I had quite a sobering lunch this week. It was with Bill Griffin, the former CEO of Kiss FM and now the strategy director of a big London ad agency. The main topic of conversation was the cultural impact of the recession and Barack Obama’s election. Would brands that are closely associated with the boom era, such as Gucci and Prada, need to reinvent themselves in order to survive? This, in turn, led to a discussion of journalists and which ones are likely to go to the wall over the next 12 months. He took the view that the cynical, hard-bitten, wise-cracking style of many veteran hacks is out of step with the new, sombre mood of the times.
‘Are you saying I need to get a new act?’
‘You might want to think about tweaking your brand,’ he said. ‘Just standing on the sidelines and sniping may not win you many friends at the moment.’
I wonder if he is right. As a cynical, hard-bitten, wise-cracking journalist, I was quick to point out that plenty of pundits have come a cropper in the past by overestimating the significance of things like the credit crunch and the Obama effect. For instance, when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, one commentator predicted that people would ‘never laugh again’ and, more recently, 9/11 produced a series of announcements about the rebirth of serious journalism. ‘There’s going to be a seismic change,’ said Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair. ‘I think it’s the end of the age of irony.’
In fact, neither event had much impact on the overall tone of the culture. If anything, the public’s appetite for celebrity tittle-tattle increased after 9/11, as witnessed by the success of magazines like US Weekly and Heat. True, Hollywood released a dozen or so ‘serious’ films about the war on terror, but no one went to see them. The age of substance failed to materialise and Graydon Carter had to backtrack. ‘Only a fool would declare the end of irony,’ he joked, less than a month later. ‘I said it was the end of the age of ironing.’
Bill Griffin wasn’t convinced by this. He acknowledged that a single big event like the Kennedy assassination might not produce a sea change, but the combination of Obama’s victory and the global financial collapse meant we were living in a new paradigm. ‘All the things that seemed really cool about 12 months ago — private jets, Aston Martins, hedge funds — have suddenly become really unfashionable,’ he said. ‘Most of my friends are thinking about retraining as teachers.’
‘Okay, suppose I did reinvent myself as a more serious journalist. Suppose I woke up tomorrow and claimed to have had a Damascene conversion after reading The Audacity of Hope. Wouldn’t that be precisely the sort of cynical, careerist move that you’re claiming has gone out of fashion? Wouldn’t it be more in keeping with the new, authentic spirit of the age to remain true to myself?’
‘And carry on being a selfish tosser?’
‘Exactly.’
Of course, Bill is right to sound a note of caution. In his world, brands that fail to keep in lockstep with the zeitgeist are destined to fail. But I’m reluctant to accept that journalists and commentators are brands in their own right and are obliged to behave as such. For one thing, it would be professional suicide to just bend with the wind, taking up whatever position you think is ‘safe’. Not much scope for a lively ‘disco’ on the Today programme there.
More importantly, when I reflected on our conversation I realised it was fundamentally misguided. To imagine that there is such a thing as a spirit of the age, and all we have to do in order to prosper is work out which direction it’s heading in, is to pretend we have more control over our destinies that we do. And this seems particularly true at present. Insofar as the cultural moment we’re living through has a defining characteristic, it is the near total uncertainty about the future. When it comes to the global economy, the old adage about Hollywood applies: ‘No one knows anything.’ Some people will prosper in the next few years, to be sure, and they will undoubtedly claim it was due to their superior powers of foresight, but the truth is we’re all subject to forces entirely beyond our control. Like flies to wanton boys are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.
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