Countries and Companies

 As I was reading the Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker, one passage toward the end of the book stood out to me. On page 114, Howie says “Was there really any need to study the historical past of Chandragupta of Pataliputra, or Harsha of Kanauj, the rise of the Chola kings of Tanjore and the fall of the Pallava kings of Kanchi, who once built the Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipuram, or the final desolation and ruin of the great metropolis of Vijayanagar, when we had dynastic shifts, turbulence, and plenty of lather in the last twenty years of that great Hindu inheritance, shampoo?” This is a somewhat odd analogy but like many other passages in the book, you can kind of see where he is coming from.

I don’t think this observation is limited to shampoos, many consumer items share in this similar change in name brands similar to that of the changing of the ruling class. The constant advertisement of various brands trying to gain an edge on the competition means you can’t help but know a thing or two about who is on top for certain products. I do not drink carbonated beverages and yet I am very aware of the Coca-Cola/Pepsi rivalry that exists with others like Sprite and Dr. Pepper also being large brands. This is certainly a feature of living in the era that we do with fast innovation and the free market, you would not expect  to see the same large brands and shifts in these brands thousands or even hundreds of years ago.

When a government breaks up a monopoly, it is similar to the disillusionment of a greater country or empire like the USSR in 1991 or Yugoslavia in 1992. One company that this reminds me of is the break up of the Ma Bell in the 1980s. It makes me think of Bell System as the large government that breaks apart into the smaller countries becoming the Baby Bells. The telephone networks have since undergone more change and now the large brands are names like Verizon and T-Mobile. The Bell corporation lives on but under the name AT&T, nowhere near as strong or large an empire that it once had.ct to see the same large brands and shifts in these brands thousands or even hundreds of years ago.

Break up of Bell System

Mergers remind me of two countries coming together to create a larger, stronger country like the Germanic states unifying as one in 1871 (or 1990). Although there was the recent merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, mergers happen all the time such as Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines back in 2008. The new Delta Airlines is still a big player in the industry.

Unification of Germany 1871

Empires rise and fall all over the world throughout history. The decline of Yahoo and the emergence of Google as the preferred internet search engine. The purchasing of another company like Facebook’s acquisition of Instagram feels similar to the annexation of a smaller country. I had much more to say about this topic than I initially thought. There are so many parallels you can draw between consumer product brands and national governments. The actions of governments and companies are analogous in ways I had not thought of before and that the Mezzanine has brought to the forefront of my mind.

Comments

  1. KatelynSeptember 4, 2020 at 7:51 PM

    My instinct after reading this post is to connect it all back to The Mezzanine in some way, and I think I've figured out how. When Aurelius' speaks about the triviality and transience of life, Howie discounts this opinion. I think that this idea of empires paralleling companies and their respective life spans really does support Aurelius' theory. However, the idea that both of these civilizations and inventions build off of one another into a growing infinity of progress, I think, supports Howie's point that life can't just be so fleeting if we're always experiencing it (although I may be editorializing Howie's train of thought a bit).

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Swan in Black Swan Green

At the end of Black Swan Green , Jason sees a swan despite his claim throughout the book that “Black Swan Green hasn’t got any swans. That’s the village joke.” Swans have long been a symbol of transformation, a classic example of this is the story of the ugly duckling. Jason’s coming of age is tied in with the idea of the swan and more specifically that his coming of age was inevitable. Firstly, the swan in literature has a relation to transformation. Jason has completed his own transformation at the end of the book, he has come of age as it were. Throughout the year, he has put up with immense bullying and has changed and become a different person than he was at the beginning of the book. He sees the swan in the exact same place that the book began a year ago, on the frozen lake in the woods. This all goes to signify the internal change that has occurred and that Jason has grown up, becoming a beautiful swan himself.  The Goose fair is a moment that defines his coming of age. He h...
Read more

The Bell Jar Was Not Enjoyable

I cannot say I completely understand what happened in The Bell Jar . I understand the basic plot: there was a woman who was in New York on an all expenses paid fashion trip and began succumbing to depression. She goes to see a doctor who is not good at his job. She gets worse and makes an attempt at suicide and is moved to a mental health institution where she eventually gets better. I understand it on a broad scope but the narration was confusing and made this unenjoyable. Similar to Catcher in the Rye, The Bell Jar was a somewhat mundane retelling of events of a young adult spiraling out of control. Catcher in the Rye may not really have had a story but at least it was linear, the same cannot be said for this book. The way this writing style was approached was a major factor in my dislike of this book. I could not tell when some events were happening. The constant stories from her past intermixed with the current timeline was a jumbled mess for me; I did not enjoy it. If so much pre...
Read more

Raymond Rambert

     Rambert is a character that has annoyed me for a variety of reasons but he is also the character who has kept me engaged while reading. Since the lockdown, he has put himself first and pestered all the officials into seeing how they could help him out. He believes that he is special because he does not actually live in the town of Oran and he was only there coincidentally when the plague broke out. He does not seem to grasp that he is not the only person that is trapped in the town nor that the lockdown is supposed to protect the rest of the world from the plague. This is just our introduction to the character, already painting as this somewhat self interested individual.      With that introduction, you may be able to empathize with him but he has been painted as an annoying character in the novel. Despite this, his story has arguably been the most interesting portions of this book. Since he decided to escape, he has been at the center of the best par...
Read more