Column:

One man's death is another's treasure

By Charles Austin

Published July 11, 2007

Courtney Love is upsetting the balance of good and evil on television, and I'll tell you why. You see, last year a financially discontented Love decided to sell 25 percent of the rights to her ex-husband's band, a little-known 90s three-piece called Nirvana, to a former record company chief operating officer.

"We're going to remain very tasteful, and we're going to (retain) the spirit of Nirvana and take Nirvana places it's never been before," COO of Virgin Records Larry Mestel said.

A year later, while watching a commercial for the baseball video game MLB 2K7, I heard Nirvana in a place it'd never been before. The balance was upsetting.

True to his word, the new partial owner of Nirvana's catalogue has taken the band to new ground. He won't be the only one traversing this new terrain, though, as the manufacturers of Dr. Martens brand shoes took a bold initiative in using Nirvana's own Kurt Cobain to advertise their footwear.

Alongside rock legends Joey Ramone, Sid Vicious and Joe Strummer, Cobain was to appear in a United Kingdom ad campaign for the previously mentioned shoes. In the promotional image, although now banned from appearing in a Dr. Martens advertisement, Cobain sits mournfully atop a cloud, draped in white robes and stylish Dr. Martens footwear.

The logic seems to be something like this: These musicians wore these shoes at some point in each of their respective lives. Thus, it follows that they would consent to advertise this product. My dead grandfather is the same way. He used the medication Preparation H in his lifetime. Thus, it follows that he would love to be depicted applying the well-known hemorrhoid cream to his ass while floating on a cloud as a part of a multi-national ad campaign.

As if using the deceased to sell footwear wasn't tacky enough, there's even a Jimi Hendrix branded vodka floating about these days, which I suppose is akin to a Kurt Cobain brand shotgun or something.

In each of these marketing campaigns, the underlying principle seems to be that dead people give a sort of unspoken, implied consent to be exploited to market any product that can be vaguely tied to their persona.

As these musicians have lost their ability to shape their own image, corporate entities have picked up the slack and are doing it for them.

It's analogous to For Eyes launching a Mahatma Gandhi branded line of eyewear, or Greyhound launching a Rosa Parks seating special. Though there might be a relevant difference in the fact that Cobain is mostly an entertainment icon and Rosa Parks is a cultural icon, there is a relevant similarity in the fact that both Cobain and Parks are long deceased and should remain as such.

Neither one deserves to have their legacy altered posthumously, and it's disappointing (and a bit culturally irresponsible) that Cobain and his ilk will continue to be exploited the way they are. Although this unabashed marketing is unlikely to end anytime soon, as least we can assume that Cobain's feet are reasonably comfortable as he rolls over in his grave.