The Abercrombie Audience

"It is all about power of course... In the end... The power to seduce... the luminous event and the drip, drip, drip of ideology." (Silverstone 1999)

I always thought of myself as an active audience, even a resistant audience. The type that not only sees objects but notices them as signs, symbols, constructs, facades, mirrors, trick-mirrors, representations. Like, I watch tv ads but read them against-the-grain, pointing to the artifice of the image and the insincerity of their address. I consume trash tv but I am not a couch potato; I am in on the joke. Or so I thought.

When I entered Abercrombie and Fitch's flagship store in London, I was, yes, seduced by the luminous event and felt the drip, drip, drip of ideology. And of my own drooling too. For starters, the store-greeter is a superbuff model with his shirt off.

The whole place was moody dark instead of department store-bright. The music was pounding and loud, like at a gay nightclub, instead of the typical soft background fare. The entire store--and all the clothes--smelled like your jock classmate's after-shave. And the salesmen were, umm, real live moWdels displaying their oiled biceps.

They'd be such teases too with their shirts riding up to reveal their undie-straps when they reach for that shirt you like on the top shelf.

Needless to say, I was a powerless audience. I blew off wads of cash. Though you forget about it when you're there: I think it was highly strategic that they assigned the prettiest guy as the cashier in order to wipe your guilt away at the crucial minute. A minute you'd wish to last for an eternity. Yeah, I swear, he was thatcute.

The media scholar Ien Ang once said, "The active audience is not a powerful audience." And to that I say, as I always do apparently, "ABS-SOLUTELY."