The iconic style magazine The Face, which closed in April 2004, had reported on the 'cutting edge' of popular culture since 1980.
| The Face never enjoyed huge sales - it peaked at around 90,000 in the mid-90s before shrinking to around 24,000 in early 2004 - but its influence far outweighed its circulation. During its peak between the mid-1980s and mid-1990s, when The Face championed a look, a book, a film or a band, people took notice. And it wasn't just style-obsessed readers either - editors of broadsheet supplements sat up and listened too. The rather muted response to The Face's closure only underlined its diminished status.
| In their obituaries, media pundits blame competition from other magazines, broadsheets stealing their thunder (and their writers), and internet publishing. But these explanations don't really wash. Other style magazines, such as Dazed & Confused, I-D and Sleaze, barely sell more than 30,000 copies between them. Meanwhile, growing magazines such as heat and Closer have managed to capitalise on the success of the internet sites, such as the gossip website, Popbitch. The Face's troubles are more to do with broader shifts within society and culture. The Face was out of place because its 'brand' has become glaringly unfashionable.
| As Andrew Calcutt has argued on spiked, The Face became associated with championing lifestyles through the consumption of clothes and popular culture (1). Unlike the left-leaning New Musical Express (NME) in the 1980s, The Face eschewed political labels and embraced designer ones. To buy into The Face was to identify with a more glamorous and materially aspirational life than your own - even if you weren't very interested in political struggle for the Good Society. In recent years, however, there's a belief that maybe even the Good Life isn't such a desirable goal.
| This essay will assess popular culture's changing attitudes towards social aspiration. First, it will look at the new suspicion with which material betterment is regarded, a suspicion that keeps The Face and its ilk off the shelves. Second, it will explore how social aspiration was once central to popular culture, and how and why it began to fade. And finally, it will assess the recent rise of 'celebrity culture'.
| We're never so bad when we have it so good
| The late 1990s and early 2000s, the period when The Face began to sharply decline, was also the time when the anti-globalisation movement came on the scene. These protesters expressed a profound hostility to the aspiration to material betterment - they railed against the 'excesses' of consumerism embodied by McDonald's, Starbucks or Nike trainers, and blamed Western consumption for third world impoverishment. They looked grimly upon rising living standards and the expansion of consumer goods. Beneath the 'anti-capitalist' rhetoric, there lurked a palpable disdain for the 'high street' consumer tastes of the mass of British people (2).
| There is a more pervasive aversion to the 'corrupting' influence of wealth. In recent years footballers' bad behaviour has been blamed on them earning too much too quickly. Today footballers are held up as 'anti-role models', an example of how ordinary people just can't handle vast sums of money. The tawdry gossip-circus surrounding David Beckham's alleged infidelities, and Victoria Beckham's not-quite-so-posh background, is partly fuelled by a derision for their nouveau riche pretensions. Indeed, the loudest championing of ITV1's hammy drama, Footballer's Wives, comes from broadsheet writers who love its unflattering portrayal of the Krug-swilling football set.
| Material wealth is also blamed for destroying personal happiness. Since the National Lottery was launched nearly a decade ago, there have been regular reports on how becoming overnight millionaires has 'ruined' people's lives. Teenage National Lottery winner Callie Rogers is only the latest jackpot winner who has become 'depressed' and 'suicidal' since scooping £1.9million two years ago. The sorry tale suggests that if only she'd stayed working as a Co-op checkout girl she'd have been much happier.
| | But it's not just New Money oiks who've come in for a finger wagging. Anyone earning a packet through 'corporate' employment is also tainted with having dubious morals. Bret Easton Ellis' Wall Street-based novel American Psycho and the 1999 film In the Company of Men indict high salaries with low morals, and good livi |
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