lecture progame - consumerism

consumerism

persuasion, society, brand, culture
what drives us to covert things? to want to spend, to buy

• Adam Curtis - the century of the self
• no logo - Naomi Klein
• the hidden persuaders - Vance Packard

Freud
new theory of human nature
psychoanalysis - theorised the unconscious mind
hidden primitive sexual forces.
we retain our animalistic instincts, violence. incompatible with civilised society so as people we are constantly repressed. these animalistic instincts are incompatible with civilised society, we are repressed for the sake of society.
argued the first world war shouldn't have been a surprise, this is how you should expect people to behave, if you constantly repress people we will come to a boiling point - bleak analysis of the human condition
if we believe were doing things we enjoy were pacified
democracy and freedom are incompatible with big business, you can only give them the belief they are free

Edmund Bernays
Freud's nephew - employed as a propagandist, he uses his background in propaganda and psychology to sell products and comes up with the discipline of public relations which is a fusion of advertising and a fusion of organised social management to serve big corporations
book - propaganda (1928)
20s = huge taboo against women smoking and the cigarette companies were loosing money on 50% of the population - Bernays hired a bunch of glamorous sophisticated female actress got them to dress high class and walk down this parade being watched by the public and as they passed a symbolic point they all lit up a cigarette and started smoking it. tipped off the newspapers and told the press they were all suffragettes and said it was a political protest by a bunch of suffragettes, they're lighting 'symboluc torches of freedom' he literally just hired all these woman for a cigarette company
politicians saw this and thought if you can make people love smoking can he make people love me? 1924 Coolidge approached him to endorse him
celebrity endorsements
all of these tactics are attempts to attach desirable qualities which wouldn't usually have these qualities - so smoking is attached to our instinctual desire for freedom, all of these desires that society doesn't allow us to realise
paying doctors to say smoking is good for you
first guy to sells motor cars on the promise of increasing male sexuality
products are marketed on the magical potential of you being able to realised all your unimagined intentions
the desire to be loved, to be successful, to dominate

fordism
developed this system of making things based on a production line (brave new world??)
a world of mass production now
1910 - 20,000
1916 - 600,000
1927 - 15 million
the danger is people think they have enough stuff, the market becomes saturated - the idea of branding now becomes really important and is invented at this time so companies can distinguish their product and give them an individual (artificial) identity separates it from similar products on the market
making something seem handmade separates so calling it something like aunt Jemima's pancake flour
the brand is a way of creating a unique identity for something in a saturated market which makes it seems desirable
people didn't like pancake mix they thought it was cheating so aunt Jemima's pancake mix took out the dehydrated egg from the compound and said they had to add an egg so people thought they were actually cooking the, it became creative rather than passive and became popular again

consumerism as social control
people don't need things anymore but they desire it
we start to understand ourselves as the sum of or objects rather than people
we become an accumulative collage of our possessions

marketing hidden needs: a tool kits for selling people their selfish desires

• selling emotional security
• selling reassurance of worth
• selling ego gratification
• selling creative outlets
• selling love
• selling power
• selling a sense of roots
• selling immortality

lots of things sell immortality the idea that your going to leave some kind of influence, still have some kind of legacy

manufacturing consent 1920
maybe you can apply these theories not just to products but to the organisation of society
Walter lippmann - public opinion
what you need is a new elite a public relations group of people to stop world wars, stop revolutions
1917 - Russia the start of the USSR
Germany - the rise of fascism
when we believe our desire are being met we feel happy and content so if we believe momentarily through consumption if we extrapolate tat to a mass social system then every day through micro acts of consumption and illusions created by PR it could keep us happy and we can believe were free and can make a variety of different independent choices

maybe PR is a form of social control keeping people pacified and thinking about short term gratification
this is a social system deliberately influenced by those in charge

America - the great depression
Oct 24 1929 black Tuesday
capitalism to keep working as a system only works if your making a profit or you get a depression
no work no money
Roosevelt - instead of backing big business taxed business more and redistribute and revisit in in infrastructure programmes, almost a socialist model - this is the start of a challenge to renegade market capitalism
big business didn't like this so they all clubbed together to try and lobby Roosevelt out of power, they came up with this giant publicity stunt which was the new york world fair 1940 which was an advert for consumerism as the best way of life - the key to ll of the problems of the world and the way to drag us out of the depression.
a giant future world all glitzy and glamorous. a giant piece of propaganda to support capitalist consumerism
'democracity'
in reality its a county ruled by big business, a dictatorship of big business