The unbearable ease of depoliticization

Looking at how industries make a profit critically through Marxist theory, it is no wonder that at some point we notice how companies and individuals are repackaging intrinsically political content to be more palatable to sell to the masses, ignoring its true meaning and worth, even erasing its social significance in the process.

In "The unbearable ease of depoliticization" author Sonja Leboš explores how the western capitalist system has taken symbolic statues from former Yugoslavia and twisted them into a profitable aesthetic, painting it as something mystical and even otherworldly that the western world could gawk at and profit from. 

She mentions the book "Spomenik" by Jan Kempenaers, a photographer with a doctorate who thought it wise to take what are culturally significant statues commemorating the deaths of brave people and soldiers that lost their lives in war and rebrand them as nothing more than something weirdly picturesque, not even doing the courtesy of naming their artists or locations. After that by logic of safety the same idea and concept was sold again by different companies and individuals such as the work “Spomeniks: The Monuments of Former Yugoslavia. Introduction to the work of Jan Kempenaers” by Willem Jan Neutelings and “Spomeniks” by Jonathan Jimenez.

The movement "Secret mapping experiment" projected other art onto the statues themselves, transforming them and their meaning, the company "Yunicorn" doing the same, marketing them as trendy and fashionable pins for American consumers. This entire process is known as synergy, repurposing something for different avenues of profit.

But its not enough to insult with erasure, some take it to spectacle like the Australian eyewear company "Valley Eyewear", using a picture of Bogdan Bogdanović's monument for an advertisement. This caused quite justified backlash. But no publicity is bad publicity as their website gained traffic from the controversy.

Yugoslavian monuments are not the only example of how capitalism seeks to profit of cultural and political significance. What consumers might consider harmless fun marketed as something unique and trendy could actually be a dangerous profiting tactic of depoliticization. So whether you're wearing a Native American headdress at a festival or a Yugoslavian monument as a pin, remember that whatever we consume has some background that can have certain significance beyond just someone elses profit off our lack of knowledge.

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