The Gift_ Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World - Lewis Hyde [141]
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;
Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered
Emerald findeth no Memling Usura slayeth the child in the womb
It stayeth the young man’s courting
It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
between the young bride and her bridegroom
CONTRA NATURAM
They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet at behest of usura.
The poem is written out of a late medieval sensibility. We have covered this ground before. As with any scholastic analysis, Pound begins with the Aristotelian “usura, sin against nature” and, following the traditional natural metaphor, declares that if such “unnatural value” rules the market, all other spheres of value will decay, from human courtship and procreation, through craft, art and, finally, religion. In an early canto, the young Pound on a visit to Italy sees the “Gods float in the azure air”; when “azure hath a canker by usura,” the spirits themselves have sickened.
The poem may have a medieval argument, but it’s a modern poem. I want to offer one example of twentieth-century usury here, so as to recall the argument of our earlier chapter and set it in its present frame. By “usury” Pound usually means an exorbitant rent on the loan of money; other times he simply means any “charge for the use of purchasing power.” But Pound also connects usury to the life of the imagination, and it is in that link that we must look for its real import. It’s the spirit of usury we want to ferret out, not the percentages that appear on loan applications.
I take as my examples of the spirit of modern usury two cases of the marketing of commodities to children. For many years Philip Dougherty wrote a fascinating column on advertising for the New York Times. In one of these columns he tells us that in 1977 the Union Underwear Company (the makers of BVD’s and Fruit of the Loom) set out to increase their profits in the children’s market. The company’s researchers found that the children of the United States wear out 250 million pairs of underwear a year. At the going price, $2.25 a pair, the annual market is almost $600 million. With this in mind, the company hired an advertising agency that in turn contracted with a series of comic-book companies for the use of their characters (Spider-Man, Superwoman, Superman, Archie, Veronica, and so on). Images or insignia of these characters were printed on the underwear, now renamed “Underoos” and repriced at $4.79 a pair, more than double the regular price. The Times columnist reports:
“There has never been a product like this before,” exclaimed Mr. [James W.] Johnston [Union’s marketing vice president], who noted that not only would it deliver higher profit margins than conservative underwear, but it would also react better to advertising and “for the first time add children’s influence to the purchasing decision” for underwear. He’s talking about making ‘gimmes’ out of the young set …
Mr. Johnston … was later to say, “Advertising is not necessary to sell the product, because it’s a powerful product, but advertising is necessary to establish it as a permanent part of the children’s culture.”
In a slightly different market, researchers for the nation’s second largest fast-food chain, Burger King, discovered that one out of every three times a family goes out for some fast food, it’s the child who chooses the brand. Apparently, when the weary father comes home and the tired mother says “Let’s eat out,” the father says “Someplace cheap,” and then they do what the children say. Retail sales in this market were $14.5 billion in 1977, so in that year the desires of children directed the spending of about $5 billion.
In 1977 Burger King developed a character—a magician named Burger King—in an attempt to lure hungry children away from McDonald’s, represented by a clown named Ronald McDonald. Burger King also bankrolled a “giveaway” program in which they “gave” the children of the nation $4 million worth of little toys.