Reconstruction 6.3 (Summer 2006)


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Lagu and Belu: The Semiotics of Bottled Water Packaging / Daniel Fusch

 

Abstract: There has been considerable recent criticism of the bottled water industry from professional and popular as well as scholarly sources. This criticism disputes the veracity of a brand's claim to a pure and natural source, as well as the standards for regulation. This paper adds another factor to the criticism of bottled "natural springs" water, emphasizing the magical operation implicit in the rhetoric for the packaging of bottled water. The paper examines the natural and supernatural semiotics of the commercial packaging for bottled "natural springs" water, and identifies a correlation between the semiotic function of the ancient Germanic rune lagu and the semiotic function of the figuration used in the packaging for bottled water brands such as Deer Park, Arrowhead, and Belu. The paper suggests that the packaging serves the same semiotic purpose as the rune. That is, the packaging serves as both sign of the act of access, and device for the act of access. In the packaging's visual rhetoric, water serves as signifier for both H2O (a natural resource) and spiritual refreshment and inspiration (a supernatural resource), and the packaging claims to offer a direct access to a natural setting at which the consumer can obtain both. In effect, like the rune lagu, the sign constituted by bottle-and-label packaging claims to perform a magical operation, in offering access to a source that is not actually present. To demonstrate the operation of bottled water packaging as both figure and device, this paper first reviews the relevant natural and supernatural significations of "water," applying Roland Barthes’ semiotics of myth to a reading of the significations of water on which the rhetoric of bottled water packaging relies. The paper then argues that the rune lagu operates as both sign and device of access to the natural and supernatural water source. Third, by analyzing the packaging semiotics of several bottled water brands, the paper demonstrates that the packaging is also intended to function as both sign and device. Finally, the paper suggests that an awareness within the public discourse concerning bottled water of the packaging’s operation as device would allow for a more comprehensive dispute of the veracity of marketing claims made by the bottled water industry.

 

<1> In this paper, I am interested in the natural and supernatural semiotics of the commercial packaging for bottled "natural springs" water. By "packaging" I mean both the bottle and the label on the bottle, which together form a rhetorical object and rhetorical message. In some cases the marketing language on the corporation’s web site serves as further rhetorical packaging. To provide insight into the semiotic function of this packaging, I will argue for a correlation between the semiotic function of the ancient Germanic rune lagu (or laguz) and the semiotic function of the figuration used in the packaging for bottled water brands such as Deer Park, Arrowhead, and Belu. My objective is to suggest that the packaging serves the same semiotic purpose as the rune. That is, the packaging serves as both sign of the act of access, and device for the act of access. However, the identification of the package as a device depends on the illusion that it is not a figure, that the bottle is signified rather than signifier (where the signified is access to the source) . Most packaging for bottled natural springs water in the United States is designed to suggest that the packaging is not actually present, and that the consumer is being granted direct access to the product’s alleged natural and supernatural sources.

<2> In effect, the sign constituted by bottle-and-label packaging claims to perform a magical operation, in offering an access to a source that is not actually present (whether in fact the source exists at all is rarely visible to the consumer). The idea that the commercial sign might operate as a magical device is not a new one; Dennis W. Rook, for instance, has made a persuasive case for a reading of signs that announce a security presence as modern "threshold protection devices" or "hex signs"—"symbolic entities that are displayed to ward off harmful or evil forces, and believed to shield people and places from undesirable natural and supernatural phenomena," such as burglars or trespassers.[1] Modern "hexes," like hexes in previous centuries, thus have a performative and therefore "magical" purpose. One might note such a purpose not only in commercial warding signs ("Protected by Watchguard") but also in private ones ("Beware of Dog"). However, there is yet to be a definitive study of the performative intent (as device for access) of the signs and packaging for bottled water. In this study I will compare the bottle to the rune, as Rook compares the security sign to the hex.

<3> To demonstrate the operation of bottled water packaging as both figure and device, I will first review the relevant natural and supernatural significations of "water," applying Roland Barthes’ semiotics of myth to my reading of the significations of water on which the rhetoric of bottled water packaging relies. I will then argue that the rune lagu operates as both sign and device of access to the natural and supernatural water source. Third, by analyzing the packaging semiotics of several bottled water brands, I will demonstrate that the packaging is also intended to function as both sign and device. Finally, I will suggest that an awareness within the public discourse concerning bottled water of the packaging’s operation as device would allow for a more comprehensive dispute of the veracity of marketing claims made by the bottled water industry.

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<4> The rhetoric of bottled water packaging relies on the association of the signifier "water" with multiple signifieds. One signified is natural or physical: H2O, that mysterious source of sustenance for physical thirst. The other signified is supernatural or metaphysical: inspiration, refreshment, energy, that mysterious source of sustenance for spiritual thirst. This semiotic relationship is not manufactured by the bottled water industry, but instead is a cultural commonplace that the industry can both exploit and proliferate. Francis H. Chapelle, in Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Waters, provides a rationale for the relationship of the two signifieds, tracing that connection to an early recognition of natural circumstances:

The traditional mythologies that surround wells and springs can be traced to two historical realities. First, springs were an important source of water, sometimes unusually clean water, for people who very much needed it. Second, the source of the waters issuing from springs or being tapped by wells could not be directly observed and was therefore deeply mysterious. We need search no further than this combination of necessity and mystery to understand why these mythologies arose and why they persist to this day.[2]

Certainly, one can note a connection: water from wells or springs comes from a mysterious, unseen source; inspiration comes from a mysterious, unseen source.

<5> The semiotic connection between water and inspiration is embedded deeply in the varied strains of American (and Western) cultural tradition. In Christian theology, for instance, the "living water" offered by Christ to his followers is a type of inspiration by which their spirits are sustained and fulfilled.[3] The medieval mystic Hildegard von Bingen writes in her visions of "the bubbling source of the living God."[4] In classical literature, the Muses live by the springs on Parnassus, and the Athenian philosophers instruct that one must search for truth at the bottom of the well. Today, one finds that most art labeled "inspirational" features water (ocean, waterfalls, shoreline, gentle streams, raindrops on leaves), unless it features mountains or sunsets. This aspect of American culture produces and is produced by visual and verbal imagery inherited from the poetry and philosophy of the nineteenth-century romantic tradition and informed by the sensibility that M. H. Abrams has labeled "natural supernaturalism."[5] The romantic poets identified the cause of spiritual refreshment and inspiration as the consummation of the "marriage" of the contemplative human mind to the contemplated natural setting. This marriage is possible because the natural setting is infused with supernatural presence. Poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge defined nature not as inert but as pervaded by a co-creative, divine spirit:

And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is in the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man,
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.[6]

In the romantic vision of the pastoral, the natural source is the "dwelling" and embodiment of the supernatural source or presence; natural nature is sign and location of supernatural Nature. Moreover, the consummation of a meditative union between the mind and the natural setting is the invigoration of the human mind through its reconnection to a supernatural source that "rolls through all things." Ishmael’s narration at the start of Moby-Dick expresses the desire for this reconnection; whenever Ishmael feels spiritual confinement or limitation, misanthropic or melancholic sentiment, and a "damp, drizzly November in my soul,"[7] or whenever, like Wordsworth, he feels that "the world is too much with us,"[8] he sets out to the sea. Ishmael returns to the natural and supernatural source that will refresh his soul. Through the words of Ishmael, Melville discourses at length concerning the refreshing effect of the water source on the individual who approaches it:

Say, you are in the country; in some high land of lakes. Take almost any path you please, and ten to one it carries you down in a dale, and leaves you there by a pool in the stream. There is magic in it. Let the most absent-minded of men be plunged into his reveries—stand that man on his legs, set his feet a-going, and he will infallibly lead you to water…. Yes, as every one knows, meditation and water are wedded forever.[9]

The desire is for union and connection with a natural/supernatural source achieved through "meditation" on and immersion in a natural setting.[10] For Wordsworth, this reconnection inspires and awakens the mind’s potential:

For I, methought, while the sweet breath of Heaven Was blowing on my body, felt within A corresponding mild creative breeze….[11]

Because of his desire for the "supernatural" and inspiring effect of the "natural" environment on his mind, Wordsworth is driven to "drink wild water, and to pluck green herbs."[12] The "wild water," for instance, will refresh not only the man’s body but also his mind, just as the natural wind (here endued with supernatural significance—the wind is "the sweet breath of Heaven" and is identified with the Holy Spirit) inspires a "breeze" of creativity in the mind. In the romantic interpretation of nature, natural signifieds become signs for supernatural signifieds. Thus, "breeze" becomes a sign for creativity, and "wild water" becomes a sign for inspiration.

<6> In this manner, the visual or verbal articulation of natural supernaturalism (whether one encounters it in romantic poetry or romantic advertising) functions as what Roland Barthes calls a second-order semiological system, by which a linguistic sign becomes in turn the signifier for a mythical sign.[13] For example, a natural sign might become the signifier for a supernatural experience. Consider Wordsworth’s encounter with the breeze. The myth that Wordsworth articulates is predicated upon a reading of the sign "breeze" as signifier for both a natural wind and a supernatural movement within the spirit. The myth is that the two movements, one natural and one supernatural, are a correspondence. Therefore the two movements can be signified by a single term. This same myth of correspondence provides the basis for syncretic significations, such as:

Signifier: water
Signified: H2O (physical refreshment)

Signifier: water
Signified: inspiration (spiritual refreshment)

As we will see, the rhetoric of the packaging for bottled water relies on the acceptance of a correspondence between the natural and supernatural signifieds for "water." (Thus semiotic strategy in the packaging for bottled water may be interpreted vis-à-vis the set of assumptions that Abrams has defined as natural supernaturalism.) The romantic desire-- where it persists in modern urban populations--is to access, as directly as possible, the natural source and therefore the supernatural source of inspiration and vitality. For this reason, the natural spring retains some of the mythic appeal of the fountain of youth; access to the spring is perceived as inspiring, refreshing, and rejuvenating. The marketing rhetoric for bottled water appeals to this desire, promising the consumer both natural water and a supernatural experience of inspiration and spiritual refreshment through an imagined congress with Nature. What the marketing offers to consumers is the myth that in drinking from the bottle, the consumer performs an act of access, drawing directly from the source.

 

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<7> Let us consider the semiotic function of the rune for water, a figure signifying the act of access to water. This is the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic rune lagu:

The rune predates written language in the Anglo-Saxon and Germanic cultures. Runes were a metaphor-based method of communication, originally pictographs comprising concrete and abstract meanings, representing a conception of the world both deeply spiritual and eminently practical. Runes provided the earliest form of writing in northern Europe; one finds them etched into stones. How early the runes appeared is uncertain. However, the earliest extant artifacts date to the second century A.D. [14] Eventually, they formed a rudimentary alphabet, and some of the runes were absorbed into the Latin alphabet when that alphabet was brought to England in the fifth century.

<8> This particular rune represents the shape of a man drawing water from a well. The man draws water from a stone well, and inspiration from the well of his sleeping or waking visions. That is, the rune, which signifies "water," "inspiration," and "dreams," is also a figural representation of the physical act by which a human being accesses the natural source of water, as well as the metaphorical act by which a human being accesses the supernatural source of inspiration. In fact, the drawing of water from the well is both acts in one.

<9> Besides the purpose of figuration, the other possible uses of the rune remain unclear to contemporary historians and linguists; defining the uses of language in prehistory is often a matter of surmise and educated guesswork. Certainly the rune had a practical use as sign and figure. R. I. Page accordingly observes that:

Most Germanic men would carry a knife at their belt. A stick of wood could be picked up anywhere. What more easy than to shave a stick so that it had two or more flat sides, and on each side to cut the letters of a message? And how much simpler than the Christian method of flaying a sheep or cow, preparing and stretching the skin, cutting it into pieces, making a pen from a bird’s quill, manufacturing ink from metallic salts and galls or from lampblack mixed with gums, and then writing (in our sense of the word) a text.[15]

Page is most interested in the practical efficiency of runes as a semiotic system. For example, a traveler could inscribe lagu ("water") on a post or a fallen tree near a path leading to a source of fresh water, or eihwaz ("death") as a warning of the proximity of a bog or some other peril. Moreover, each rune served as a specific sign, but because each rune was also a letter, the runic letters could form an alphabet for use in more complex messages.

<10> The view that runes also served not only as signs but as devices for magical or incantatory use is now unpopular with many scholars; Page especially favors the interpretation of runes as a daily script for everyday use. Christine Fell, similarly, argues that the connection of runes with magic was a Scandinavian innovation, imported into England and Germany quite late, during the Viking invasions.[16] This view is probably a reaction against both the perception of runes in popular culture (for example, Ralph Blum’s oracle The Book of Runes) and the tendency of earlier twentieth-century scholars to favor the attachment of mystical meaning to runic alphabets (for example, R. M. V.’s Eliott’s etymology of "rune" as originated in the Old English run [secrecy], in Runes: An Introduction). However, Page’s and Fell’s views may be equally misleading; it is probable that runes served as both sign and device, depending on the context. One need neither argue, with Eliott, that "communication among people remained a secondary function of runic writing" and that "much more common was the use of runes to invoke higher powers to affect and influence the lives and fortunes of men,"[17] nor divorce the rune from all magical connotation, as R. I. Page does, citing our age’s "lamentable tendency to flee from reason, common sense and practicality into the realms of superstition and fantasy."[18] One need not approach the runes with either chip on one’s shoulder; too little is known. Eliott and Page both make arguments about the essential nature of runes; yet runes are neither practical nor magical in nature, but in use; in fact, the distinction between the "practical" and "magical" efficacies of language is probably a modern anachronism. There is ample evidence of magical or ritual uses of runes; in support of such rune use, Robert DiNapoli paraphrases Bede’s story about the capture of Ymma:

His brother believes he has been killed and so has masses performed for the release of his soul from purgatory. As these masses are sung, the manacles binding the still-living Ymma fall away of their own accord, to the consternation of his captors, who then ask Ymma whether he has any ‘litteras solutorias’ (releasing letters) on his person.[19]

The use of Bede’s story illustrates the source of our confusion concerning the magical use of runes. For Bede, a Christian writer using the Latin alphabet, the nature and use of runes is probably as obscure as it is to modern scholars, both because for Bede also the runes belong to a linguistic past and because they belong to a cultural (pagan) other. As DiNapoli remarks, the poets of the Anglo-Saxon period had "only vague and scant knowledge of what the runes may have meant to their pagan forebears."[20] In short, the modern scholar’s primary evidence for the use of runes is in writers like Bede, who are part of the beginning of our own tradition of language, not part of the language tradition that relied on runes. For this reason, I elide the available definitions and theories of rune use, and direct attention only to what is apparent: that runes served, in some way, as both signs and devices. Lagu, for instance, could serve the use of either figuration—as a sign of the proximity of water or as a representation of water in a written script—or as a device for either the invocation of water or the use of water in a magical spell or script. Lagu would provide magical access to water (to a natural source), or to dreams (to a supernatural source). That is, depending on the context, the rune either figures the man drawing from the well or draws the water from the well, performing the act that it signifies.

<11> One might compare to this use of the rune the later use of the dowsing stick. Dowsing (a.k.a. rhabdomancy, "water witching," or "doodlebugging") survived in popular use as a divinatory practice well into the eighteenth century in frontier America (and survives even today, though rarely). The earliest known written reference to dowsing is in a text from 1430,[21] but the actual age of the practice is unknown. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, frontier families would hire dowsers to search for underground water, for the right place for a well. The dowser tapped at the earth with a forked or hooked stick, often in the shape of the letter L (which is also the shape of the rune lagu), until the stick twitched over the site of water.[22] The device was even used recently—in the mid-1990s—by an employee of AquaPenn, who secured the services of a water witch with an "L rod" or dowsing stick in order to locate a natural source. Francis H. Chapelle quotes this brief conversation between the employee, Bob Hirst, and the dowser:

Hirst pulled Wray aside. "How do those L-rods work?" he asked. Mark Wray laughed and shrugged. "I have no idea. They just do."[23]

Regardless of whether one believes in its operation, the origin of the dowsing stick remains a mystery. All that is known is that the L rod (also known as a "doodlebug") was (and apparently is still) a device for locating and accessing sources of water. The L rod’s physical resemblance to the shape of the rune lagu may be coincidental, but that resemblance may also explain the origin of the stick (otherwise, why the letter "L"?), in which case the stick originally served as figuration as well as device, both representing and enacting the act of accessing the source. This cannot be demonstrated, but it is an intriguing speculation.



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<12> My objective is to demonstrate the means by which the packaging for bottled water serves, like the rune (and possibly like the L rod), as both sign and device of access. This claim sounds like one of Lewis Carroll’s unsolvable riddles: When is a water bottle like a rune? Yet an examination of the semiotics of bottled water marketing will demonstrate that the bottle, despite different cultural coding, serves a similar semiotic purpose for a twenty-first century consumer. First, the packaging for bottled water provides, by its visual and verbal rhetoric, a figure signifying the act of access to a source that is both natural and supernatural. Second, the packaging is designed to convince the consumer that the package is not a package, that the sign is not the sign but instead the signified, that in opening the bottle one is actually granted access to the natural and supernatural source.

<13> Chapelle suggests: "When the average American sips a bottle of water, it is likely that his or her attention is focused more on the water than on the bottle. After all, the water is the point. It is the consumable, and that is what generally interests people."[24] Chapelle takes it for granted that the consumer ignores the bottle itself. Yet he also indicates that "when consumers peruse bottled waters on a grocery shore shelf, what they see is a colorful packaging designed to attract the eye"[25] ; the corporations that sell bottled water are also selling "choice" and "variety."[26] Thus, the packaging must interest the consumer, because on the basis of that packaging the consumer is to choose a particular brand over the others. How can the consumer both notice the packaging and make choices based on it and also take the packaging for granted? In fact, the consumer is meant to both see and not see the packaging. That is, the successful bottle and bottle label persuade the consumer that there is no packaging, that the consumable is in fact not the half liter of H2O but the pure experience of accessing a natural and supernatural water source. The product is described as direct access to both natural spring waters and to the spring of spiritual refreshment and inspiration for which those waters are sign and symbol.

<14> Consider the images that adorn the labels on bottled water brands: Fiji depicts a mountain waterfall, Arrowhead a river pouring downslope from the mountains, Belu a spring bursting from the ground. In each case the image operates as a sign; the signified is not the specified quantity of H2O contained in the bottle, but instead an experience to which the bottle gives the drinker access. The packaging claims to connect the consumer with Nature and deliver to the consumer the spiritual energy and invigoration that comes from drinking "wild water" (to borrow Wordsworth’s phrase). To indicate the possibility of direct access to a natural and supernatural source, most brands of bottled water use the words "natural" and "refreshing" on their labels, together with a recognizable iconography signifying inspiration received from nature. The labels for Deer Park bottles, for instance, feature the image of a stag silhouetted against a rising dawn; the color tones are cool, light blues, and between deer and dawn are the faint outlines of mountains, as though just emerging from mist. The label informs consumers that Deer Park water comes from "natural springs as pure as nature itself."[27] Deer Park, then, is advertising proximity to nature and to the supernatural inspiration available through meditation on or immersion in nature The implication is that drinking Deer Park water provides the same feeling or energy that is provided by watching a stag silhouetted against the dawn rising over misty mountains. The stag is one of the marketing world’s many "powerful, idealized, and ritualized symbols that are employed to market a feeling and a sensation."[28] That feeling is the product as much as the water itself; the packaging—label and bottle—offer to the consumer the myth of access to that feeling, that connection to nature .

<15> Thus, the visual and verbal message on the Deer Park label operates as a myth, based on a second-order semiological system. According to Barthes, "the materials of mythical speech (the language itself, photography, painting, posters, rituals, objects, etc.), however different at the start, are reduced to a pure signifying function as soon as they are caught by myth."[29] That is, the sign becomes itself the signifier for a second sign; thus "water" can be a signifier for "inspiration," and the image on the Deer Park label, itself a sign signifying nature, can become a signifier for a mythic access to inspiration. Thus:

First Sign:

Signifier: A stag before a sunset
Signified: Nature

Second Sign (myth):

Signifier: A stag before a sunset, signifying nature
Signified: Access to a spiritual connection with Nature

The label on the bottle promotes this myth of access, and the image on the label is a mythical sign signifying that access.[30]

<16> What makes this myth especially compelling is that it relies upon a feeling that urban consumers may feel is unavailable to them. The bottled water product, like other products that rely on a similar myth of a supernatural and inspiring connection to Nature, promises to offer the consumer a better life. Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water even has as its slogan "It’s Better Up Here! With a taste as refreshing as nature itself."[31] That undefined betterness provided by the experience of refreshment is the advertised good. The "refreshing" taste signifies both the quenching of a natural thirst (the water is direct from a natural source, a pure spring) and the quenching of a supernatural thirst (the water is direct from a supernatural source, Nature). The natural spring water contained in the bottle, the advertisements suggest, may inspire energy, creativity, and a spiritual and intellectual vitality not otherwise available to the consumer. Julia Corbett describes this type of "green sell" as follows:

In many of the appeals of nature-as-backdrop ads, the advertisements attempt to associate material goods with nonmaterial qualities that have disappeared from many people’s lives, qualities such as solitude, wilderness, lush landscapes, free-flowing water, and clean air. In a print ad for L.L. Bean, we see a man wading across calm, milky blue waters to a small sailboat in the early morning light. The caption reads, "Don’t mistake a street address for where you actually live." Apparently this man cannot "live" in his everyday life—which we assume takes place in a far less serene setting—but must leave it to achieve qualities it lacks.[32]

Like the L.L. Bean ad, the Deer Park and Arrowhead packaging tantalizes with the promise of a more abundant and fulfilling life. Nature/nature is the source of this life, and the packaging claims that the bottle delivers that source directly to the consumer, "pure," undiluted, and "refreshing." Corbett notes that "pristine mountain vistas and sparkling waters (usually devoid of people) allow us to romanticize about a life lost or connections broken" (149). Bottled water companies market their products as solutions not just to physical thirst but also to needs that are symptomatic of societal deficiencies. These perceived deficiencies include: 1) the lack of healthy water, 2) the lack of personal connection to nature/Nature, as well as 3) the lack of the inspiration and refreshment that might be provided through such a personal connection. If the consumer feels, like Wordsworth, that "the world is too much with us," or, like Ishmael, that there is a "damp, drizzly November" in the consumer’s soul, the bottle offers a way to get free of civilized confines and return to the natural source, via an act of access at once physical and symbolic. Nostalgically, these advertisements recall the myth of a Golden Age past in which pure, natural water was easily accessible (which in fact it rarely was), in which nature was immediately close, and inspiration might be achieved simply by climbing the nearby mountain and watching a sunset by a waterfall. Thus the Deer Park web site invites the consumer (symbolically) to enter Deer Park, "surrounded by hundreds of acres of secluded woodland."[33]

<17> In order to present the myth of access to natural refreshment and supernatural inspiration to the consumer, the marketing rhetoric for bottled water brands tends to mystify the source and the actual process of access. Those who dispute the claims in that rhetoric attempt to demystify both source and process, in order to expose corporate fraud or consumer folly. What is at stake in the discourse is the mystery. What is the origin of the water? How does the water get to the consumer? By what means (natural or supernatural) does the consumer draw from the well? The marketing rhetoric emphasizes the effortless rush of both water and inspiration directly from nature; the rhetoric employed by the skeptics emphasizes the sluggish flow of uninspiring and rather normal water through a mechanistic factory process. In fact, both processes may be equally mysterious to the average consumer, but one has a tang of romance, the other the taint of stigma.

<18> Chapelle attributed the value of natural springs water to the fact that "the source of waters issuing from springs or tapped by wells could not be directly observed and was therefore deeply mysterious."[34] Wells and springs are mysterious and inspiring. Is the same true of bottled natural springs water? There is a paradox here. First, the claim of "purity" suggests the value of bottled water to the consumer is primarily the fact that bottled water is not mysterious. Instead, the water is packaged, trusted, safe, pure. There are no interfering chemicals, as one presumes there is with tap water. One knows what one is buying. That, at least, is what the advertisement claims. At the same time the marketing of bottled water relies on the semiotic deletion of the package, the replacement of the signifier with the signified. The illusion is that one is not buying treated or bottled water at all. Instead, the consumer is buying a mysterious access to the natural spring itself. The label returns the magic and the mystery to the elaborate process of locating, retrieving, processing, and transporting water from natural spring to thirsting consumer. The rhetorical objective is for that process to be invisible to the consumer; the consumer is to believe that when opening the bottle, he or she is: 1) drinking directly from the natural source, and 2) taking in energy or inspiration from a supernatural source (refreshing Nature) of which the natural source is itself the sign. The consumer is intended to accept on a subconscious level that he or she is drawing water directly from the spring. The idea is that by drinking from the bottle package, the consumer achieves the access signified on the label.

<19> Consider the advertisements for Aquafina, a brand of purified water pioneered by Pepsi and marketed using the same strategies as natural springs brands.[35] The marketing images available on the Aquafina web site, for instance, deliberately render the origin of the bottled water and the connection between consumer and source mysterious and mythical; the web site has sported images depicting fresh and remarkably blue water rushing over an Aquafina bottle, as well as the image of an upside-down, frozen Aquafina bottle, hanging from a tree branch alongside icicles. At first glance, the iced-over Aquafina bottle appears to be an icicle. By immersing the bottle in natural water (in the first image) or disguising the bottle as a natural object (in the second image), the advertisements attempt to erase the bottle’s identity as a bottle or package; that is, the packaging, the verbal and visual rhetoric for Aquafina, attempts to convey that there is no packaging, that the bottle represents direct access to the source of fresh, natural water. The bottleness of the bottle is hidden from the consumer; instead, the consumer is meant to see the bottle as a quasi-magical object that emerges directly out of nature.[36] The water is so fresh and natural that one might pluck the bottle from a bough as one would pluck an icicle. As magical device, the bottle functions much like the rune. While the label on the bottle functions as a mythical sign of access, the bottle itself is presented as the means of access, the device or tool by which the consumer achieves that access. The packaging for the water product is both figuration and device, both mythical sign and mythical signified.

<20> The marketing for Belu--the commercial brand of bottled natural springs water based in the United Kingdom that has recently been awarded Best of Show in the 11th Annual Beverage Packaging Global Design Awards as well as the 2004 Shine Award by British Glass for packaging design--adopts a more complicated visual and verbal rhetoric.[37] Rather than elide the difficulty of the process by which the water travels from source to consumer, the marketing for Belu actually emphasizes the difficulty. Consider the marketing text on the Belu web site:

Throughout history, people have been able to drink pure water from almost any stream on the planet. Now, despite our progress from the yo-yo to the laptop, it’s no longer so easy— We think we can do better. By investing our profits in clean water projects, Belu is an opportunity to balance our modern world with our essential need for clean water.[38]

The marketing blurb combines an appeal to the desire for clean water in a polluted world with an appeal to the nostalgia for a simpler, more natural world, in which yo-yos are more common than laptops and one can drink: 1) from any stream, because all streams were clean, and 2) directly from a natural stream. The images on the web site illustrate the process of finding and reaching the water. The web site purports to educate the consumer concerning the process, though the rhetoric of that education is inspirational rather than technical; for instance, the web page illustrating the origin of the Belu water—a source "fed by pure ocean rains" and "filtered through ancient Silurian rock"—is entitled "Our Quest." Unlike the marketing for Aquafina or Deer Park, the message of Belu does not emphasize the ease of access to the source. Instead, part of the attraction of Belu is the alleged participation in a romantic, almost Authurian quest for the source, a quest in which the consumer is invited to participate vicariously when purchasing Belu water. The "Our Quest" web page describes a search that spans 4,000 miles and the investigation of 70 wells, concluding with the triumphant sentence: "We found our source."

<21> Belu is presented to the consumer with romantic significance. "Our passion is pure water," the Belu slogan declares; the image on the Belu label depicts the burst of water from a hidden, underground source; on every page of the belu.org web site, one finds the same image of a spring bursting from deep earth. The spring never bubbles; it springs , spraying upward like a geyser. Besides suggesting the purity and natural origin of the water, the image suggests the kinetic result of opening the glass water bottle. Like champagne, the water and refreshment will spray from the bottle in a liberating and orgasmic release. The Belu product, according to the advertising, is that immediate and abundant rush of water and refreshment from the source; the opening of the Belu bottle is the act of access to that rush of wild water.[39] Belu, in effect, sells both access to the natural springs and access to inspiration from Nature. The packaging for Belu offers a vicarious "adventure" (a quest for the natural source) that reconnects the consumer with Nature.[40]

<22> Chapelle draws a correlation between the commercial search for salable spring waters in Florida and Ponce de Leon’s mythic search for Florida’s Fountain of Youth, a natural spring capable of energizing and rejuvenating the world’s weary.[41] Chapelle intends this correlation to emphasize the practical difficulties of accessing an actual natural springs source. Belu also suggests that difficulty, but the company promises to do most of the work. The consumer’s alleged participation is on a more romantic level. Belu offers not only direct access to the source but also a heroic or mythic status for the consumer, who is invited to view his- or herself as the partaker in a quest. The marketing for Belu has not invoked Ponce de Leon by name, but it has invoked the same quest story of the heroic search for the natural and supernatural water source. The geyser-like spring depicted on the label looks much like a fountain of youth, and signifies the opportunity for a spiritual rejuvenation; the water that will rush from the bottle is restorative and refreshing. Moreover, the glass bottle is itself a beautiful object, designed to be a fitting vessel for the romantic waters it allegedly contains. Because of the consumer’s participation in a quest narrative, the Belu bottle becomes a more compelling magical device than the Aquafina or the Deer Park bottle—and wins marketing awards.



5

<23> Lagu and Belu, rune and sign on the water bottle: both are a means of figuration, representing the act of drawing water and inspiration from the source. However, the visual emblem and the verbal slogan on the water bottle also attempt to erase the perception that emblem and slogan constitute figuration; the illusion is that the bottle constitutes a vehicle for direct access to the source, that the commodity package is actually an unpackaged experience. In this, too, the emblem is like the rune; in ritual or magical use, the rune is an attempt to provide direct access to water or inspiration. Rune and bottle are devices for drawing water directly from the source.

<24> Chapelle contends that "bottled water companies—along with municipal water suppliers, home-based water treatment systems, water stores, and privately owned wells to name a few—are not just selling water. They’re selling variety. They’re selling choice . They’re selling Quality."[42] In fact, companies selling bottled natural springs water are selling more than that. They are selling the myth of access to a natural and supernatural source of refreshment and energy, to the quenching of spiritual as well as physical thirst. The difficulty of obtaining water from a natural and pure source and then delivering it is elided for the consumer; for the consumer, the access is direct. The illusion is that by merely opening the bottle, the consumer might drink from the natural spring, waterfall, or river depicted on the bottle label. The bottled water company has one up on the seventeenth-century dowser; while the dowser leads his client directly to the water, the bottled water corporation claims to carry the water directly to the client.

<25> Thus the bottle, like the rune (and possibly like the L rod), is both figure and device. The emblem on the label (the deer framed by the sun, the geyser, the waterfall) allows the marketing campaign to bypass many of the concerns voiced in the public discourse concerning access to the natural source by presuming to invoke for the consumer the magical act of that access. Paradoxically, the rhetoric on the bottle itself both advances an argument concerning the relationship of the water inside the bottle to the distant, invisible, and mysterious natural/supernatural source, and presents the bottle as itself a magical device for accessing the source. Inasmuch as the marketing anticipates the effect of the public discourse on a modern and skeptical consumer, the label on the bottle includes the argument; inasmuch as the marketing presents the bottle itself as a device, a modern L rod, the rhetoric on the label elides the need for any argument as to the veracity of the sign in its relationship to the signified source. If the consumer can be persuaded to accept the bottle as a device, as a means of drawing water directly from the source, then the figuration on the label requires little argument, little proof of veracity. Belu does one better by creating a quest narrative, in which the argument, though the evidence for it is vague, is nevertheless visible and alluring because of its mythic appeal.

<26> The rhetorical effectiveness of this deliberate mystification, this identification of the bottle as a device for accessing the source and the corresponding erasure of all signs of the arduous process by which the company achieves that access (if in fact the company has done so at all), relies on an appeal to the consumer’s need for that access. The rhetoric of the packaging for bottled water relies on a set of assumptions about consumer desire. These assumptions include the consumer’s desire for adventure and for a spiritual connection with nature. Probably many consumers are more concerned in their conscious judgment with issues of taste or with the veracity of the claim of a natural source; it probably cannot be demonstrated conclusively whether a majority of consumers of leading bottled water brands subconsciously desire not only access to the natural spring water but also access to a supernatural experience of Nature. It can be demonstrated, however, that the packaging for the bottled water brands claims to offer such an experience to the consumer. The implication of magical access is not articulated in explicit terms; as in so much marketing rhetoric, the labels on the bottles rely on suggestion rather than invocation, connotation rather than denotation. Only the natural semiotics need be stated in the packaging, because the claim that the water is "natural" and "pure" is in response to questions the consumer is likely to ask. The supernatural semiotics articulated in the formulation of the bottle as a device for access is not in response to a question that is ever likely to be explicit.

<27> While little attention has been given in public discourse to the claim of direct access to inspiration via a connection with Nature, dispute concerning the veracity of the claim of direct access to the natural source is frequent. The appeal of such a claim (and, I would argue, of the implicit claim of access to the supernatural source) assures that the probable deceit of some bottled water corporations is received as especially unethical and perfidious. Yet the appeal is there. The growing popularity of bottled water in the United States has coincided with (and also contributed to) a growing doubt in urban populations as to the sufficiency of tap water, in terms either of health or taste. "Americans," according to Chapelle, "have particular tastes in drinking water, but much of the water actually available is not up to these standards."[43] American consumers expect water that is fit to enter the human body to be either "pure" (taken directly from mountain springs) or "purified" (that is, treated). Given this imperative, one sees rapidly increasing sales of natural springs water, purified water, mineral water, and other bottled commodities. Doubts about both the purity and the sustainability of national and natural resources contribute further to the value attached to bottled water.

<28> At the same time, the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has published studies to the effect that "while bottled water marketing conveys images of purity, inadequate regulations offer no assurance."[44] For another example, Tom Standage’s recent New York Times article, entitled "Bad to the Last Drop," is openly critical of the advertised inspiring taste of bottled water because of his certainty of the economic infeasibility and wastefulness of the products. Having argued that "despite its association with purity and cleanliness, bottled water is bad for the environment" due to the "huge numbers of plastic bottles" sent to landfills by the consumers, and having argued that the shipping of bottled water is extremely expensive, Standage closes his article with a challenge to his readers: "If you don't believe me about the taste, then set up a tasting, and see if you really can tell the difference."[45] Humorously, one of his readers took him up on this challenge, and publicized the voluminous results of the bottled water tasting on a personal web page.[46] More recently, John Stossel, on 20/20 and in a written editorial, attacked the veracity of bottled water marketing on the grounds that the purity and health advertised on the bottle labels is a fiction: "Big-selling Dasani and Aquafina are also just reprocessed tap water from cities around the country. One of Aquafina’s sources is the Detroit River! At least the popular French water, Evian, does come from France."[47] Books such as Water Follies and But Not A Drop to Drink! argue the same, exposing the "purity" and the sanitation of most bottled water brands as an advertising hoax.[48]

<29> Starbucks has recently launched a marketing campaign for Ethos bottled water that evades these criticisms in an innovative fashion, obviating many of the conventional semiotic functions and rhetorical claims of brand packaging. Rather than emphasize either purity or direct access to the source (the claim of "natural spring water" is given minimal attention on the bottle label, on the Ethos Water web site, and in the press releases), Ethos focuses on an access and availability to the natural source that the consumer can provide to others. The bottle does remain a magical operator, but this time the primary line of access is not between consumer and source but between consumer and other, underprivileged, consumers. With each purchase of an Ethos bottle, Ethos Water has pledged the charitable donation of 5 cents toward the donation of clean water to children in third-world countries. The marketing of the Ethos brand is thus complicated by the suggestion that Ethos serves as a two-way device; first, the water in the bottle is labeled as "natural spring water," suggesting the consumer’s direct access to the natural source. Second and more importantly, however, the label on the bottle carries the slogan "Helping children get clean water."[49] The act of purchasing the bottle is both charity and exchange; the web site announces: "It’s a powerfully simple concept…Water for Water."[50] Ethos is a device by which the consumer both receives direct access to the source and delivers that direct access to others. The Ethos Water web site devotes little attention to a discussion of the actual natural or supernatural sources available because little is needed; the consumer’s attention is directed instead to the act of providing, rather than receiving, access. Ethos is a special case.[51]

<30> Those voices bent, however, on exposing the ethical and factual fallacies of the marketing rhetoric and rhetorical packaging for bottled water brands would profit from noting not only the lack of evidence for the claims advanced in that rhetoric but also the semiotics of that rhetoric. One must take note of the use of an implicitly magical sign. The hoax is not just that the water is pure, but that the purchase and the act of opening and drinking from the package allows access to a natural and supernatural source. What is at stake is not just the commodification of nature but the commodification of access to nature and spirit. That both the "access" and the "nature" involved are mythical constructs highlights the potential duplicity of the marketing rhetoric. Therefore, to argue that the water for such and such a brand does not actually have its origin in a pure and natural spring is not enough. To dispute the standards by which the purity of bottled water is regulated is also not enough. The packaging of the water must become a subject for discourse as well. What critics of the bottled water industry have to contend with is not only possible distortion of fact but also the deliberate propagation of a compelling myth. For that matter, the explicit statement that the bottled water is pure is easier for consumers to question than the myth advertised implicitly on the label: the myth of a magical access to nature and an invigoration of the spirit by means of that access.

 

Works Cited

Abrams, M.H. Natural Supernaturalism. Norton Library. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973.

"Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water." www.arrowheadwater.com. Nestle Waters North America Inc., 2005.

Barthes, Roland. "Myth Today." A Barthes Reader. Susan Sontag, ed. New York: Hill and Wang, 1982. 93-149.

Blake, William. "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." William Blake: The Complete Poems. Alicia Ostriker, ed. New York: Penguin Books, 1977.

Blum, Ralph. The Book of Runes. Oracle Books. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1987.

"Bottled Water Tasting – The Results." A Life of Luxury Posted by "Andrew." http://www.alifeofluxury.co.uk/archives/2005/08/bottled_water_t_1.html. August 6, 2005.

Chapelle, Francis H. Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Waters. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Coffel, Steve. But Not A Drop to Drink! The Lifesaving Guide to Good Water. New York: Rawson Associates, 1989.

Corbett, Julia B. "A Faint Green Sell: Advertising and the Natural World." Enviropop: Studies in Environmental Rhetoric and Popular Culture. Mark Meister and Phyllis M. Japp, eds. Westport: Praeger, 2002. 141-160.

"Deer Park Water." http://www.deerparkwater.com. Nestle Waters North America, Inc., 2005.

DiNapoli, Robert. "Odd Characters: Runes in Old English Poetry." Verbal Encounters: Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse Studies for Roberta Frank. Toronto: University of Toronto Press Incorporated, 2005. 145-162.

DS Waters of America, L.P. www.water.com. 2005. Retrieved September 9, 2005.

Ebay. Auction: "Genuine Bottled St Lawrence Seaway River Water." http://cgi.ebay.com/GENUINE-BOTTLED-ST-LAWRENCE-SEAWAY-RIVER-WATER_W0QQitemZ5613700006QQcategoryZ88433QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem. September 13, 2005.

Elliott, Ralph W. V. Runes: An Introduction. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1959.

Ethos Water. "Ethos Water." www.ethoswater.com. 2006.

George, Lois D. "Uses of Spring Water." Springs and Bottled Waters of the World. Philip E. LaMoreaux and Judy T. Tanner, eds. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 2001. 105-120.

Glennon, Robert. Water Follies. Washington: Island Press, 2002.

Hildegard of Bingen. Book of Divine Works, with Letters and Songs. Matthew Fox, ed. Santa Fe: Bear & Company, Inc., 1987.

KJV Compact Reference Bible . Grand Rapids: Zondervan Corporation, 2000.

Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick, or the Whale. 150 th Anniversary Edition. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. 4-5.

National Resources Defense Council. "Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?" http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/nbw.asp. April 29, 1999. Retrieved December 2, 2005.

Page, R. I. Reading the Past: Runes. Los Angeles: University of California Press. The Trustees of the British Museum, 1987.

Pepsi Co. "Aquafina." www.aquafina.com. 2005.

Rook, Dennis W. "Modern Hex Signs and Symbols of Security." Marketing and Semiotics. Jean Umiker-Sebeok, ed. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1987. 239-46.

Standage, Tom. "Bad to the Last Drop." New York Times. www.nytimes.com. August 1, 2005.

Stoltman, Jan. "Coffee Cantata." Really. www.musarium.com. Musarium, 2003.

Stossel, John. "Is Bottled Water Better Than Tap?" www.abcnews.go.com. May 6, 2005.

Williams, Henrik. "Reasons for runes." The First Writing. Stephen D. Houston, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 262-273.

Wordsworth, William. William Wordsworth. Stephen Gill, ed. Oxford Authors. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.

 

Notes

[1] Rook, "Modern hex signs and symbols of security," 239. [^]

[2] Chapelle, Francis H. Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Waters. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 25. [^]

[3] Christ introduces this philosophy to a woman seated (significantly) by a well in John 4:13-14: "Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again. But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." [^]

[4] Hildegard of Bingen. Book of Divine Works, with Letters and Songs. Matthew Fox, ed. Santa Fe: Bear & Company, 1987. 207. The passage is taken from the Eighth Vision, "On the Effect of Love." [^]

[5] Abrams, M. H. Natural Supernaturalism. Norton Library. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1973. [^]

[6] William Wordsworth, "Lines written a few miles above Tintern Abbey," 94-103. [^]

[7] Melville, Herman. Moby-Dick, or the Whale. 150th Anniversary Edition. New York: Penguin Books, 2001. 1. [^]

[8] Wordworth, William. "The world is too much with us." Line 1. [^]

[9] Melville, 4-5. [^]

[10] According to Abrams, what the romantics achieved was the replacement of the three-term system (God/Nature/Man) with a two-term system (Nature/Man). The "living water" of Christ is replaced by the "wild water" that one might drink in the wood. In both cases, one accesses a source that is both natural and supernatural. [^]

[11] Wordsworth, The Prelude, 1.41-43. [^]

[12] Ibid., 1.37. [^]

[13] See Barthes’ essay "Myth Today." [^]

[14] Williams, "Reasons for runes." The First Writing. Stephen D. Houston, ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 262-273. 263. [^]

[15] Page, 8. [^]

[16] Williams, 270. [^]

[17] Eliott, 2. [^]

[18] Page, 12. [^]

[19] DiNapoli, 147. [^]

[20] ibid., 161. [^]

[21] The text is Andreas Sola’s Eröffnultee un blostellte natur. [^]

[22] According to George P. Hansen, although the L rod is the most well-known dowsing stick, dowsing has been performed with a number of other devices as well, "including scissors, pliers, crowbars, and even German sausages" (343). See Hansen’s "Dowsing: A Review of Experimental Research," in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, Vol. 51, No. 792, Oct 1982. [^]

[23] Chapelle, Francis H. Wellsprings: A Natural History of Bottled Spring Waters. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2005. 201. [^]

[24] Chapelle, 62. [^]

[25] ibid., 79. [^]

[26] ibid., 254. [^]

[27] The label can be seen at www.deerparkwater.com. Deer Park Water is produced by Nestle Waters North America, Inc. [^]

[28] Corbett, 146. [^]

[29] Barthes, "Myth Today," 99. [^]

[30] I suspect that the image on the Deer Park label is also a deliberate reference to the mythic image in Disney’s Bambi, in which the stag who is Prince of the Forest stands silhouetted against the rising sun, a cultural image of untouched, ennobled and ennobling Nature. Such a reference further complicates the layers of signification, and deepens the mythic significance of the image on the label. [^]

[31] The slogan is from the bottle label for Arrowhead Mountain Spring Water. The Arrowhead advertising can also be found at www.arrowheadwater.com. Arrowhead’s "About Us" page begins: "So where is ‘Up Here’ anyway? Well, ‘Up Here’ refers to where we come from—high in the mountains. It’s where the air is clean and our pure mountain spring water is protected by nature." [^]

[32] Corbett, 148-49. [^]

[33] See "Our Natural Spring Water." http://www.deerparkwater.com/natural [^]

[34] Chapelle, 25. [^]

[35] See www.aquafina.com. Not to be outdone, CocaCola also has a brand of bottled water: Dasani (www.dasani.com). Both are top brands of bottled water, largely due to advertising and prioritized placement. [^]

[36] Ironically, part of the "bottleness" that is hidden from the consumer includes the damage to nature incurred by the disposal of millions of PET bottles which are manufactured and used for the sole purpose of bottling water. [^]

[37] See the Beverage World web site (www.beverageworld.com) published by the Beverage World Publications Group and the Shine Awards at the Glasspac web site (www.glasspac.com) created by British Glass. [^]

[38] See www.belu.org. [^]

[39] The name of the brand itself is fascinating; according to the company web site, the word belu is an anagram of the word "blue," as well as a conflation of "belle" and "blue," connotating both beauty and purity. In fact, the word belu has an arcane sound, an otherness or magic about it. It is not quite like either "blue," an everyday word, or "belle," a refined and elegant word. The word belu is difficult to actually pronounce—it does not roll off the tongue—and the hard b and long e crack like a whip (unless the e is meant to be pronounced short, in which case it produces a softer, more seductive sound), and the whip recoils with the soft l and long u; the word achieves the same phonetic effect as the "abra" in abracadabra, or the "open" in open sesame. Belu is an opening word, an arcane and mysterious word. It even sounds remarkably like lagu. Both by connotating beauty and purity (according to the company’s explanation of the signifier) and by its arcane and mystical sound, "Belu" is meant to signify the magical act of direct access to natural water and inspiration/refreshment. [^]

[40] I borrow the term "adventure" from Corbett (149): "Pristine mountain vistas and sparkling waters (usually devoid of people) allow us to romanticize about a life lost or connections broken. When such adventures are tied in such a way to products, that connection materializes a way of experiencing the natural world." [^]

[41] Chapelle, 187. [^]

[42] Chapelle, 254. [^]

[43] Chapelle, 217. [^]

[44] National Resources Defense Council. "Bottled Water: Pure Drink or Pure Hype?" http://www.nrdc.org/water/drinking/nbw.asp. April 29, 1999. Retrieved December 2, 2005. [^]

[45] Standage, Tom. "Bad to the Last Drop." New York Times. www.nytimes.com. August 1, 2005. [^]

[46] "Bottled Water Tasting – The Results." A Life of Luxury Posted by "Andrew." http://www.alifeofluxury.co.uk/archives/2005/08/bottled_water_t_1.html. August 6, 2005. [^]

[47] Stossel, John. "Is Bottled Water Better Than Tap?" www.abcnews.go.com. May 6, 2005. [^]

[48] See Steve Coffel’s Not A Drop To Drink! (New York: Rawson Associates, 1989) and Robert Jerome Glennon’s Water Follies (Washington: Island Press, 2002). [^]

[49] See the Ethos Water bottle label and slogan on the index page of the Ethos Water web site, www.ethoswater.com. [^]

[50] See the "About Ethos" page on the Ethos Water web site. [^]

[51] Notably, Belu has adopted a similar project (contributing profits to the development of clean water projects globally), though this project is probably less central to the marketing for Belu than Ethos Water’s project is to the marketing for Ethos. Belu does incorporate the clean water project into the quest myth that is the theme of the Belu web site: "We’ve always been obsessed with pure water," the site proclaims, "and when we found out that the world didn’t have any, it sparked an idea…." (www.belu.org). [^]



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