19 May 2008

The new/old world order


Just when I think the promotion of super-elite status can't get any more ridiculous, any more superlative, any more unashamedly narcissistic, I find this advert in the latest issue of Condé Nast Traveler magazine. In addition to the synthetic personalization of the tag line (see also "your needs always come first"), here we find an explicitly racialized and gendered ordering of the world: our European Neocolonial Man in first class, the East Asian woman in steerage. There he is with all the "personal space, individual privacy and attention" he desires. And there she is, clearly very happy with her lot in life - maybe even writing a poem or a diary entry about it all.