Abstract

This article undertakes a comparative analysis of two oil company advertisements—British Petroleum’s (BP) “Persian Series”, published in London in 1925, and Cenovus Energy’s “Canadian Ideas at Work”, published across Canada in 2012. These advertisements are separated by eighty-seven years, and were produced in different countries, by different companies, and for different audiences. Yet, a closer reading of these documents reveals that they are two sides of the same coin: both narrate the extraction of oil as a great game of commercial conquest, whereby exotic prizes trapped beneath wild and empty landscapes are unlocked by oil companies. How could two advertisements that appear so radically distant feel so close? In what ways do the oil cultures of the past inflect those of the present? This article engages with such questions by critically deconstructing and comparing the imagined worlds of oil presented in BP and Cenovus’ advertisements, tracing the ways in which the resource is represented through the binaries of ancient and modern, empty and urban, wild and civilized. By configuring oil as a constellation of ideas rather than a system of things, this investigation reveals how the colonial legacies of the past continue to seep through the oil cultures of the present.

Highlights

  • Oil Cultures Past and PresentThe oil cultures of the past are alive and well in the present, constantly shaping how we think about and imagine the resource today

  • This article will engage with such questions by critically deconstructing and comparing the imagined worlds of oil presented in “The Persian Series” and “Canadian Ideas at Work”, focusing on the ways in which British PetroleumCompany (BP) and Cenovus rendered oil-bearing landscapes as wild, empty, and remote spaces defined exclusively by the exploitation of oil resources

  • A leitmotif of Energy Humanities, is what Frederick Buell has identified as the scholarly “gap between energy and culture”, and research within the field has centred upon closing this distance through interdisciplinary investigations that take oil as a constellation of ideas rather than a system of things [27]

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Summary

Introduction

The oil cultures of the past are alive and well in the present, constantly shaping how we think about and imagine the resource today. In 2012, the Canadian oil sands company, Cenovus, published a series of energy advertisements that were strangely reminiscent of those published in the ILN almost a century earlier One such commercial, entitled “Canadian Ideas at Work”, provided consumers with a wide range of information about Northern Alberta’s rugged wilderness and the exotic source of energy that was trapped beneath the province’s challenging landscapes [11]. This article will engage with such questions by critically deconstructing and comparing the imagined worlds of oil presented in “The Persian Series” and “Canadian Ideas at Work”, focusing on the ways in which BP and Cenovus rendered oil-bearing landscapes as wild, empty, and remote spaces defined exclusively by the exploitation of oil resources These two advertising series do much more than convey product information and increase brand awareness. A leitmotif of Energy Humanities, is what Frederick Buell has identified as the scholarly “gap between energy and culture”, and research within the field has centred upon closing this distance through interdisciplinary investigations that take oil as a constellation of ideas rather than a system of things [27]

Imagining Persia and Petroleum
Imagining Exotic Prizes and Empty Wildnerness in Northern Alberta
Findings
Discussion

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