Hollywood and biofuels: Julia Roberts becomes spokesperson for biofuels company
And now on a lighter tone... America has this long and awkward tradition of Hollywood stars lending themselves to the promotion of commercial products or mildly political programs. For many people, including us Europeans, this is often strange and sometimes embarrassing. Not that we have anything against Julia Roberts becoming the Spokesperson and chair of the Advisory Board of a publicly traded biofuels company, or against country singer superstar Willie Nelson's "Biowillie" thing, let alone Morgan Freeman's decision to join the same company as Ms Roberts. Or how about Leonardo DiCaprio's 'eco-site', and his green energy quest in Costa Rica and Jamaica? Brad Pitt's preoccupation with Really-Serious-Environmentally-Responsible-Architecture for New Orleans?
If these faces sell a product or a project well, then that's allright. And if your perception of these at times mellow actors and actresses becomes surreal because suddenly they promote Something Quite Serious - then so be it. We can safely conclude that these celebrities will not fight for any structural change though. They embody the status quo and cultural monotony to the fullest.
But what if you want to promote another paradigm based on less sexy principles like social justice, environmental retribution, energy justice, re-claiming ownership over the global commons... ? Then putting a face that represents the gratuituousness of a globalist entertainment industry on it, won't work. Neither will the tradition of 'compassion' and 'charity' do as it is being currently revived. In that case, we need something else, another logic, not a glam marketing strategy. Should we use our own global icons of resistance - Hugo Chavez, Lula da Silva, Evo Morales -, or should we refer to the anonimity of a collective swarm of organisations, such as the altermondialist movement? Even the latter have already been called 'liberalo-communist' by a European intellectual who's been inspirational to us (and who awkwardly equated them with Bill Gates and George Soros who, according to Zizek, are 'libcoms' par excellence...).
It's time to think of a serious marketing strategy for the promotion of bioenergy's potential to bring social justice to the 'damned of the earth'. It will have to be one where a series of extremely complex historical, social, economic and environmental problems have to be condensed into a single message. One thing is certain though, Hollywood will probably not be very useful to us. Even though we collectively melt when Julia smiles that natural, perpetually renewable smile of hers...
[Light entry ends here.]
ethanol :: biodiesel :: biobutanol :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: Africa ::
If these faces sell a product or a project well, then that's allright. And if your perception of these at times mellow actors and actresses becomes surreal because suddenly they promote Something Quite Serious - then so be it. We can safely conclude that these celebrities will not fight for any structural change though. They embody the status quo and cultural monotony to the fullest.
But what if you want to promote another paradigm based on less sexy principles like social justice, environmental retribution, energy justice, re-claiming ownership over the global commons... ? Then putting a face that represents the gratuituousness of a globalist entertainment industry on it, won't work. Neither will the tradition of 'compassion' and 'charity' do as it is being currently revived. In that case, we need something else, another logic, not a glam marketing strategy. Should we use our own global icons of resistance - Hugo Chavez, Lula da Silva, Evo Morales -, or should we refer to the anonimity of a collective swarm of organisations, such as the altermondialist movement? Even the latter have already been called 'liberalo-communist' by a European intellectual who's been inspirational to us (and who awkwardly equated them with Bill Gates and George Soros who, according to Zizek, are 'libcoms' par excellence...).
It's time to think of a serious marketing strategy for the promotion of bioenergy's potential to bring social justice to the 'damned of the earth'. It will have to be one where a series of extremely complex historical, social, economic and environmental problems have to be condensed into a single message. One thing is certain though, Hollywood will probably not be very useful to us. Even though we collectively melt when Julia smiles that natural, perpetually renewable smile of hers...
[Light entry ends here.]
ethanol :: biodiesel :: biobutanol :: biomass :: bioenergy :: biofuels :: energy :: sustainability :: Africa ::
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