Aims
- Analyse rise of US consumerism
- Discuss links between consumerism and our unconscious desires
- Sigmund Freud
- Edward Bernays
- Consumerism as social control
Film
- Century of Self (2002)
Book
- No Logo (1999)
Freud
- New theory of human nature
- Psychoanalysis
- The Interpretation of Dreams (1899)
- Hidden primitive sexual forces and animal instincts that need controlling
- The Unconscious (1915)
- The Ego and the Id (1923)
- Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920)
He argued people aren't rational and are instinct based.
Conscious: Contact with outside world is tip of the iceberg
Preconscious: Material just beneath surface of awareness
Unconscious: Difficult to retrieve material well below the surface of awareness
1930 (book)
- Civilisation and Its Discontents
- Fundamental tension between civilisation and individual
- Human instincts incompatible with the wellbeing of community
- Says we have sexual and violent instincts and society keeps world in order with laws
- However, this means we are unsatisfied. If our pleasures are satiated we are docile and civilisation will make us happy
Freud said of WW1 we should expect is as we are instinctive human beings and are dangerous and have morbid desires. He thought it was inevitable, but wasn't happy with this and became depressed.
Edward Bernays
After the War the West developed considerably and became wealthy due to a number of treatys. During the war, Freud's nephew Edward Bernays was employed by Public Informations and he learnt a lot about propaganda. After the war he set up his own company and thus came the birth of PR.
He said any business will succeed if the product is linked to our repressed, unconscious instincts.
Smoking
In 1920s smoking was a taboo for women, and this was bad for tobacco companies as they could only target half the audience. So a tobacco company employed Bernays to get rid of this prejudice. He did this by employing beautiful debutonts to go to a parade and start smoking when the photographers where about. He then sold a story to the press that these women were suffragettes and were fighting against male oppression. He called them 'torches of freedom' and it was seen as a sexy thing because of the beautiful women. This removed the prejudice.
He came up with:
- Celebrity endorsements
- Product placement
- Use of pseudoscienfitic reports
Things are bought not because they are things but because of the illusion of them satisfying our conscious.
Fordism
- Moving assembly line
- Productivity increased, so profits increased as there were more products to sell, so wages increased because companies could afford it
Aunt Jemima's Pancake Flour
At first this product was very unpopular, and after a series of focus groups it was revealed why. Women didn't want to buy this product as it made them feel less of a housewife for cheating and choosing the easy route. So they changed their recipe so that you had to add an egg to the mixture, and then it became very popular. Psychologically women's needs of wanting to provide and feed were satisfied and they felt they could buy the product without being less of a mother or wife.
Emergence of consumerism brings shift in why we buy products.
The Hidden Persuaders - book
- Selling emotional security
- Selling reassurance of worth
- Selling ego-gratification
- Selling love objects
- Selling creative outlets
- Selling sense of roots
When we buy these products our illusions are satisfied and we are happy, but our status isn't necessarily getting higher.
Great Depression
Government thought after the stock markets fell that gaining more profit is not a stable way to run a country as businesses had previously been giving advice to the government that society should be spending more. Roosevelt came in and introduced the New Deal.
Conclusion
- Consumerism is an idealogical project.
- We believe that through consumption our desires can be met.
- The Consumer Self
- The conflicts between alternative models of social organisation.
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