Flashback – Price Deception

[On New Year’s Eve 2012 I posted a look at the various ways advertisers use prices to convey a false impression. Make prices appear low to suggest a bargain; jack them up to give the impression of special quality or luxury items. Because of the date, I ended with a brief note on champagne. Though it’s only June, why not read this and then find something to celebrate?]

We are deceived by a lot of things, by ourselves and by others, especially advertisers. We are all familiar with the pricing scheme of marking items as $19.99 instead of $20 to make them seem like a bargain, even though many people, when asked, will describe the $19.99 shirt as a $20 shirt.  Consciously we are not fooled, but subconsciously it registers as a better deal. Consider that  nine-tenths of a penny per gallon on the price of gasoline.

Surprisingly, the opposite strategy is also used. When paying a higher price, we often believe we are buying better quality even when we are really getting substantially the same thing. In prior postings I brought your attention to tests of (more expensive) organic foods showing that they are not nutritionally superior. Recently we learned that family cars outperformed luxury cars in the new crash tests. I have seen many Consumers Digest-type articles saying that ordinary moisturizers help your skin as well as the high-priced brands that claim to be superior. Higher-priced brand name drugs continue to sell well against similar or even identical generics by virtue of perceived quality. “When served microwaved food from the frozen food section in the setting of a fine restaurant, most people never notice.”

I remembered some time ago seeing a story about wine judging. Experts were asked to rate a certain group of wines. Later, in what they thought was a different event, they were presented with the same wines. The ratings of the same wines by the same judges came out completely different – no correlation whatsoever. I couldn’t find that source, but was overwhelmed by similar stories.  One told of wine tasting experts fooled in general, recommending wines with expensive labels with eloquent descriptions of their superiority over the same wine poured out of an different bottle. Experts also gave differing descriptions when served a white wine and the same wine with red food coloring added. Others couldn’t tell if a wine was red or white when they drank them from black-colored glasses.

It’s not only the experts who are fooled. “Expensive wine is like anything else that is expensive, the expectation it will taste better actually makes it taste better.” This article gave even more examples.  HDTV clarity and cheese tasting elicited the same perception errors based on price. A January 2008 study showed that adults rated the same wine as tasting better when it came from bottles labeled $45 than from ones labeled $5.

How would this apply to the art world? Experts always want to tell us what to think and what is real art. We often look at the work and scratch our heads. Here is a comment from a friend who visited an exhibition of what was proclaimed to be a major contemporary British artist at the Aberdeen (Scotland) Art Museum. “Imagine a giant empty exhibit hall with nearly-blank canvases, each about 7 feet square, or painted unevenly in reddish-orange oil. A life-size bronze casting of a rumpled sleeping bag.” I'm sure most of us would be equally puzzled at the praise for such an exhibit, but in the art world there is so much hype, and it’s so easy for the experts to pompously fall back on the accusation that others "just don’t get it." We buy that logic and that’s why we get what we get. (For an amusing spoof on contemporary art check out a film called Untitled).)

The effects of high price and over-reliance on so-called experts apply in many other fields. So before you buy something based on the name or the price, do the research. Whether it’s food, art, drugs, wine, cosmetics or cars, more expensive is not necessarily better. When all you have to go on is expert opinion rather than evidence, you are usually safe to trust your own taste.

Which brings us to the real topic for today – champagne. It is, after all, New Year’s Eve.  In this case I have done the research for you, and guess what?  More expensive is not necessarily better. As this British source says, “In a blind test that has thrilled the marketing departments of the major retailers and perturbed at least one of the grande marques, six wine experts gave a resounding vote of support to some of the less glamorous bottles.”

So buy what you like and save a little cash. Happy Critical Thinking in the New Year [or Independence Day], and Cheers!

Thoughts about words

An activist is any person with a platform who makes it a habit to be offended and then to seek revenge on behalf of another person. This has more impact on society than those who act offended on behalf of another just to do some virtue signaling. In the latter case, it’s a matter of showing off for friends and family. In the former, it’s trying to use one's influence or celebrity to get the offender fired, chastised or cancelled in some other way. 

An example comes from the TV show America’s Got Talent. Gabriel Union, a judge at the time, along with the host “were upset with how...offensive issues were not addressed, including reports of an offensive joke made when [Jay] Leno made a guest appearance on the show.” One of his jokes referred to serving dog meat at a Korean restaurant. “She demanded that Leno be reported and wanted to increase the ratio of Asian staffers working there."

Having never seen her (or heard of her), I wondered what part of Korea she came from that she was so offended. Wikipedia lists her as American, born in Omaha. But it also lists her as an activist, which explains the outrage. You can’t maintain activist credentials unless you are prepared to seek out and try to remedy every possible case of apparent injustice. What used to be considered humor, perhaps in bad taste, is now cause for condemnation and reparations. Any ill-advised wise crack can brand you as a racist – apology expected, but it won’t do you any good, as a vocal minority demand that you be fired anyway.

Notice how these activists are all so well off that they have the luxury of indulging in this hobby – a kind of self-righteous bullying.

On another subject, notice how in the first paragraph I used “impact” as a noun. Notice also in day-to-day life how often people use impact as a verb. In the weather report the cold front will impact the temperatures or the snow will impact driving conditions. In sports the number of players on injured reserve impacted the performance of the team. In health news: “CMV impacts Newborns.” In an insurance notice: “This change does not impact any benefits.”

I have a theory of why every situation seems to be impacted (as if they were all wisdom teeth). The confusion in usage between the words effect and affect is often listed among the most common errors in English. So people have found an easy solution to the problem by avoiding them not only in writing, but also speaking. The snow may affect something – or will it effect something? – Who cares, just say impact. It sounds more forceful anyway.

Finally, what is an artist? An artist is anyone who calls himself an artist. Duct tape a banana to a wall and you are an artist. Take the banana down and eat it and you are also an artist. When something is so subjective as art, visual or performance, does the word really have any meaning anymore?

Perhaps it means that any time we make a mistake or violate a norm, we can claim as a defense that we are artists practicing our art. Tell your questionable joke and when people object, just say it was art. You were only trying, through irony, to elicit a teachable moment and to positively impact society. 

Some Odd Thoughts

As I write these little essays, I get the impression that I often have thoughts that are out of sync with the rest of the world. Perhaps I think too hard about things, but here are a few more random observations.

I picked up a small card advertising a kind of school system open house and presentation. In part it read, “Come hear about some of the new and exciting things happening at our schools.” This is probably a symptom of current advertising where everything has to be new and exciting or new and improved or innovative and sustainable. Buzzwords fill all advertising from shoes to cars to doctor’s offices.

But if I were a parent of a child attending one of these schools, I wouldn’t care two pins about new and exciting. I would want the school to teach my children how to read, write, add and subtract. These are basic skills that anyone needs in any profession or just to live a reasonably stress-free life. Instead, in another case I see a television news segment featuring kids in the early grades crawling around on the floor to get an appreciation of STEM subjects with “educators” gushing about how wonderful it is and how it “keeps them engaged.”

Shouldn’t it be the child’s responsibility to learn and the parent’s responsibility to ensure they do? It seems in too many cases teachers are entertainers, the students are the audience and the parents are automatic advocates for their children when they step out of line, setting up an unproductive dynamic.

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Some research shows that patients in nursing homes can be comforted by dogs and other pets, but can be equally comforted and cheered up by mechanical dog-like robots. What if airlines developed a policy that so-called support animals were no longer allowed on planes. Instead people could rent a teddy bear of other stuffed comfort animal at the departing airport and turn it in when they landed. (This would not apply to legitimate service animals.) That’s never going to happen. Society is headed in the opposite direction.

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CBS Sunday Morning ran a segment a few weeks ago about the $450 million makeover of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York City. In it the museum director mentioned that they “will also increase the number of works by female artists – five times as many [as] before.” Wow, that’s really a good thing – or is it?

Apparently the art world today harbors some resentment that the art world of the past judged art, at least in part, on the basis of whether the artist was a man or a woman, giving preference not to the quality of the art but to the sex of the artist. The quality of the art (as subjective as that can be) should be the criterion for judging what gets displayed and what is rejected, not the appearance, the status, the reputation or the political connections of the artist. That would be the really good thing.

So why is MOMA making it a point to call attention to the number of female artists? Isn’t that the same kind of objectionable thinking that prevailed in the past dressed up in a different costume? They express their objection to past flaws in the system by doing the same thing in the opposite direction and call it progress.

Some People Will Protest Anything!

This story was so “out there” I had to check to make sure it was not a spoof from the Onion or other satirical website, but sure enough reputable sources like NPR and the Boston Globe confirm that a small group protesting against the hanging of Renoir paintings gathered in front of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts last week.

When they so eloquently say, “Renoir Sucks” and “God Hates Renoir,” they refer to Pierre-Auguste Renoir, born in 1841, a French Impressionist painter.  They don’t object because his work was obscene or anti-American.  They just don’t like it and think as a painter he “is the most overrated artist east, west, north and south of the river Seine.”  Apparently his trees don’t look enough like trees (or something).  Last spring, the leader started an Internet petition urging the President to "remove all of the literally awful Renoir paintings hanging in the National Gallery in Washington DC."  It has been taken down for lack of support.

When looking for a cause in an attempt to shine the spotlight on himself and gather a following, is this the best someone could come up with?

I shouldn’t even care about this except that it reminded me of one more group that tries to manipulate us and gets away with it more often than is reasonable.  It is not the news media and politicians that I highlighted last time.  This time it’s the art critics.

(So much passes for art these days, as it is extoled by self-proclaimed artists and the professional critics that this deception could be the topic of an entire book, not just a short on-line essay – and it probably has been.  In the interest of space, I will stick to one contrasting example in the visual arts.)

See this short video titled:  A Visual Odyssey: Christopher Wool.  This is also a serious piece (not satire) from a reputable site featuring two critics lovingly describing the artist as a “hero of our generation” with a work filled with “complexities and ambiguities.”  They just go on and on pulling our leg about how he uses yellow as a “non-color” to accentuate his black and white painting.  (It’s enough to make you roll your eyes until it hurts!)

See one example of his work at the left.  Nothing here is even identifiable as a tree, bears the slightest resemblance to anything in nature, and looks like little more than an accident.  The critics, of course, would dismiss my opinion as that of one who just didn’t have the capacity or training to “understand” such a masterpiece.  And so goes the con, but how many people get drawn into these Emperor's-New-Clothes scenarios.

See this gallery of Wool's work and compare to a gallery of Renoir at the bottom of the Wikipedia page and judge for yourself who, if anyone, should be protested against.