Study Task 03 - Defining the Brief

1. Research question: To what extent do hand-made techniques and finishes of packaging design create appeal to the upper-class consumer?

1a. Is it viable...

What is there to study? (Ontology)

• The differences in design for generalised consumers in comparison to design for the upper-class.
• Hand-made techniques.
• Finishes (foiling, embossing etc.)
• Luxury Brand Identity.
• Packaging Design.
• Consumerism.
• Sustainability.

How can we know about it? (Epistemology)

• The experience of packaging at point of purchase in a range of stores targeting differentiating clientele from different levels of social class buying at varying price-points.
• Academic reading materials/journals/essays.
• Books on Packaging design/consumerism/sustainability.
• Research of luxury brand strategy.
• Online content.
• Exploration of finishes and hand made techniques.
• Analysis of existing examples. 

How do we study it? (Methodology)

• Creation of Luxury Packaging using a range of hand-made finishing techniques.
• Feedback regarding outcomes on the effect finishes and hand crafting have on perception of packaging. 
• Comparison of outcome(s) to pre-existing established luxury packaging resolutions. 

2. Defining the design problem:

When it comes to high-end packaging — it is the fine details, accents, personal touches and sheer volume of materials that truly encapsulate the niches of luxury brands and the methodology through which they deliver products. This type of packaging from an environmentalist point of view is unnecessary, boastfully extravagant and grotesquely grandiose, however, to restrict these devices and materials would be to disembody the soul of luxury packaging altogether. With this in mind, there should be greater exploration in to the uses of 100% sustainable materials for luxury retail packaging and the effects this has on the perception of brand and consumer experience - especially uses of materials that have a clearly sustainable aesthetic. 

3. "Client" needs or requirements:

The clients of this explorative project are the likes of Louis Vuitton, Dior, Prada, Tiffany etc. who require point-of-purchase retail packaging to have clear potentials for upwards-comparison and a high-end luxury aesthetic that creates appeal to the high-class consumer and rouses their niche desires for brands/products/packaging that is of a higher cachet to all other competitors. The packaging created during the project should have this consideration at the forefront of production as equal to concerns of sustainability. 

4. Audience:

With packaging design, more must done in order to capture the individuality of the high-end consumer and their perpetual endeavour and ambition to own and experience the less ordinary to meet their niche desires. To successfully create appeal to the typical upper-class consumer, luxury packaging must exploit an abundance of available materials and their ability to be used in forming both tangible and emotional relationships with consumers through theatrics and manipulation of luxury sector cues.

5. Mandatory requirements: 

All resolutions produced should be born out of exploration in to whether material objects can be packaged to optimise the high-end consumers’ appropriation of them whilst still being sustainable — and if so, through what methodology/strategic implementation.

Resolution Requirements:

• Must be 100% recyclable.
• Must use sustainable materials.
• Must appear luxury/high-end.

Study Task 02 - Parody and Pastiche

In Frederic Jameson's 'Postmodernism: Or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism' and Linda Hutcheon's 'The Politics of Postmodernism: Parody and History,' both parties discuss the concept of Postmodernism and the parody it entails.
Jameson's adopts Jean Baudrillard's concept of Simulacrum - this being the concept of a person or thing being replaced or imitated with a representation as opposed to it's reality. He paints a dystopic picture of the post-modernist present, which he believes is influenced by a loss of connection with history resulting in a lack of originality or authenticity. It is Jameson's view that post modernity provides nothing other than emptied out stylisations of history that can be commodified and re-consumed, something which he describes as 'Pastiche.' Speaking on the subject, he claims 'Pastiche is, like parody, the imitation of a peculiar or unique, idiosyncratic style, the wearing of a linguistic mask, speech in a dead language. But it is a neutral practice of such mimicry, without any of parody's ulterior motives, amputated of the satiric impulse, devoid of laughter.' (Jameson, 1991: 17) Here, Jameson identifies that pastiche mindlessly selects styles without reasoning, causing the past to blur into a meaningless weakening of historicity. 
In contrast to Jameson, Hutcheon believes 'through a double process of installing and ironizing, parody signals how present representations come from past ones and what ideological consequences derive from both continuity and difference.' ( Hutcheon, 1989: 93) Her viewpoint here is that post-modern parody does not disregard the context of past representations, however instead uses irony as a tool of acknowledgement that we are inevitably separated from the past.
Ultimately, in regard to post-modernism, Jameson's viewpoint is negatively charged - whereas Hucheon takes on a more positive disposition, criticising Jameson's inability to see the movement as embracive, reproductive, and even reinforcing of culture, drawing from it as inspiration, with development alongside it as a parallel. 

Perhaps the greatest examples of parody and pastiche within the design industry are Andy Warhol's 1960's silk-screen prints featuring Marilyn Monroe. Andy Warhol is best-known for his stylization of imagery derived from brands, logos, pictures and newspaper articles, reflecting the popular culture of the time by re-stylizing ready-made images (typically with repetition or the addition of colours) to transform them into works of his own. 

Andy Warhol: Marilyn Diptych, 1962.

Warhol's works have been reimagined, repeated and reinvented endlessly since their production in the 1960's by artists including Richard Pettibone, Elaine Sturtevant, David LaChappelle and acclaimed street-artist Banksy. Each appropriation of the original work(s) attempts to better reflect the culture and time of re-creation, with even the original artwork by Warhol himself arguably an appropriation of the photographer's original image of Marilyn - a publicity shot by Gene Korman for the film Niagara, made in 1953. For example, Banksy's 'Kate Moss, 2005' is undeniably inspired by Warhol's Marilyn, however instead of Monroe used world-renowned supermodel Kate Moss, reflecting that time's equivalent of Marilyn in terms of fame and prominence within popular culture. Also, David LaChapelle's 'Amanda As Marilyn, 2007' re-analyses Warhol's work through the medium of photography.

Richard Pettibone: Andy Warhol, "Marilyn Monroe," 1964, 1968.

Elaine Sturtevant: Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, 1924-2004.

Amanda As Marilyn (Red) By David LaChapelle, 2007.

Banksy: Kate Moss, 2005.

Another example of parody and pastiche comes in the form of Walker Evans' 'Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife, 1936,' or more specifically the works produced by Sherrie Levine and Michael Mandiberg respectively thereafter. 

Walker Evans: 'Alabama Tenant Farmer Wife, 1936.'

In 1936 Walker Evans photographed the Burroughs, a family of sharecroppers in Depression era Alabama. In 1979 in Sherrie Levine rephotographed Walker Evans' photographs from the exhibition catalog 'First and Last' to produce the series entitled 'After Walker Evans.' This became a landmark of post-modernism - though received criticism as a 'feminist hijacking of patriarchal authority, a critique of the commodification of art, and an elegy on the death of modernism.' Despite the criticism, the series also received praise from those who identified the  series' representation of our inability to create meaning and recapture the past. 

Sherrie Levine: 'After Walker Evans, 1979.' 

In 2001 Michael Mandiberg scanned the same photographs before creating AfterWalkerEvans.com and AfterSherrieLevine.com to 'facilitate their dissemination as a comment on how we come to know information in this burgeoning digital age.'

Study Task 01: Triangulation Exercise

Laura Mulvey - Visual Pleasure and Other Narrative Cinema.

Harvard Reference.

Mulvey, L (2009 [1975]) 'Visual Pleasure and Other Narrative Cinema,' In: 'Visual and Other Pleasures,' Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.

Key Facts about Mulvey. 

• Is a British feminist and film theorist.
• Educated at St Hilda's College, Oxford.
• Talks/writes from a feminist position/viewpoint.
• Is a scholar of film, worked for the BFI (British Film Institute) and now lectures as a Professor of film and media studies at Birkbeck, University of London. 
• Has interest in psychoanalysis and Freudian/Lacanianism theory and its use as a political weapon.
• Has been awarded/has achieved high qualifications (Doctorates).
• Mulvey's most famous piece is the essay 'Visual Pleasure and Other Narrative Cinema' which was originally written in 1973 and published in the Oxford University journal 'Screen' in 1975 (an important time for the women's liberation movement fighting for equal rights and sexual equality) before being republished alongside a more extensive body of work in 'Visual and Other Pleasures' in 2009.
• Is also an avant-garde film maker.

Themes within the text.

• Scopophilia (freudian term relating to visual pleasure and the act of looking good) in relation to film and audiences.
• How people relate to culture and how culture reflects society and its structures/social inequalities.
• Women as sexualised objects, incidental to film itself. How women are objectified both on and off screen, used merely as a sexual symbols on screen for the purpose of the audience exclusively with no relevance to story/plot.
• Views of Budd Boetticher.
• Patriarchy. The male as active and the female as passive (cultural system of organisation). 
• To-be-looked-at-ness.

Key Quotes 

 In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. (Mulvey, L. 2009 [1975] p19)

'What counts is what the heroin provokes, or rather what she represents. She is the one, or rather the love or fear she inspires in the hero, or else the concern he feels for her, who makes him act the way he does. In herself the woman is not the slightest importance.' (Boetticher, Mulvey 2009 [1975] p20)

'Traditionally, the woman displayed has functioned on two levels: as erotic object for the characters within the screen story and as erotic object for the spectator within the auditorium, with a shifting tension between the looks on either side of the screen.' (Mulvey, L 2009 [1975] p20)

'According to the principles of the ruling ideology and the psychical structures that back it up, the male figure cannot bear the burden of sexual objectification.' (Mulvey, L 2009 [1975] p20)

 'The determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly.' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]:19)

John Storey - Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction.

Harvard Reference

Storey, J (2006). Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction. Georgia: University of Georgia Press. 81-83.

Key Facts about Storey.

• Storey is Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, University of Sunderland, UK. 
• He is also a visiting professor at the universities of Henan and Wuhan in China. 
• He has published widely in cultural studies, including nine books. 
• His work has been translated into Chinese,German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbian, Slovene, Spanish, Swedish, Turkishand Ukrainian. 

Themes within the text.

• Scopophilia (freudian term relating to visual pleasure and the act of looking good) in relation to film and audiences.
• Popular Culture.
• Cultural theory.

Key Quotes

'In a world structured by 'sexual inbalance', the pleasure of the gaze has been separated into two distinct positions: men look and women exhibit 'to-be-looked-at-ness'- both playing to and signifying male desire. Women are therefore crucial to the desire of the (male) gaze.' (Storey, [2001] p82) 

'...often leads to the erotic look of the spectator no longer being borne by the look of the male protagonist; producing moments of pure erotic spectacle as the camera holds the female body (often focusing on particular parts of the body) for the unmediated erotic look of the spectator.' (Storey, [2001] p83) 

'Popular Cinema is structured around two moments: moments of narrative and moments of spectacle. The first is associated with the active male, the second with the passive female.  (Storey, [2001] p82) 

'The male spectator fixes his gaze on the hero ('the bearer of the look') to satisfy ego formation, and through the hero to the heroine ('the erotic look'), to satisfy libido.' (Storey, [2001] p82-83) 

Richard Dyer - Stars.

Harvard Reference.

Dyer, R. (1979) Stars. London: Educational Advisory Service, British Film Institute. 187-191.

Key Facts about Dyer.

• Dyer is an English academic currently holding a professorship in the Department of Film Studies at King's College London. 
• He specialises in cinema, particularly Italian cinema, queer theory, and the relationship between entertainment and representations of race, sexuality, and gender.
• He was previously a faculty member of the Film Studies Department at the University of Warwick for many years.
• Has held a number of visiting professorships in the United Kingdom, the United States, Italy, Sweden, Denmark, and Germany.

Themes within the text.

Critical and theoretical approaches to the phenomenon of stardom.

Key Quotes 

'While films do construct positions which limit how they may be understood and interpreted, moviegoers also respond actively as individuals producing a diversity of responses.' (Dyer 1979: 187).

'Male characters on film are made obviously threatening and aggressive in order to avert their erotic potential.' (Dyer 1979: 188).

'Male pin-ups appear in the image to be looking in ways which suggest they are not an erotic object.' (Dyer 1979: 188).

Triangulation

Film scholar Laura Mulvey is most famed for her critically acclaimed essay 'Visual Pleasure and Narrative in Cinema,’ originally written in 1973 and published in the Oxford University journal 'Screen' in 1975 (an important time for the women's liberation movement fighting for equal rights and sexual equality) before being republished alongside a more extensive body of work in 'Visual and Other Pleasures' in 2009.

The essay arguably provides an obvious viewpoint from the perspective of feminist psychoanalysis through her analysis of the patriarchal structures of not only the film industry, but culture as a whole as she delves into the roles of active males and passive females within a society plagued with inequality and stereotype. 

Mulvey dissects the Freudian ideologies regarding scopiophilia (the act of taking pleasure in looking at something) in relation to film and its audiences. Speaking of this, she states 'In a world ordered by sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female.' (Mulvey 2009 [1975]: p19) Her statement suggests that women are exploited as sexualised objects, incidental to film itself, objectified both on and off screen and used as mere sexual symbols for the purpose of the male audience exclusively with no relevance to story/plot — stripping away their identity and condemning them to being slaves of erotica for the soul purpose of male pleasure.

This view is shared by Professor of Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies (University of Sunderland, UK) John Storey in his book ‘Cultural Theory and Popular Culture: An Introduction’ (Storey, 2006). Here, he too attempts to examine scopiophilia —claiming that 'in a world structured by 'sexual imbalance,’ the pleasure of the gaze has been separated into two distinct positions: men look and women exhibit ‘to-be-looked-at-ness,’ both playing to and signifying male desire. Women are therefore crucial to the desire of the (male) gaze' (Storey 2001:82). This perspective amplifies Mulvey’s viewpoint while reinforcing the evident and apparent gender inequality featured in film. 

In addition to the abundance of evident gender inequality Mulvey and Storey concern themselves with in their texts, English academic and professor in the Department of Film Studies at King's College London Richard Dyer also notes in his book 'Stars' (Dyer. 1979)  that 'male characters on film are made obviously threatening and aggressive in order to avert their erotic potential' and that 'male pin-ups appear in the image to be looking in ways which suggest they are not an erotic object.' (Dyer 1979: 188). While Dyer's view initially seems to be parallel to those of Mulvey and Storey, he also argues that 'while films do construct positions which limit how they may be understood and interpreted, moviegoers also respond actively as individuals producing a diversity of responses.' (Dyer 1979: 187). This view is perhaps most applicable to the present day, in which the male form is used increasingly as a means to engage and provide for the female gaze and the successes in the fight for sexual equality become ever-more present within society and culture.