Clapp's Assessment Of American Consumer Culture

Advertising is not only used to sell products, it also affects the ideas of who we are. Each and every day we are induced to believe that we must spend money to attain an ideal

Every day, companies present the people with advertisements everywhere they go. Advertisements have become very prevalent in today’s society nowadays focusing in on a negative connotation. Advertisement has become an effective way for producers to display their new products. In present day, they come in forms of billboards, flyers, e-mails, and even text messages. It is widely known that companies create advertisements to persuade people to buy specific products or goods; however, it is not widely known that advertisements can make a negative impact on today’s society. The companies manipulate people’s mind and emotions, swaying people by new promotions and therefore generating a strong desire to fit into the society, that causes them to make inessential expenditures. Advertisements pose a critical impact on the American culture.

In “Two Ways a Woman Can get Hurt: Advertising and Violence,” the author Jean Kilbourne describes how advertising and violence is a big problem for women. Although her piece is a little scrambled, she tries to organize it with different types of advertisement. Women are seen as sex objects when it comes to advertising name brand products. Corporate representatives justify selling and marketing for a product by how a woman looks. Kilbourne explains how the media is a big influence on how men perceive women. Kilbourne tries to prove her point by bashing on advertising agencies and their motives to successfully sell a product. Kilbourne’s affirmation towards advertisements leaves you no doubt that she is against them.

For the longest time now, advertising has played a huge role in how we identify ourselves in the United States with the American culture, and how others identify themselves with all the cultures of the rest of the world as well. It guides us in making everyday decisions, such as what items we definitely need to invest our money on, how to dress in-vogue, and what mindset we should have to prosper the most. Although advertising does help make life easier for most, at the same time it has negative affects on the people of society as well. Advertisement discreetly manipulates the beliefs, morals, and values of our culture, and it does so in a way that most of the time we don’t even realize it’s happened. In order to reach our main goal of

The amount of consumerism that happens every day of our life is something people in society may never think of. Consumerism is everywhere in our societies. .Consumer culture is the value of where our thoughts are on the buying and selling of goods or services and how we use the resources that we consume. In the article “Devil Takes Visa” on consumer culture, Clapp would say everything people do is becoming consumeristic, from going to church or going to school we are consumers. Consumer culture is all around and all through us whether we believe it or not we are constantly being consumers of many products and services. Americans are constantly consuming and it’s something I wouldn’t agree more on. I’ve never really stopped and thought about

Consumerism in America has been at an all time high for years now. Consumerism refers to the consumption of goods and services at an ever-increasing rate. It is one of the many things that America is know for. Our economy is judged by how much people spend, and if it is high then our economy must be well off (Shukla 1). This ideology is purely materialistic and pushes people towards higher consumption than is needed. It transforms others into overly materialistic people who cannot distinguish the difference between wants and needs, and negatively affects those around them including the environment because of the glorification of material wealth.

The American attitude has always been to work as long, and as hard as possible. Not everyone agrees with this idea, but for those who do, why is that? Is it because that is what they were told? Is it because they are truly passionate about what they do? Perhaps it is so they can just afford to buy what is needed to live. However, what about those who work overtime just so they can afford the luxuries like going on vacation, or buying a new phone? This need for luxuries dates back since after the Civil War (“Consumerism,” par 4). Another part of the American culture is shopping, in fact shopping is now perceived as “a patriotic activity” (“Consumerism,” par 1). This is what consumer culture is, the push to buy what isn’t a necessity.

“Since the end of the Second World War the USA has been transformed into a society where the national economy depends to a large extent on private consumption; and where mass acquisition and use of material goods is the dominant lifestyle, the centerpiece of social practices, leisure time, cultural rituals and celebrations. We refer to it as consumer society.”

Every so often… to correct that every day, hour or minute something new comes out. May it be the daily smartphone that aims to fill the already deep pockets of the big CEO’s sitting in their high-rise office, adding to the growing multibillion dollar electronics industry? Or the clothing line from the new designer that everyone hypes about? Consumerism is something that flues the fire, also known as the 21th century disease of materialism. Although an alarming issue everywhere today, I believe none is more precedent that of the United States, a society in its own right whose consumerism is as staggering as it is worrying. Why the United States? Because it is a symbol of the Western society, the consumerism capital. Further this is in conjunction with the generation of today, us the fore-runners of this blind quest for material dominance, within an ever expanding materialistic society. We buy more, receive more, and want more, yet we don’t seem to be any happier, a coloration to consumerism that finds it roots within the American society, the generation of today and its values.

Advertisements sell the ideal look of a human being along with the idea that consumer goods bring happiness, thus creating superficial visions of the world. Jhally’s study argues that the contemporary world is saturated with advertising messages that persuade consumers to buy goods by manipulating them into thinking those goods are connected to important domains in their lives. The Author’s main point is that to connect goods as an important necessity for happiness in ones life, advertisers use existing values and attitudes that are shared by the target audience. (Jhally, 1990).

Advertisements in today’s society are nearly ubiquitous, appearing on screens, buildings, radio, clothing, newspapers, magazines, buses, mail, and almost every type of modern media. It is a cultural marker that sheds light into the worlds in which its companies and their target audiences reside. Naomi Klein analyzes the 1980s shift from a product economy to a brand economy in which brand is glorified and used to sell the projected vision of the company and advertisement is the main method by which brand is marketed. Thomas Frank discusses in depth how brands are sold through depictions of fantasy

Kilbourne’s last point is that advertising influences sexual attitudes. She points out that “advertising’s approach to sex is pornographic: it reduces people to objects and de-emphasizes human contact and individuality”(239). She argues that the commercial women today are portrayed as independent hardworking women that can do it all. On the contrary she notes this is an illusion that reduces complex sociopolitical problems to mundane personal ones”(239).

The consumer culture is one of the primary forms of domination and can often interfere with our identities in destructive ways. Companies use the media as a system of communication to increase commodity consumption in order to generate profit for capitalists. Mainstream news media are profit driven businesses owned by corporations and are largely funded by advertisers. Advertising was a significant innovative expansion that influenced the formation of the consumer. “The goal of advertisers was to aggressively shape consumer desires and create value in commodities by imbuing them with the power to transform the consumer into a more desirable person” (C. Colaguori, 2013, p.173). When linking values to commodities, advertisers are implanting insecurities and fears

Advertising does not function by formulating values and attitudes on its own; rather, it draws upon and redirects issues that the target audience or common culture already shares. Advertising packages our emotions and sells them back to us. In other words, advertising reflects (not affects) beliefs, values, and ideologies (cultural beliefs that serve to justify social stratification). Researchers in advertising agencies attempt to discover and expose our attitudes, moral judgments, and, sometimes, how we interact with others (Cortese 12-13).

Looking at consumer culture through the lens of sociology. *Seeing how consumer culture has changed throughout the past few years. We will be discussing four different topics in depth; how companies have been abusing this consumer culture, how consumer culture is dominating free time, how consumer culture has shaped me throughout my life, and what activities might not be associated with consumer culture.