It is easy to
tune into the discussion about different brewing standards and methods of
enjoyment that exist throughout cultures across the globe, but what about the
aesthetics of advertising? What about the received ideas within the culture
that shape the normative (or at the very least most prominent) rhetoric
constructed around daily coffee enjoyment? Are those things worth comparing?
Obviously I think the answers are yes I say yes we can yes.
And well we're
on the subject, let's start by looking at the guiding metaphor used to
advertise the sensory appeal of coffee in almost every French coffee commercial
you will ever see (or, at least, every French coffee commercial I have seen;
and I have seen my fare share) - sex. Given the relationship between sexuality,
sensuality, and commodity fetishization that exists in the French media culture,
and its relevance to coffee products and coffee consumption, the use of this
metaphor makes perfect sense. The thing that becomes interesting about this
sexy rhetoric when it's positioned within a more global (or, at least
transatlantic) conversation is the role the concept of enjoyment plays in the
advertising of coffee as a commodity.
Anyone who has
seen an American coffee commercial knows the same approach isn't exactly taken
in the States. When asked to conjure up the ideas associated with coffee
advertising in America, most people will probably come up with something about
a man waking up in the morning, steam rising from a pot of bold, black coffee,
and the suggestion of preparing for the day's work. Why do we always like our
coffee bold? Is it because the word is a more attractive synonym for bitter
(hint: yes) or is it because there is something about the strength implied by
the word that links coffee flavor to the productivity associated with caffeine
intake? Although the French may like their coffee sensuous, Americans would
appear to like it efficient.
So who's got it
right? Do we want or coffee sexy? Do we want our coffee strong? And why can't
we have it both ways?
The rhetorical
difference between enjoyment and productivity as they apply to coffee
consumption is pretty easy to get a sense of. The irony is that there is a
disconnect between these (supposedly) competing discourses and the coffee
characteristics from which they draw - the French ads just tend to combine
sexually evocative imagery with capsules and liquid, while the American ads
simply paint mornings and beginning the workday against some nebulous pastoral
backdrop. Taste and caffeine content are only articulated in vaporous,
metaphorical imagery (which is a wise choice because they certainly won't
inhere in the products being advertised), and most of the rhetorical work done
in these ads ties their discourses to the product in which the coffee in
packaged, rather than the coffee itself.
So now we have
an interrelated set of questions: on the strong-sexy spectrum of coffee
advertising (yes, that is now the technical term), where do we tend to place
our coffee based on the way it is advertised to us; secondly, what connections
and disconnections exist between the discourses created around our coffee and
the aesthetic and flavor-related qualities brewed into our coffee?
Thinking about the
drink in this split way forces us to view it in a sort of parallax, as we move
back-and-forth between the coffee in our heads and the coffee in our hands.
What exists in the gap between these split views of what we drink? Is it a
desire for productivity? Is it a desire for sensuous enjoyment? A desire for
status, or simply for sugar? The ways in which we conceive of our coffee shows
what a deep and integral role it plays in our personal and cultural lives.
