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Consumer Confections© Kim Imdieke
A recent International Labor Organization report reveals that U.S. employees work the longest hours in the industrialized world. Report authors say the "benefits of hard work are clear," but they caution against burn-out leading to decreased productivity. This emphasis on labor and productivity is a feature of the consumer society described in the following article by Christine Giustra. Christine is an Atlanta high school student who wrote this article as part of a media literacy class offered by the Duke Talent Identification Program.
We all know what a huge influence the media has on us as a society and more importantly as a group of individuals. We hear it from teachers and from family; it seems that even the media is out to make us aware of its clutch on us. One of the most important and certainly the largest example of this is in the consumer marketing industry. Here teams of talented, creative, artistic and musical people tap into our most wonderful fantasies, the complexities of our personal lives, and our deeply-rooted fears and repulsions. They appeal to us in ways we don't expect, and we never, as a society, see it coming. Our culture has always been a materialistic one. It has seen occasional brief periods of "postmodernism," but always reverted. To what, you may ask; have we reverted back to a simple love for the earth? to true husbandry with the animals in our care? No. We have always reverted back to the cycle in which crafty media authors constantly tantalize the public with newer, juicier goods and better reasons to covet them. To the cycle in which the media audiences willingly, greedily consume the proferred delicacies with growing blindness and increased fervor. Materialism. I hope the word makes all of you shudder as I do at the knowledge that this is as bad as it gets--and here we are. Consuming is the way we are taught to satisfy our emotional needs. Spending slow, rainy afternoons at the mall. Establishing certain days as festivals to celebrate consumption. Walking blindly through the motions of our huge consumption. It is, after all, our culture. And we take advantage of every bit of it, feeling no pain or loss for what we are doing to ourselves, to our neighbors in the world community, or to the earth. This is our culture, America, Upper Class to the world. In sharp contrast are the postmaterialists whose focuses, according to McLeod, Sotirobic and Holbert in the October 1998 issue of Communication Research, are "self-expression, a sense of community, and the quality of the environment." These unfortunately are a small minority, today and at any given time in the history of our culture. Go To Page: 1 2 |
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