The Beginnings of a Consumer Society
Advertising is distorted communication. Brands like McDonald’s and Coca-Cola promise a better life, but these essentially will leave the consumer dissatisfied. The more you consume, the greater dissatisfied you will become because advertisements display a desire, a world of which is never fully real. They are partially real because the ideas come from society, but they are hyper real to the point where it is a dream.
Advertising is concentrated in the hands of a few managers and leaders. Thus what we call democracy really is not because only a few hands control this social order. Thus there is an enormous taking of profit by the management and elite class, and society really becomes undemocratic.
It was these few hands that produced the middle class in the 1920s. Thus was the birth of the consumer society. There was much productive capability but there was no middle class to spend, so the leaders created this by raising the wages of the working class for a surplus to accumulate. This way the working class had more money than was necessary to cover vital needs, and were able to spend more on luxury products. The task that these leaders handled was to manage consumer demand, and to diminish the working class in order for people to have more funds to spend.
A century ago, goods were mostly utilitarian. Needs nowadays are not only to survive, but also to express yourself, and goods appeal to secondary needs. Advertising creates patterned systems of meaning and patterns of behaviour. Goods become more than just goods. Advertising directs what to buy, and when to buy it; what are the hottest trends? Advertising has become a tool we depend upon for meaning. We have identifiable classes because of these commodities because of the meanings advertisements give to them. What it means to be wearing a name, what it means to be thin, what it means to be a different race, etc.
This capitalist system we live in forces maximization of profit. Consumers then buy products that are not essential. It is a system that has no end, the worse thing for capitalism is to be satisfied, because if it is then there would be no production. Thus it creates hyper consumption – capitalism is responsible for producing consumers that want that lifestyle, but there are not enough resources to sustain this society’s needs.
There are also codes of consumption. So who you are judges what you buy, and vice versa, so some things are not appropriate to get based on your circumstances. For example, a bank manager in a small town may not want to get a hot little convertible because it may give off the wrong impression. And if he or she does in fact have one, and lives in a small town, they may most likely choose to use another car to go into work, and reserve the convertible for leisure.
~ Leon
Reference:
Harms, J. & Kellner, D. (n.d.) Toward a critical theory of advertising. Southwest Missouri State University. Retrieved July 5, 2011, from http://gseis.ucla.edu/faculty/kellner/illumina%20folder/kell6.htm
