Consuming
Nostalgia: A Semiotic Analysis of the “Generations” Mastercard
It doesn’t seem a stretch to discuss credit cards existing in our
society as signs. Any card,
when looked to first as a signifier, offers a variety of signified
meanings—from a meaning as simple as the ability to buy something
without having money on hand to something as complex as freedom, status,
even America itself. The Generations Mastercard, as an example, perhaps only
demonstrates an awareness of such secondary significations more blatantly
than is sometimes seen in credit card offers, mainly because it
unabashedly draws attention to these secondary connotations as part of its
advertisement.
Before I get too far afield, I should describe the Card. The Generations Mastercard offers a variety of “special
edition” card designs picturing “memorable” scenes of American life
from the Fifties, Sixties, and Seventies.
The images depicted on the cards include denim (the Western
favorite), acoustic guitars (because America is its folk culture?), the
March on Washington (!), and tie-dye designs (because America loves its
protesters, too?). You are
encouraged to choose from such cards as the “Peace” card, the
“Happiness” and “Memories” cards, and, yes, the “Freedom”
card. The fact that this
Mastercard is so blatantly marketed as synonymous with the values depicted
thereon made it difficult, in our in-class group discussion, to focus on
the initial level of signification—the secondary significations were
bleeding through everything. It
may be that because of the heavily advertised ideological marriage of
freedom and capital in our culture the signifier “credit card”
actually produces for many the signified “freedom” (as opposed to a
simple primary signified “ability to pay with credit,” or the more
realistic secondary signifiers of, say, “economic slavery,” “credit
debt,” or “not able or interested to wait until I actually have the
money”).
Certainly, the diction of the Generations Mastercard credit offer
itself betrays these intended significations of American cultural
“values”; the card will provide its bearer with “freedom,”
“convenience,” “status,” and “distinction”—hell, it even
comes to you as an “invitation” (which signifies here not just the
primary “invitation to apply for a credit card” but the secondary
“invitation to join the ranks of happy Americans”)
And of course, this invitation isn’t being extended to just
anyone; you have been “preselected.”
The text of the credit card “invitation” further reinforces not
only what we are to assume the card connotes, but explicitly ties them to
what, in our American cultural system, we give value and use to imply
meaning. The “memorable”
events of the generations appropriated by the Mastercard also work to
create primary and secondary levels of signification.
On the primary level, the events chosen suggest what we as
Americans “remember” and hold dear—rock-and-roll and the Barbie
doll, the fight for civil rights (only a “memory”—a thing of the
past?), disco dancing and smiley faces.
These memories are presented to us in the typical pedagogy of
American “soundbyte” history, and tell us what we are supposed to
value. Our accomplishments
are matched to each other in ways that suggest they are all fixed in
history, and exist on the same level of meaning and importance.
This is what moves us to the deeper connotations, the level of
signification in which we can see how what moments are chosen suggest
something about not just Mastercard, but about America.
Almost all of the events presented on the generational timelines
given point to commodities created for purchase, beyond the Barbie doll
(and all it signifies) we see the opening of the first McDonald’s and the
invention of the Chia Pet. These
are offered for the general signification of shared culture, but paired
with Martin Luther King’s “I Have A Dream” speech, for example, they
suggest that everything is shared and simple and nothing but a fond
memory. There are also other
memorable events that signify on secondary levels.
“Sandy Koufax pitches a perfect game” not only connects America
with its favorite pastime, but equates America with athletic perfection.
“Alan Shepard plays golf on the moon” not only suggests
American accomplishments in space, but on a secondary level seems to me to
connote that we are so free/wealthy/etc. that we went to space for our own
leisure purposes (the moon is our playground). This also hints at a possible American “given,” that
something has true value only insofar as we might exploit (though we
wouldn’t use that word), own it, profit from it, or otherwise colonize
it. Again, with the card
itself and with the signifiers of its text and images, the Generations
Mastercard is not only selling credit, it is selling a particular version
of the American dream.
Obviously, Mastercard’s marketers are very aware of the
connotations surrounding their choices and depictions of American lives
and times. They count on it to sell their credit (would so many of us
really buy into credit debt if it was sold as debt?).
It is perhaps very telling that the Mastercard Generations stop
with the Seventies. What
would we see on the Eighties Mastercard?
The humorous pratfalls of the Iran-Contra hearings?
The Trickle-Down credit card?
The Wall Street “Greed
Is Good” Platinum Deluxe? It’s
perhaps telling, too, about the power of connotations, that we can
simultaneously value “American hard work” (we work hard for our money)
and Platinum credit status (because you’ve earned it?) in our marketing
and popular rhetoric.
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