Benson & Hedges -sytyttimellä

Kulutustavaroiden ja tavaramerkkikerronnan ulottuvuuksia vuosituhannen vaihteen suomalaisessa romaanissa

• Jussi Ojajärvi Oulun yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74871

Abstract

With the Benson & Hedges Lighter Dimensions of Commodities and Trademark Narration in the Finnish Novel around the Year 2000

During the 1990s, it became more common in the Finnish novel to use trade marks in narration. How should we interpret this role of trade marks and, generally speaking, of com¬modities?

On the one hand, trademark narration often tries to catch the meaningful¬ness of the growth of consumer culture in Finland from the 1960s to the 1980s. On the other hand, it is a practice of the more recent, narrating world, and represents commodification, i.e. the power of the commodity form in the construction of reality. Capitalism makes commodities the center of social memory.

The junctures of consumption and identity are connected to nostalgia, performativity and class difference. The retro-nostalgic tone of narration emerges in the context of commodity aesthetics and capitalist outdating of products. In the stories the individual subject (usually teenage, middle-class, or feminine) may cherish the contemporary commodities as representatives of a new (as opposed to traditional and more narrow) cultural space; however, consumption in itself may become a binding norm. Moreover, the resources and conventions of consumption are signs of class.

Methodologically, it is crucial to consider the relation of these texts to the context of capitalism. Texts full of commodities may naturalise consumption and the level of commodification in contemporary capitalism. However, texts that poetically foreground consumption may also keep literary distance to it, and thus, in a way, put it under consideration. Finally, texts that are clearly counter-hegemonic have several elements and levels which deconstruct the self-evident nature of consumption and the shining of trademarks. Interpreting texts narrating with commodities and trademarks, it has to be asked how can we see the larger context of capitalism behind the consumeristic surface.