Authors:Mel Campbell Source: Age, The (Melbourne), 21/05/2009 Abstract:By emphasising human creativity over base profit motives, handmade things beg us to like them and their creators. ISSN: 03126307 Accession Number: SYD-5PB0WLK0IR410NAQJ40V Edition: First, Section: News, pg. 17 ~~~~~~~~ Mel Campbell By emphasising human creativity over base profit motives, handmade things beg us to like them and their creators. IT'S now 10 years since Fight Club was out in cinemas. In 1999, appalled critics called David Fincher's visceral, hallucinatory rendition of Chuck Palahniuk's debut novel "morally irresponsible". But when I watched it last Sunday night, it struck me that Fight Club remains a biting satire of the cuddly, caring face we put on rampant consumerism. As the camera pans around the narrator's Ikea-furnished apartment, he describes "the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever". Many people are now aware of "greenwashing": cynical attempts to appeal to environmentally conscious consumers by devising spuriously green-friendly marketing claims for products. But making things appear lovingly handmade is an equally cynical marketing technique. In a blog post last July, Amy Shaw of Brooklyn handmade goods shop Greenjeans dubbed this practice "handwashing". By emphasising human creativity over base profit motives, handmade things beg us to like them and their creators - which is why art, design, fashion, mass-manufactured goods and even pop culture are pitching themselves to consumers with a thick, reassuring dollop of the handmade. Wonky arts and crafts abound in film and TV, from Napoleon Dynamite's liger portraiture to the foil-and-cardboard robot suits from Flight of the Conchords. Shadowplay Studio even describes its opening titles for Juno as handmade. And American author Reif Larsen's new novel, The Selected Works of T.S.Spivet, sparked a frenzied bidding war among publishers, largely over its charmingly detailed drawings. King of the handmade aesthetic is director Michel Gondry, who brought us hand-painted calendars in The Science of Sleep and the notion of "sweding" in Be Kind Rewind - which Hugh Jackman borrowed for this year's Oscars opening montage. On his personal website, Gondry even offers to sketch your portrait. In an uncertain economic climate, handmade things have acquired virtuous new connotations of resourcefulness and thrift, but the handmade aesthetic is actually far more about luxury than paucity, especially a luxury of time. In the presence of convenience meals and overtime at work, slow-cooking stews or hand-stitching tea towels are pleasant ways to spend an afternoon rather than the onerous chores they once were. The deliberately messy, clumsy style of many self-consciously handmade things also harks back to childhood. So do low-tech media, including crayons, coloured pencils and paper collage, and repurposed kiddie paraphernalia such as toys and board game pieces. There's something endearing about imagining the makers of handmade things beavering away, perhaps with tongues protruding in childlike concentration. Oddly, there's nothing especially endearing about child sweatshop labour. But it's exactly this contrast with the anonymity of mass-production and the intangibility of digital culture that makes "handwashed" products so wholesome and reassuring. Knitted garments come with photographs of the sheep that was shorn to produce the yarn. Restaurateurs personally gather wild herbs and seaweed to make salads. And last year, the internet was abuzz when someone discovered their new Apple iPhone already contained photos - of the Chinese teenager who had assembled it. Perhaps Steve Jobs wished he had thought of that himself. Fetishising handmade things is a tiny protest against the tyrannical consumer cycle of newness and obsolescence. But ultimately, it's just another kind of consumerism. "You're not your f---ing khakis!" Tyler Durden tells the narrator in Fight Club. But you are more likely to feel a personal connection to khakis whose origins clearly involve real people. Muddying these waters is the genuinely increasing popularity of handmade goods, as chronicled in countless zeitgeisty newspaper features and Faythe Levine's documentary film Handmade Nation. Small producers are trying to make money from their handiwork at weekend markets, in niche boutiques, and through websites such as Georgie Love and Etsy. But how can cottage industrialists compete with large companies that trade off the handmade aesthetic, and sometimes even their actual work? It's not unknown these days for illustrators to stumble across big brands who are using their images - without attribution or payment - on T-shirts and other merchandise. Making things by hand is undeniably satisfying. It's also laudable to support small sellers of handmade goods. But let's not forget that Fight Club's Tyler Durden took the piss out of the rich by selling their liposucked fat back to them as luxury soap, ready for handwashing. ________________________________________ Copyright 2009 John Fairfax Publications Pty Limited. www.theage.com.au. Not available for re-distribution.