Themes and motifs brainstorm

One of the themes or motifs in the story is commercial advertisement and brands. Throughout the entire book Cayce encounters all of these different logos, brands, and advertisement, which is present in all of her surroundings. She is highly sensitive to these brand names and logos and seems to have an allergic-like reaction whenever she sees the Michelin man. Through Cayce’s perspective, we become more aware of the world’s globalization and commercialization. With billboards and logos at every corner, it almost feels like a nightmare for Cayce. Ironically, her job is to spend time around all of these brands and logos to learn about the fashion trend. Cayce’s job is to find out new fashion trends so that blue ante can tailor their products to sell more. Blue ante has even gone as far as hiring Magda to start new trends so that people would watch a certain movie or buy a certain product. All Magda has to do is simply talk to someone at a bar and mention something like a movie and that will cause that person to either watch that movie or bring it up in another conversation with someone else, thus starting a new trend. When Cayce reaches Tokyo, we see that commercialization has reached to far corners of the world and that it is almost everywhere. Gibson shows us that originality is lost when all businesses seem to care about is using advertisement to sell their products.

Another theme or motif in the story is globalization. Everything is modern now. In Tokyo, you get large skyscrapers with advertisements and electric billboards everywhere, which isn’t unfamiliar where Cayce comes from. Japan is depicted as an ultra-modern country, which really isn’t that much different from the rest of the world. Brands that can be found in Japan can be found in other parts of the world as well, like hello kitty.  Everyone uses cell phones and computers and everyone is connected to each other online. We also get characters from different ethnic backgrounds like Boone and Voytek. The world is basically becoming more uniform and that comes with good things and bad things. The world is more connected and similar, but there is a loss of cultural identity and originality.  Eventually, when the entire world is globalized and communications between one end of the globe to the other become effortless, the barriers that keep cultural identities distinct will come down, creating a single super-culture of brands, advertisement, and consumerism.