Week 10: Post blog

“Countless people use words and expressions which they either have ceased to understand at all or use only . . . as trademarks”

This quote by Horkheimer and Adorno points out a phenomena that I’ve noticed in passing and acknowledged, but never really put any thought into critically. The idea that a company can have such a monopoly on the market of a certain type of item, to the point where the item is no longer referred to by its own name but by the brand name instead, is fascinating. And the fact that these “trademarks” range from descriptions of objects to actions adds another layer to the act. 

The trademark is definitely a reflection of the power of capitalism and the companies that control so much of the market. There seem to be several elements of how a brand name comes to stand for the entire genre of product, including its presence and its association. For example, I personally cannot name a single type of plastic baggie besides Ziploc, and I have no memory of seeing any other brand at the store. It dominates the stock to the point where even if there are other brands for sale, I don’t see them, because I’m so used to seeing the Ziploc logo and stopping there. I also don’t have a reason to look for another kind of baggie instead, because I’ve had positive experiences with Ziploc in the past and associate the label with being reliable. Both the presence and the association of the brand means that I don’t think twice about my decision to purchase the bags and refer to them as Ziplocs, and assume any bags I find elsewhere are also Ziplocs, because I know that’s the majority of what people use. 

Symbols are also an interesting manifestation of this. We associate the save icon on a computer or other technology with the image of a disk drive, or a floppy disk. Most kids nowadays don’t know what that is or what it would have looked like, and just assume that the image they see exists just a way to signify the save button. The referent gets lost over time, until its origin no longer carries any meaning except what’s been assigned to it.