- Analyse the rise of US consumerism
- Discuss the links between consumerism and our unconscious desires
- Look at the works of Sigmund Freud
- Look at the works of Edward Bernays
- Consumerism as social control
Much of the theory behind this lecture is taken from these two books:
Century Of The Self - Adam Curtis
No Logo - Naomi Klein
Sigmund Freud was the father of psychoanalysis and argued that due to our evolution and animal past, we have deep routed sexual and violent desires. Much of his research and theory was based around the analysis of peoples dreams. His theories were very radical at the time and was the opposite of what many other scientists were saying.
Freud's model of personality structure:
One of the most informative and radical books that Freud published was this:
Civilization and It's Discontents - Sigmund Freud
The main points of this book were:
- Fundamental tension between civilization and the individual
- Human instincts incompatible with the well being of community
- The Pleasure Principle - This states that our repressed animalistic desires will never go away and unless we act upon them we will never be happy; only once we do shall we will be temporarily happy and docile.
Edward Bernays, 1891-1995
Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud who implied the theories of his uncle in a whole new way. He was a press agent that was employed by public information during the first world war. Post the first world war the set up 'The Council on Public Relations' and thus gave birth to the term 'PR'. He managed to apply the theories and principles of Freud to big businesses in the US in order to successfully market their products. By linking these spiritual desires to products and meaningless objects he was able to greatly improve the sales for various different companies.
Easter Day Parade, 1929:
The Easter Day Parade of 1929 is a very good example of the way in which Edward Bernays applied Freud's theories and principles into the world of advertising. During this time it was considered taboo for a woman to smoke which was obviously a problem for tobacco companies; half of their market was women and in order for them to make maximum profit, they needed this to change. Bernays paid beautiful debutante's to walk through the parade smoking, but then informed the press that these women were Suffragettes. He said that they were referring to the cigarettes as 'Torches of Freedom' and from this point on, it was more socially acceptable for women to smoke.
Bernays also implemented the use of product placement, celebrity endorsements and the use of pseudo-scientific reports. After this success, many politicians began to notice this new found
power and employed him in order to increase their chances of success.
Fordism:
Henry Ford, 1863-1947
By now, people had begun purchasing things based on their desires instead of buying due to necessity. Henry Ford capitalised on this by transposing 'Taylorism' to the production of his vehicles. This refers to the way in which the car was built; before now a group of people would all work on producing a whole car, whereas the new system meant that individuals would be responsible for separate parts only. A prime example of this was the 'Model T Ford' between 1908 and 1927. In 1910, 20,000 cars were produced costing $850. By 1916 600,000 were being created with a cost of $360 and by 1927, 15 million had been manufactured costing only $290. The assembly time has been greatly reduced from 12.5 hours down to only 1.5 hours. Mass production had begun, allowing the companies to start paying people much more whilst also generating a huge profit thanks to the reduction in cost of production.
Due to this sort of great mass production, brands had to start competing in order to generate as much profit as possible. These are the real starting points of modern consumer society; mass production and higher levels of disposable income.
Aunt Jemima's Pancake Flour
This is another good example of how peoples deep desires were the main driving force behind the advertisements. At first, this product didn't sell well at all and after many focus groups and customer feedback they became aware why. Housewives were saying that they felt almost guilty when using this product due to it being a ready mix recipe; they felt as though they were cheating and not being proper housewives and properly providing for their families. In order to combat this, the company then changed the recipe so that you needed to add an egg which had great effect on the sales. The desire to be a good housewife, to provide and feed your family, had been preventing them from buying the product but now that you had to add an egg, they felt as though they were meeting these desires.
Oldsmobile, 1909
By now, a zeitgeist was beginning to emerge in which desires were being added to things in order to sell them. For example, within this advertisement above for 'Oldsmobile' they are linking the act of owning a car to the act of power and knowledge that you're in control. This can also be seen within this advertisement for Cadillac in 1919:
Within this advertisement they are selling the product through links to power and knowledge once again, the brand becoming much more important.
This change caused the change from a society buying based on necessity into a society buying based on wants and desires. This caused a real risk of over production and people eventually realising that they don't actually need all these 'things'. However, this never happened and people carried on buying and creating 'false desires'. And thus, the consumer society was born.
The Hidden Persuaders - Vance Packard
This book covers all of this and explains the different areas that advertisements use in order to sell things. These are:
- Selling emotional security
- Selling reassurance of worth
- Selling ego-gratification
- Selling creative outlets
- Selling love objects
- Selling sense of power
- Selling a sense of roots
However one of the main ones would be:
- Selling a sense of immortality
In the book, 'Public Opinion' by Walter Lippmann, he wrote the a new elite is needed to manage the bewildered herd, this 'manufacturing consent' culture was developing whereby people thought they could satisfy their desires through purchasing materialistic items that were associated with what they desired. This would make them believe they were living happy lives even though these items gave them no more power.
During this time however, there was the Russian revolution in 1917.
This was a movement in which the poor over threw the rich and replaced their current system with communism. This meant that the wealth was shared much more evenly between the different classes and in theory preventing poverty.
This was the start of the links between political policies, consumerism and commercialism.
On October 24, 1929 was 'Black Tuesday'. This was were all of the stock market collapsed and many people lost lots of money and lots of people became unemployed. This caused the 'Great Depression' in which the level of poverty and unemployment greatly rose. And then along came Roosevelt who took Governmental control and starting putting big businesses back in line and caring for the well fare of America.
In 1940, there was a world fair.
The World Fair, built in New York City, was supposed to showcase all that is good about the American culture. However, it seemed to be more about big businesses trying to persuade people to forget about what the Government was telling them and to just continue buying. There was a model of the future America, although this model was how America would look if people continued to buy into this consumer society.
The overall conclusion of the lecture:
- Consumerism is an ideological project
- We believe that through consumption our desires can be met
- The consumer self
- The legacy of Bernays can be felt in all aspects of the 21st century society
- The conflicts between alternative models of social organisation continue to this day
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