Report: The Diminishing Marginal Value of Aesthetics

Why Edgy Aesthetics Have Value

Cultural production moves hearts, minds, and dollars. There are several types of cultural production, but here we are primarily concerned with aesthetic production: the production of images and their value in society.

To simplify things dramatically, consider that every aesthetic falls somewhere on the following spectrum. The left side of the spectrum corresponds to wide recognition and acceptance. The right side corresponds to unrecognizability and uncommonness. Altogether, this spectrum constitutes the entire “cultural field” of images.

The large chunk in the middle represents the zone of normalcy, into which fall most aesthetics we encounter daily. On the far left is the zone of aesthetics which are so banal they are generally considered obsolete (such as oversized suits for men). On the far right is the zone of experimental aesthetics. The location where avant-garde artists operate, this zone comprises aesthetics and images that are still hard for most consumers to understand and appreciate.

Between the zone of normalcy and the zone of experimentation, there is a sweet spot. Just outside what is considered normal yet familiar enough to be comprehended, this is where good marketers work. When Weiden Kennedy says they want to capture “lightning in a bottle” this is what they mean: to take something just outside of mainstream culture, aestheticize it, and turn it into marketing for a consumer product. It doesn’t matter how much of a commodity the product is—this works for makeup and sneakers as well as it does for high-performance cars.

Slightly controversial aesthetics cater to the leading edge of consumer culture, a large population willing to spend money in order to maintain its status. As this group consumes, the cultural Overton window shifts to accommodate more and more radical aesthetics, which lose their novel status as they become normalized. The cultural normalcy spectrum flows to the left, and the function of this sort of marketing is to accelerate its natural movement.

What I have described is the essential logic of fashion. Most people associate fashion with the recycling of aesthetics on the far left of the spectrum back into the right, but that is only one function within the general model. It’s important to note that this machinery is not only present in aesthetics and garment design, but applies to innovation in music, natural and social sciences, ideology, and most other areas of culture.

In Marxist literature and cultural theory, it is common to cite the matter of capitalism’s ability to incorporate oppositional elements into itself. Behind that insight, which is usually dressed up in theoretical language, is this regular movement of culture, automated by the existence of cultural producers: artists, designers, marketers, and brand strategists.

Now that we have established that the market values aesthetic edginess, we can complicate this idea by understanding how context and technology affects aesthetic production and consumer reception. Of course, it is not only edgy aesthetics that have value. Aesthetics that simply reinforce demographic associations, for instance, are valuable for selling things to those demographics. But we are interested in aesthetic novelty because we are interested in the limits of aesthetic production.

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