Mythmaking in the Marketplace
Admirable, lovable, equal, normal . . . . Does it matter if any of these commercial images for LesBiGays is true? Does it matter if the marketplace has merely created LesBiGay myths for the larger masses? Any meaningful answer to these questions depends entirely on a profound understanding of commercial mythmaking. Indeed, American society's mythmaking may turn the very wheels of its commerce.
Commercial myths are generally spun for both aspirational and regulatory reasons.102 Aspirationally, all marketplace myths enrich the values that promote capitalism's preservation and progress.103 America's advertising stories, its entertainment stories, and its business stories all become its cultural stories--its noble tales for commerce. The aspirational mythmakers aim high, equating capitalism with all of America's most deeply treasured ideals of democracy, liberty, and equality, even though they may know that commerce's practices will sometimes fall low, equating capitalism with individual disenfranchisement, oppression, and inequality. By the mythmakers' efforts, then, many might strive for self-realization through commercial reward.
The regulatory functions of marketplace myths are no less important, albeit much less venerable. Capitalism's very survival requires that it commodify the substance and style of any serious dissent, thereby rendering that dissent both powerless and profitable.104 As free speech theorists Ronald Collins and David Skover observe:
Young and old alike are invited to reveal their rebel stripes by donning a James Dean, John Wesley Harding, or Axl Rose T-shirt. For the more radical, Malcolm X baseball caps are commercially available. Rappers, punks, and Mapplethorpe types all may, to paraphrase Shakespeare, strut and fret their hour upon the stage of pop life and then be seen and heard no more.105
Counterculture thus becomes one of commerce's prime commodities. By the mythmakers' efforts, then, many might "radicalize" themselves for conspicuous consumption.
