Are ideas and art just more things to buy, another set of commodities for sale in the vast mall of America? On one level, yes. For better and for worse, yes. The whole mission of the behemoths of the cultural industrial complex, companies like AOL Time Warner and Viacom, is to sell product, to move units.

But music and stories and movies are also different. We like to believe that the best and most interesting artists, even popular artists, make the stories and pictures and music they do because they need to make them, not just because they think they can earn a buck.

And of course, the fact that you and I buy CDs and novels and tickets to movies and plays is what allows artists to survive, and create more art -- some small bit of which will be good, and, if we're lucky, a tiny bit even great. But still, lots of artists prefer not to think of themselves as peddlers of products.

That's why last fall the author Jonathan Franzen admitted he was ambivalent about Oprah Winfrey choosing his novel for her book club -- even though her embrace meant he would sell hundreds of thousands more books.

And that's why this summer, 28 left-wing authors, led by Ralph Nader and Noam Chomsky, have written a letter to the chairman of Borders complaining about a new, sophisticated market research system. They worry that the bookstore chain might now be giving certain publishers more power than others. Borders pretty convincingly explains that it's just trying to figure out how to help sell more books.

Nader's and Chomsky's real problem is a basic anti-business ideology compounded by snobbery. ''There is a difference between books and Pop-Tarts,'' the authors' letter declared.

I found their protest dopey and annoying. Yes, we live in a capitalist culture. And in addition to being artifacts of discourse and sometimes works of art, books happen to be products. Get over it.

But then comes this new announcement from NBC television and Baskin-Robbins that makes me feel like…Ralph Nader, that makes me wonder if the blurring of culture and supermarket consumerism has indeed reached some new pathological level of frenzy.

Starting this fall, there will be Baskin Robbins ice cream flavors named after NBC shows. Such as Will & Grace's Rocky Road of Romance and Fear Factor Sundae.

On the NBC game show Fear Factor, contestants eat real insects. So Baskin-Robbins' Fear Factor Sundae will be covered with candy spiders and broken chocolate cookies meant to look like dirt. I know: it sounds like a joke.

But I won't be entirely surprised if NBC and Baskin Robbins announce the introduction of still more joint flavors…like West Wing Rum Raisin…or Just Shoot Me Sherbet…or maybe Law & Order Special Victims Unit Daiquiri Ice.

Because these days, life doesn't imitate art -- it imitates satire.

This is Kurt Andersen in Studio 360.

About Kurt Andersen

Email Kurt Andersen

Commentary Archives