ABSENCE OF INNOCENCE

Claudette Fetherstone, 2005

Meet Shelly Innocence – uber model and retail in-store demonstrator – born in Oil of Ulan, Russia. Shelly’s image appeared stretched across 12 metre high billboards around Melbourne CBD and suburbs from May to July this year. But what is Shelly Innocence selling? She has constructed a brand identity which models human qualities as desired attainments. Happiness™, Integrity™, Honesty™ and Trust™ are promoted as ready to use states – labelled, commodified and marketed – an ephemeral product range for an omnipresent consumer culture.

At one level Shelly is an advertising tragic. She epitomises all the qualities of a woman created by the marketing industry. The potency of Shelly Innocence is she inverts the territory, snaring the viewer in her hyper-real domain. The virtual world of Innocence™ so closely overlaps the actual world that the viewer or consumer has difficulty distinguishing one from the other. Shelly Innocence has garnered real fans who email regularly. She has attracted an enthusiastic clan of bloggers. Some people claim to have seen her on TV. And yet Ms Innocence is a virtual image selling virtual products.

Superimposed on screens and billboards in public spaces, what Shelly makes visible is the real, yet not real, face of commodity culture. Shelly is not trying to become an equivalent of the billboard model. Rather she turns the idea against itself in order to open a new space. In her seeming sameness, Shelly affirms a difference that makes it possible to consider the impact of brand culture from new ground; we are invited to buy into her fictions as active rather than passive consumers.

In her narcissistic larger-than-lifeness, Shelly Innocence, the public face of the Innocence™ company, is brand new. As the face and persona of commodity and purchase she remains far from innocent.

Claudette Fetherstone is an itinerant writer and reviewer.