JITTERY JOE –– I saw the documentary Starbucking (2006) earlier this year and was thoroughly captivated by its protagonist, Winter. I was so enthralled by all the rich implications of this work that I decided to show it to my popular culture class. The premise of the film is rather straightforward: to capture the overly caffeneited, jittery Winter (formerly named Rafael Lozano) through his life goal of visiting every Starbucks in the world. Hence the noun turned verb. Starbucking: the act of following the corporation and never losing sight of that objective. «Nothing matters but Starbucks,» Winter admits, emphasizing, later on, that «a goal is a goal, pointless as it may be.» When I asked my students about their impressions, some questioned his sanity. I wanted to see beyond the "weirdness," however, for Winter made me think a great deal about Starbucks as a permanent marker of individual memory. In rejecting the formalities of his first and last names, Winter willfully loses (or misplaces) any links to his territories of origins. By attaching his self to a mega brand, he embodies a level of thinking objectification that humanly performs the product. Winter re-traces the steps of the multinational corporation, and it proves exhausting. His goal is more like a trajectory of achievement (will he ever finish this remarkable accomplishment? at what point will he quit?) where his "weirdness" becomes, in effect, what Laura Marks calls the postcolonial grotesque. This weirdness pushes one to think about why Winter's objectives appear as "abnormal," while the rapid growth of the corporation, colonizing landscapes and making "our" world more uniform, is considered "normal" and "natural"? In other words, why should we seek a language that rationalizes Winter's motivations in a culture that demands our attention from so many directions? If, for some, globalization brings discontent, for Winter it brings certainty, a universality and connection with the American spaces that can only recognize him through the world of the commodity. It is paradoxical, then, that Winter's road story of how it is that he came to visit Starbucks after Starbucks echoes the very reason that motivated him for the Starbucks project: his outsiderness. Winter's outsider snapshots of Starbucks Americana are the ones doing the archiving. . . .
10.4.08
JITTERY JOE –– I saw the documentary Starbucking (2006) earlier this year and was thoroughly captivated by its protagonist, Winter. I was so enthralled by all the rich implications of this work that I decided to show it to my popular culture class. The premise of the film is rather straightforward: to capture the overly caffeneited, jittery Winter (formerly named Rafael Lozano) through his life goal of visiting every Starbucks in the world. Hence the noun turned verb. Starbucking: the act of following the corporation and never losing sight of that objective. «Nothing matters but Starbucks,» Winter admits, emphasizing, later on, that «a goal is a goal, pointless as it may be.» When I asked my students about their impressions, some questioned his sanity. I wanted to see beyond the "weirdness," however, for Winter made me think a great deal about Starbucks as a permanent marker of individual memory. In rejecting the formalities of his first and last names, Winter willfully loses (or misplaces) any links to his territories of origins. By attaching his self to a mega brand, he embodies a level of thinking objectification that humanly performs the product. Winter re-traces the steps of the multinational corporation, and it proves exhausting. His goal is more like a trajectory of achievement (will he ever finish this remarkable accomplishment? at what point will he quit?) where his "weirdness" becomes, in effect, what Laura Marks calls the postcolonial grotesque. This weirdness pushes one to think about why Winter's objectives appear as "abnormal," while the rapid growth of the corporation, colonizing landscapes and making "our" world more uniform, is considered "normal" and "natural"? In other words, why should we seek a language that rationalizes Winter's motivations in a culture that demands our attention from so many directions? If, for some, globalization brings discontent, for Winter it brings certainty, a universality and connection with the American spaces that can only recognize him through the world of the commodity. It is paradoxical, then, that Winter's road story of how it is that he came to visit Starbucks after Starbucks echoes the very reason that motivated him for the Starbucks project: his outsiderness. Winter's outsider snapshots of Starbucks Americana are the ones doing the archiving. . . .
