Coffee, Conformity & Cosmologies
Posted on November 23, 2021I feel for the mermaid on the Starbucks logo. In the past 15 years, Starbucks has risen to the top of the list of the key essentials needed to become a “basic bitch.” It is in the company of Lululemon leggings, the first two Taylor Swift albums, over processed hair, unironic “Live, Laugh, Love” signs, North Face jackets, and Ugg boots (in the Chestnut color of course!). In my opinion, our label friend has been misinterpreted to represent a value set that is foreign to her.
Founded in 1971, Starbucks has grown at a staggering rate in its 50-year existence. Currently operating in 80 countries worldwide, this Seattle based company serves as a prime example of the power and breadth of American business. As people search for their identities in consumerism, our mermaid has become a symbol for the comfort one can find in conformity.
On the final page of Anthony Dunne and Fiona Raby’s Speculative Everything, the authors bring to our attention the danger of monocultural thinking: “As we rapidly move toward a monoculture that makes imagining genuine alternatives almost impossible, we need to experiment with ways of developing new and distinctive worldviews that include different beliefs, values, ideals, hopes, and fears from today’s. If our belief systems and ideas don’t change, then reality won’t change either.” (Dunne and Raby, 189)
So, let us speculate!
I feel for our Starbucks logo lady mermaid friend because I think we’ve misrepresented her. I think she is actually a Siren from West Africa – Benin to be exact. And I think her name is Mami Wata. On the Starbucks website they say that the founders were influenced by Moby Dick in naming the brand, but the muse for the logo – our friend – was found as they were flipping through marine books to find associated imagery. That being said, there is no definitive case against the idea that the logo we all know and are familiar with today is a representation of a centuries old Voodoo goddess from Benin: Mami Wata.
So, if that is the case, what might that mean for Starbucks the brand, the multinational corporation, or for the basic bitch who likes to carry their cups around like an accessory? Could the global expansion and dominance of American business be a conduit for the spread of ancient African cosmologies!? Perhaps. If so, then every sip of a Pumpkin Spice Latte or a Caramel Macchiato could equate to consumers becoming one with Mami Wata – like Christian devotees consuming bread and wine as representations of the Body and Blood of Christ. With every sip, drinkers could begin to channel their ancestors more, summoning them for guidance in their lives. With every sip, drinkers could pay respect to the natural world, thanking it for its generosity and fruitfulness. With every sip, drinkers could pay respect to their elders, thanking them for channeling their lived experience into wisdom to be used as advice and direction.
If we decolonize the Starbucks logo, we can create space for a plethora of meanings, interpretations, belief systems, and identities to emerge. E. Tuck and K.W. Yang state: “Decolonization offers a different perspective to human and civil rights-based approaches to justice, an unsettling one, rather than a complementary one. Decolonization is not an “and”. It is an elsewhere.” (Tuck and Yang, 36) ‘Elsewhere’, in the context of Starbucks, is a world where mass production and conformity do not dictate “basic” identities. It is a place where a harmless, Ariel-like mermaid, is actually a powerful Siren. It is a place where defaulting to assumed conclusions, groupthink, and colonized mindsets will stop you short of discovering alternative, more-complex, embellished realities.
-EE
Sources
- “About Us.” Starbucks, https://www.starbucks.co.uk/about-us.
- Deeley, Rachel. “Why the Basic Bitch Ruled This Decade.” The Business of Fashion, The Business of Fashion, 19 Nov. 2021, https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/news-analysis/end-of-the-decade-basic-bitch-ruled-millennial-gen-z-vsco-girl-normcore-gorpcore-ugg-boots-michael-kors-lululemon-the-north-face.
- Dunne, Anthony, and Fiona Raby. Speculative Everything: Design, Fiction, and Social Dreaming. MIT Press, 2014.
- Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, vol. 1, no. 1, Sept. 2012, p., http://resolver.scholarsportal.info/resolve/19298692/v01i0001/nfp_dinam.xml.