ‘beautiful’ young stranger.” Wolf praises the “female identity” affirmed by women who refuse to alter their appearance with makeup, hair dye, or cosmetic surgery: “a woman’s determination to show her loyalty—in the face of a beauty myth as powerful as myths about white supremacy—to her age, her shape, her self, her life.” Except those born with exceptional natural beauty, authenticity and aesthetics are, in this vision, inevitably at odds. Remaining true to oneself means eschewing artifice…
... This reasoning combines the oversimplified Maslovian idea, “aesthetics is a luxury,” with a puritanical conviction that luxury is waste...
… The claim is unfalsifiable, since the more we try to proclaim the real value we attach to look and feel, the more we demonstrate just how duped we are… Viscerally, if not intellectually, we’re convinced that style does matter, that look and feel add something important to our lives. We ignore the preachers and behave as if aesthetics does have real value. We cherish streamlined artifacts, unconcerned that they do not really move through space. We find spiritual uplift in pageantry and music… If you don’t know how to dress, then what else don’t you know? Do you know how to advise students or grade papers? The clothes are part of the judgment of the mind…
Aesthetics is not a luxury, but a universal human desire. Those anticapitalists who criticize markets for luring consumers into wanting more than their basic needs, and those capitalists who scoff at aesthetics for detracting from serious work, are missing a fundamental fact of human nature… Good Design is not about the perfect thing anymore, but about helping a lot of different people build their own personal identities…
The Substance of Style: How the Rise of Aesthetic Value Is Remaking Commerce, Culture, and Consciousness by Virginia Postrel
