Fans of Fight Club will get the joke. For those who haven't seen it, the title relates to a passage where Edward Norton's unnamed narrator reflects on who will get the naming rights to the various places we will explore in space. The joke hits pretty close to home nowadays.
Virtually every sports arena you hear about nowadays has some corporations name attached to it. Every event has some company's name attached to it. We in Houston have Reliant Stadium, Reliant Astrodome, the Toyota Center (formerly Compaq Center) Minute Maid Park (formerly Enron Field, for reasons we're all aware of.).
I'm sure y'all folks have your own local example. They call it selling the naming rights. Yeck. I agree with capitalism, to be sure, and look forward to making plenty of money in the future, but when do we get a break from Business?
I remember when the custom was to name places permanently after either people (safely dead, most of the time), or after nice sounding locations or concepts. Calling it the Astrodome was fine and dandy without a power company's name attached. Calling a place "The Summit" was an acceptable name. Even Minute Maid Park (formerly Enron Field) had a nice evocative name before the juice started flowing: Union Station. Doesn't that sound American to you? Doesn't that sound like the proper name of a ballpark?
I know it makes money for people to sell these things, but they're selling so much anyways. There are whole industries worth of profits one can make without having to be so crass as to use an establishment's name to sell corporate awareness.
In the old days, names were intended to have some power, some resonance for people. They weren't intended to merely function as somebody's marketing. They had weight and oomph; most importantly, they had identity. The Astrodome. Even without the corporate name added, it's a place, a known quantity, an almost living thing in people's memories.
I remember times when that is what identified a place. I'm no big sports fan, but I can recall names like Wrigley Field, Soldier Field, and Yankee Stadium right off the top of my head. I'm sure readers could provide more examples.
As a society, I think we need more breathing room, more space between us and the constant presence of the workplace in our lives. In short, I think people need to relearn the meaning of free time. Not everything has to serve somebody's profit.
3 comments:
I think we should campaign, when the time comes around for some decent names for new sports venues. I think it should be held up to satire. We should be more than our workplaces. We should have a culture that transcends corporate identity
Fag
I know the phenomena you are talking about and have spat about it in the past. Locally, the major auditorium was intially and appropriatly names the "O-rena". At some point later this sports and entertainment venue was renamed to reflect some corporate sponser. I have to think real hard to remember the new name and one usually has to refer to it under it's original name before I reconize where they are talking about. Which kinda nullifies the advertising angle the corp. paid for.
I question why this renaming is actually happening. Are the municapalities or other owners of these venues (and events, by the way) so strapped for cash to run them? Or is it just greed driving this?
Whichever, renaming landmark things to tranasitory advertising logos demeans the venue or event and erodes the sense of pride and permenance of the host cities and cultures
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