This a-hole has a posse.

Posted by Maximum Fun on 8th May 2006

The Times today has an interesting piece on the new breed of low-print-run, high-gloss lifestyle magazines. The focus is Swindle, a relatively new mag that is apparently re-inventing the idea of the zine for Generation Y. (It also mentions, Lemon, a magazine which apparently is SCENTED).

About 3/4 of the way in, the piece quotes Shepard Fairey, who’s one of the two creators of Swindle. They call him a “36-year-old street artist turned marketing guru.” He’s better known to the world as the creator of Obey and those stickers and wheatpastes that say, “Andre the Giant Has A Posse.”

When I first started seeing the posters in San Francisco, maybe ten years ago, there was a captivating mystery to them. When I learned more about Fairey, I was doubley captivated… the wheatpastes were intended as a sort of satire of consumer culture, an advertisement for a product which didn’t exist… agitprop for a nonexistent ideology.

Of course, since those posters became a phenomenon, Fairey has basically pooped upon his original idea by making his “Obey Giant” brand into just that — a brand.

I’m not one to accuse people of selling out — I know we all have to make a living, and I would have had no problem with Fairey using his aesthetic skill and renown to teach big companies to be cool or whatever. But what he did really took selling out to a new level.

And then I read this article, and read quotes like this:

“We want the advertising to sort of blend with the content,” Mr. Fairey said on the phone from his Los Angeles marketing firm, Studio One, which counts 20th Century Fox and Coca-Cola as clients. “When there’s an ad that doesn’t seem simpatico, we think it messes up the feng shui of the magazine.”

Barf city, right?

No amount of ironic magazine naming can wash out that stain.