Gawker
As you trudge to your thankless job some wet mornings, don't you yearn for those days of sitting around in a too-warm classroom and pretending that talking about total bullshit constituted some kind of important work, as long as you managed some references to encoded signifiers and diff
rance and used the word "problematize" a lot? Well, uh, we do. Which is why the bullshitty discussion of the new vs. old Payless logo in the new issue of n+1 (disputed book-hottie Ben Kunkel's lit mag) gave us a warm and fuzzy feeling, even as it annoyed us as all things asssociated with n+1 must. Specifically, there was this one part of n+1's interview with "commerical semiotician" A. S. Hamrah that we think probably wouldn't have sat well with our 'Engendering Gender: The Semiotics of Postfeminism' professor:
ASH: The reason Howard Johnson's was turquoise and orange was supposedly—this is a rumor as far as I know, I've never read this anywhere (I should look into it more)—that turquoise and orange make you hungry. Anyway, who says? I don't believe that. But the orange and pale blue in the Payless logo look like Howard Johnson's. So maybe it's supposed to make you hungry. Hungry for shoes. I do think women buy shoes as a sublimation of eating. You can shop for shoes instead of eating. n+1: Eh, I don't know. I think it's about choosing and stocking up. Women are probably still in thrall to their thousands of years as gatherers of berries and edible tubers and things. Women take a lot of pride in their power to discern and select. ASH: Well, that's true. Shoe shopping is like gathering tubers. Shoes are like potatoes. It's like that Jerky Boys joke, "I'll take my shoes with me so I'll have them." But I see it more as a sublimation of eating and of sex. I like women's shoes a lot, personally.That sort of problematized the whole interview for us, honestly.
The Haunting of Payless [n+1]
