Commodity Fetishism In Consumer Culture

Notably a lot of are behavior for shiny new objects is fueled from what is seen in everyday existence. The extravagant life style of the upper class which is on constant display across many media broadcasting outlets around the world for everyone to see and desire. Prompting individuals impulsive reaction to make purchases for what they see; even though they know otherwise they can not afford it. The textbook gives numerous accounts to why America has become a nation of mass consumption and what triggers people impulse to spend in relation to material possession and the American Dream.

Oftentimes, people over indulge to own the newest cars, a home in an upscale neighborhood, or designer clothing in order to create a certain image of themselves to present to others. Consumer spending accounts for seventy percent of the United States economy (Davis). Are all these goods and services purchased necessary? Of course not. As a society, we allow advertising to influence our spending and we tend to spend more on luxuries than we do on necessities. Hedonic products give one pleasure or enjoyment, and among these products are symbolic products. Symbolic products are used to project a self image that reflect one’s emotions (Samson). People are more likely to rush out and buy expensive, high end products to feel as though they’ve achieved a higher societal

Consumerism is a major theme in MT Anderson's 2002 novel FEED. Consumerism is the belief that it is good for people to spend a lot of money on goods and services. When people buy things and spend lots of money they are doing it to impress there neighbor and 'Keep up with the Jones's'. As Titus puts it, "It was like I kept buying these things to be cool, but cool was always flying just ahead of me, and I could never exactly catch up to it." (Anderson, 279). Though some may argue that consumerism stimulates the economy, it harms the National Culture of the United States as people are always competing to have the coolest things and who can have the most- expensive products just to impress there friends and neighbors. Consumerism present in FEED illustrates just how easy it is for people to be influenced with money and fancy things and they lose perspective of many things such as family and friends and are only worried about themselves and become very selfish human beings.

“They had been honed and trained so thoroughly by that extinguished world that they were doomed in this new one” (Zone One 31). Colson Whitehead 's novel, Zone One, draws attention to the issue of consumer capitalism through a post-apocalyptic plot line. Likewise, Leif Sorensen draws on a similar point by discussing how Zone One feeds into his claim that “the novel’s commitment to closure is driven in part by a sense that repetitive cycles of late-capitalist futurism offer change in name only” (561). In other words, an aspect of consumer society includes a presentation of a new idea, product, or concept that is actually a previous idea rebranded. My essay builds and extends this claim by focusing on an overlooked aspect of the novel, the stragglers

Everyone in the world in the world seems to know who the Kardashians are, wherever you look they seem to appear, on billboards, magazines, in salons, on the internet, pictures of them are plastered everywhere. The Kardashian family is popular culture. In this essay I will be discussing consumerism, the role of technology in consumer culture and materialism in accordance to the show Keeping Up With The Kardashians and the Kardashian family, and explaining it through conflict theory.

The 20th century was an era of great transformation. It was the birth of department stores, automobiles and consumption durables. Advertising became a popular and effective means of promoting goods to the consumer through billboards, television, and print media. In turn, this revolutionized a modest, minimalistic way of life into a new culture of a consumeristic society (Mooers “Constructing the Consumer”). It was this revelation that sparked the gluttonous need for the ever new. In the 21st century, we consume so frequently that we do not take notice; consumerism consumes us. Consumerism is an integral

Commodity fetishism refers to the transformation of human relations formed from the exchange of commodities in the market. Human relations form between people of trade in goods and services in the market expressed in terms of the objectified economic relations among currency. Commodity fetishism allows the ability to transform individuality, conceptual aspects of financially viable value into objective and real things that people think have intrinsic value. (Rubin, 1990,5)

Romero intentionally targets consumer culture and capitalist economics by setting the majority of Dawn of the Dead in a shopping mall, using both the unusual setting and the symbolic zombies to offer a mordacious critique of contemporary 1970s American society (Bishop 2010: 234). Romero consciously draws the audience’s attention towards the relationship between zombies and consumerism (Bishop 2010: 234). The insatiable need to purchase, own, and consume has become so deeply ingrained in twentieth-century Americans that their reanimated corpses are relentlessly driven by the same instincts and needs. The metaphor is simple: Americans in the 1970s have become a kind of zombie already, slaves to the master of consumerism, and mindlessly migrating

In “Subculture: the Unnatural Break” (the sixth chapter from his book Subculture: the Meaning of Style), Dick Hebdige claims that subcultures represent a rupture between the processes that lead from reality to media representation, challenging therefore the codes of language and discourse and losing their disruptive power once they get assimilated. The reaction to the punk subculture in Great Britain in the seventies is used to prove Hebdige’s thesis.

Very few books in the history of economic thought still render an accurate portrayal of society today. Written 115 years ago, Thorstein Veblen’s The Theory of the Social Class (1899) describes a materialistic society obsessed with reputation and social status, echoing a portrayal of the modern capitalistic consumer culture that defines us today. As Roger Mason (1998), professor of consumer theory states: “Consuming for status has, in fact, become a defining element of the new consumer societies” (p.vii). In his treatise, Veblen’s discusses such a society, in order to portray the ‘leisure class’, the 19th century society that characterized the upper class that formed as a consequence of the Second Industrial Revolution. Such a society uses the consumption of goods and leisure as means of climbing up the social ladder. Veblen calls such types of consumption ‘conspicuous consumption’ and ‘conspicuous leisure’.

Many Americans love shopping, especially during the holidays, with its captivating discounts and sales, which lead to uncontrollable splurges on irrelevant things. According to Quindlen, this is an example of America’s crazed consumerism and it is absolutely absurd. In her article, “Honestly, You Shouldn’t Have”, she states that there is currently an assumption that purchasing American merchandises symbolize an act of patriotism and at the same time, build a strong economy. She also states that we, as Americans, need to acknowledge important spiritual values such as friends and family rather than material goods.

The American people are focusing more on materialistic items, people are shopping for pleasure more than necessity. This article comments on how people are shopping to release stress or to gain pleasure. Even though the article was written in 1984, it is still pertinent to modern time. In Shopping and Other Spiritual Adventures in America Today by Phyllis Rose, varied sentence length, different point of views, and anaphora are utilized to prove that society is becoming consumed in materialism.

As stated by Fulton J. Sheen, an American theologian, “Advertising tries to stimulate our sensuous desires, converting luxuries into necessities, but it only intensifies man's inner misery. The business world is bent on creating hungers which its wares never satisfy, and thus it adds to the frustrations and broken minds of our times” (azquotes.com). Many people crave such absurd objects as necessities, despite them merely being a disgusting attempt of satisfying this monster. There are so many things which people feel that we need to be happy, but it really simply gives us a distraction from what we truly need. An author by the name of Bryant McGill once said, “The folly of endless consumerism sends us on a wild goose-chase for happiness through materialism” (azquotes.com). This materialistic point of view in our society today has lead to so many thinking consumerism is just fine because it satisfies our wants and needs in this

The concept of consumerism was first brought to my awareness in First Year Writing. I admit, before this intro course, I was indeed ignorant of the negative impacts that consumption had on society. FYS opened my mind to the dangers of over-consumption, and more importantly, helped me see beyond what meets the eye. Take for example, Disney, a seemingly innocent corporation, a company’s whose name is practically synonymous with the notion of childhood innocence. Upon initial judgement, one would assume that Disney is merely harmless family entertainment. Where in fact, if one looks beneath Disney’s visage of innocence, their true intentions are shockingly cynical. Disney’s cultural pedagogy embeds the concept of consumption into young susceptible

David Redmon’s documentary, Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005) provides an insight on Karl Marx’s theory of exploitation within capitalism. It does an exceptional job at explaining how exploitation exists in a capitalist society by tracing the simple commodity of beads used in the festival of Mardi Gras in New Orleans while revealing the hidden picture of its social and economic effect on the factory workers. Karl Marx’s class structure theory of capitalism can be observed in Mardi Gras: Made in China (2005). The cycle of exploitation that the Chinese workers face is further expanded in the film by explaining how exploitation works under capitalism through the differences between society’s values, the conditions of labour that the workers are in to produce the Mardi Gras beads, as well as how commodity fetishism takes part into the continuation of exploitation.