Truth Vaccine

 In his collection Mythologies, the French critic Roland Barthes describes at one point a technique in counter-intuitive advertising which he dubs "Operation Astra." The process works like this: first, spend some time criticizing your own product. Acknowledge and emphasize all of its most notorious flaws. Outdo your very critics in deprecating your wares. This old thing? Terrible. Look at it! It's tattered; moldy; it has holes. Who'd want it?

This gains you credibility in the eyes of a jaded and leery public, sick of being told what to do and buy. 

Then, once you have them on your side—once you show you agree with all of their criticisms, and indeed have preempted them—then you spring the turn. And yet, you say, even with all these flaws... is there not something... authentic? Is there not something earthy, appealing... Can we not bring you to love this product in spite of these flaws—nay, because of them, for they make it what it is, and if the product did not have them it would not be true to itself? 

And so, what began as an apparent effort at self-effacement becomes a sly method of self-promotion. The advertiser first won the public's trust by seeming to tell the truth for a change about their product. How refreshing! But, Barthes writes, this dash of truth is offered up in a carefully controlled and limited quantity, for purposes of a greater deception. It operates thus as a "truth vaccine" that inoculates the viewer, curing them of their doubt and eliminating their risk of infection by any further skepticism. The sales pitch can therefore enter all the more unimpeded when it comes. 

What began as a criticism of a product has thus ended as the consummate advertisement for it. 

As Barthes shows, this technique could be used to sell everything from margarine (we know that margarine doesn't have all the fancy pedigree of real butter; we know its reputation has never been stellar; and yet...) to the Christian Church and the U.S. military. And indeed, it was widely adopted by Madison Avenue in the years after Barthes wrote on the subject. Viz. the Avis "We Try Harder" campaign, the Volkswagen "Lemon" advertisements, and other milestones in the history of self-deprecating and pseudo-humble ad copy. 

But perhaps the most virtuoso performance yet in this genre—the symphony to these earlier mere tone-poems—has got to be this summer's blockbuster mega-hit: Barbie. Here, after all, is essentially a two-hour commercial for a toy, sponsored by Mattel and chock-full of product placement. Yet, it has won the praise of critics and the intelligentsia the nation over as a satire and think-piece for our time, a great feminist manifesto, a stirring and timely work of social criticism. How was this sleight of hand achieved? By applying the methods of "Operation Astra" with the deftness of a surgeon. 

After all, the film gives voice to all the familiar criticism of Barbie as a product—characters point out that it sets up an impossible set of expectations for women and girls, that it contributes to harmful negative body image and self-doubt, that it represents patriarchal hypocrisy in so far as it is ostensibly marketed toward girls and represents empowerment yet is produced by and enriches an historically male-dominated company and industry (and indeed, the film actually exaggerates this last point by implausibly portraying the contemporary Mattel board and C-suite as staffed exclusively by men). 

All of these are criticisms people have been making of Barbie for the last half-century at least, and many therefore feel dated. (Notably, though, the film does not mention the environmental and potential health impacts of making and selling an unending supply of plastic—perhaps this would hit too close to home or prove too actionable a criticism for the film's corporate sponsors to tolerate.)

The very fact that these objections to the product are so notorious, however, makes us trust the film more when it gives voice to them. It persuades us the filmmakers are on our side. Wow, we think—they actually get it! They know everything wrong with this product! They haven't been oblivious to all the criticism voiced over the last many decades. They can sound just as jaded about their own product as we are!

And then, of course, comes the turn. After acknowledging all the criticisms, after the film's central human characters in the real world berate Barbie for the harm she has done to women and girls—then, even with all these objections validated—Barbie still saves the day and comes to represent the ideals of empowerment and self-actualization. 

At the lowest point of the film's action, when Barbie herself is prepared to give up, her critics take her side. The loudest critics of the product who had protested against her most vehemently in the film are the ones to redeem the faith. "Come on," they say—or words to this effect, "Don't give up! Maybe Barbie does represent everything positive and life-affirming in the world after all—even with all of her flaws!"

This is Operation Astra at its finest. See if it is not precisely parallel to the method as Barthes describes it: Take the Church, he gives as an example. "[S]peak in a sufficiently brilliant way of its hypocrisy, the narrow-mindedness of its bigots, show how all this can be murderous, hide none of the miseries of the faith. And then, in extremis, reveal that the Letter, however ungrateful, is a way to salvation for even its victims, and justify such moral rigorism by the sanctity of those it overwhelms." (Howard trans. throughout) Is this not precisely the plot structure of Barbie? 

And so, what appears as a social criticism or a self-criticism is in fact a mystification in textbook Barthesian form. The film's criticism of its own product is really a kind of inoculation or vaccine against the type of critique that would go all the distance, culminating in an actual rejection of the product. It allows precisely that amount of deprecation of its own wares that would not push the would-be buyer to put the toy box back on the shelf. "Barbie?" the film says, "That old thing? What a hoary old patriarchal scam! And yet... even then... does it not still represent something greater...?"

And so we buy it anyways, and go on buying it, and do so now with pride and conviction—just as the film's sponsors desire. And all at once, as Barthes writes, "There we are, rid of a prejudice that used to cost us dear, too dear, that used to cost us too many scruples, too many rebellions, too many battles, and too much solitude."