Or more importantly, is it uncool?
There was a time not too long ago when all youth marketers wanted to do was associate themselves with supposedly wild adventure-sport enthusiasts. Mountain Dew anyone? Maybe it’s just me, but I think it’s become decidedly uncool to climb mountains or go white-water rafting now. Maybe it has something to do with plaid becoming uncool because of the hillbilly association now that every man and his dog wants too portray themselves as tree-hugging liberals.
It’s not that I don’t like adventure. I’ve re-read Treasure Island more times than I can remember and even own the Spitting Image version. So I can sign on the parchment with my blood if you like. But it’s the determined pursuit of adventure as a hobby that somehow rings false. Thor Heyerdahl took the Kon-Tiki voyage to prove a point. And he did it in a courageous, ballsy way. If he did it simply because he wanted to endure the elements, its pure masochism. Or is there more to it?
There are some people on this earth for whom wildness is a predisposition. Hemingway famously explained his ways in the opening lines of The Snows Of Kilimanjaro.
“Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Its western summit is called the Masai "Ngaje Ngai," the House of God. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude.”
A biologist would have a plausible explanation, no doubt. Maybe it was driven out of its natural habitat by some threat and was injured before it could make its way to safety. Maybe some tribesmen killed it and dragged it there as a talisman.
To suppose it was driven there by wanderlust or curiosity is to imply that the leopard is either an aberration or that there is an instinct for curiosity within animals to seek newer territory or whatever.
Hemingway was evidently one that identified with the latter explanation. But there’s a difference between Hemingway and the spandex-clad Finnish lice-head who climbs Kanchenjunga for the 13th time. One is driven by his own unrest, his wild spirit and natural curiosity. The other is an adrenaline-junkie. One is unquestionably cool. The other’s coolness is what I question.
Fortunately, the world of fashion and marketing has come to realise this and we won’t be subjected to X-Sports in ads for the time being. Or until Lindsay Lohan wears plaid knickers. What? She did that already? God help us.
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3 comments:
I'm deeply distrustful of the sort of adventurism featured in those Mounting Spew commercials. I tend to identify it with "explorations" of the New World, the kind that led to the extermination of entire civilizations. I tend to conflate adventure, exploration and imperialism but I'm an extremist and a lunatic so not to worry. I was a soda addict back in the States but I never could stand Mounting Spew. It looked and still looks like beer piss. I didn't like Doctor Pecker either. I don't know if they sell Doctor Pecker outside the States. Let's hope they don't. Another great post. Keep coming, I mean keep em coming.
Plaid is uncool?
nirmal, you're just getting old man.
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