I am still recovering from reading Infinite Jest, a massive and intricately crafted futuristic tome by the late David Foster Wallace about marketing, drugs, political power, art, film, sex, consumerism, sports, group therapy and how all this (and more!) can become pathological attempts to fulfill the needs of each individual’s “Inner Infant.” The people who actually use this term are derided in the book, but clearly the I.I. concept is its central fascination.

In fact, most of the novel takes place during the Year of the Depend Adult Undergarment. The years don’t have numbers anymore, as the Gregorian calendar has been replaced with Subsidized Time, and this corporate sponsorship is the government’s main source of revenue. During Y.D.A.U., the Statue of Liberty herself wears a giant diaper. Yes, really.

Aside from the unspeakably moving accounts of the characters’ thoughts as they live through substance addiction and withdrawal, sexual abuse, grueling tennis drills, obsessive-compulsive disorder, bizarre math and film classes, the murder of friends and hundreds of other things, I was fascinated by the idea of Subsidized Time. Especially the idea that maybe we are already a little closer than is comfortable to having our entire lives underwritten by corporate sponsorship. Because if it were not a slight exaggeration of what is already reality, it would not be funny. (And I assure you that the book is hilarious, if sometimes painfully so.)

My favorite (but very crude – fair warning) ad blogger, copyranter, has a frequent feature he calls Ad Creep, about “ambient” advertising. Welcome mats that look like abandoned babies on your doorstep. Urinals challenging you to pee in a straight line. Hole-less bowling balls that advertise cavity-preventing products. Subways whose hand straps were replaced with a hank of braided hair to market a salon. The kind of advertising you literally can’t get away from.

But I like to think of myself as pretty non-consumerist, and pretty well removed from the kind of lifestyle that results in total advertising saturation. To a great extent, I think this is an illusion.

I live in Vermont, where billboards are illegal. I have no television, so I have to subscribe to advertising blogs in order to see commercials. I shop at a food co-op instead of a supermarket. I don’t have a cell phone or any associated apps. I don’t go to bars where I might see “ambient” ads while throwing up in the toilet, my kids don’t go to a school where they might be subjected to corporate-sponsored curriculums, and my family’s idea of a good time on most weekends is to trudge up a steep hill in the snow and have cambric tea and homemade cookies at the top. So total ad saturation is not part of our lives in any conventional sense.

But part of the point of Infinite Jest, I think, is that we cannot really opt out of our own culture anymore than we can opt out of sharing air with others. And our culture is fully sponsored. Those hills we like to trudge up, and the billboards we never see here, are all part of the Vermont “brand” discussed in my last post. The food co-op, while not nearly as overstimulating as the local supermarket, is nevertheless overbrimming with strategic presentation: end-caps, packaging, even licensed characters on the kids’ snacks, and many other subtle messages that appeal to the sort of consumer that I am. And no, there is no way to get out of being a “consumer.” I have to eat.

But on an even deeper level, we are always presenting ourselves to others, and always interacting with a giant web of people and things-made-by-people that are actively and strategically presenting themselves to us. This has always been true, since humans became human – but things happen at higher speeds, and for different reasons, in modern culture. For the most part, the most strategically savvy people and products are the ones that get your attention – and eventually, if they are successful, your loyalty.

And it’s this idea of “brand loyalty” that I think really helps tie the idea of Subsidized Time with how life really works right now. In the world of Infinite Jest, pretty much every single character is desperate to give him- or herself away to something else, to be relieved of responsibility and pain. They want to trust something, anything, besides themselves. At the heart of the plot is a deadly dangerous film that terrorists are trying to get their hands on; it turns out the film, shot through a lens intended to reproduce the vision of a newborn, consists entirely of a mother figure apologizing over and over to the viewer. It is deadly because people stop wanting anything else, including food, water, medicine. They only want this repeated apology to their inner infant.

And that is the ultimate promise that marketing tries to make for many consumer products: that you should not have to feel pain or discomfort, that you should not have to be responsible. We’re sorry. We’re so sorry. Buy this. You deserve it.

We cannot get away from our humanity or our culture; we will always seek ways to alleviate pain, to cede responsibility, and we will be tempted to give our trust and loyalty to any person, product or substance that can consistently offer us that service. In the book, many characters search for an antidote to the deadly film, but they never find one. I think that’s because, ultimately, the only real antidote is within us. We live and breathe constant messages, most of them not in our interest, but we do have a choice; we can think for ourselves. The trick is to want to. Grow up. Put on your big-boy pants. Don’t give yourself away.

Photo Credit: Editor B, under CC license.