Aims:
- Analysis of the rise of US consumerism
- Links between consumerism and desires
- Sigmund Freud
- Edmund Bernays
- Consumerism as social control
During today's lecture we went through consumerism and what it means to the society and how it effects individuals in a certain way by looking through the main topics above and also through the teachings of the film 'Century of Self' by Adam Curtis, 2002, and the book 'No Logo' by Naomi Klein, 1999.
Sigmund Freud 1856-1939
Sigmund Freud is responsible for coming up with Psychoanalysis, which is the study of understanding human nature in a very radical and shocking way. People thought humans were rational and needed communities but Freud argued we have dangerous, sexual desires in which Freud then became famous for analysing dreams.
Freud's map of the mind is, below, visualised as an iceberg, shows that each section of the iceberg symbolises each area of the human mind and how it works, with only the tip of it being what we truly understand of humans and there nature.
'Civilisation and its Discontent', 1930, is one of Freud's later works in which we states that our desires are incompatible with the well being of community - this creates law and order so that we don't just act out our desires anywhere and it is constricted to certain places.
For him the WW1 was the test of all theories.
Edward Bernays 1981-1995
Nephew of Sigmund Freud, all Edward Bernays wanted to be was a Press Agent, but during the war he began work in a Propaganda office and worked for the Council of Public Relation shortly after the war had ended.
He theorised that any business can succeed if you link it to one of the repressed animal instincts; you can make people want or desire the object.
Bernays was hired by a cigarette company who wanted to encourage woman to smoke, as this was severely frowned upon in modern society back then, as they were not making enough sales with only men buying them, and during the Easter Day Parade that year, Bernays had a clever idea to help endorse this. He paid off beautiful debutons, rich young ladies, to walk in the parade and at a certain time, when all of the photographer were watching, light up a cigarette and start smoking. Bernays then fed a story to The Press that these ladies were suffragettes, and obviously this worked as we still see smoking today.
Fordism
Fordism is mass production in cars in which so many were made in one go, instead of how they used to be made with getting there parts from different places and then assembling them together in another. Other companies then soon began to copy this trend using Unique Selling Points as a way to get people to buy them over others selling the same thing, and this is where modern consumerism comes into play. During the war we had Aunt Jemima's Pancake Flour, by saying that it is made specifically by Aunt Jemima makes people want to buy it more as it is made by one person, even though it is mass produced and still around today much like Aunt Bessy's products.
Oldsmobile Car Company 1909
Before this way of selling in 1909 was by Oldsmobile car company and they used a type of psychoanalysis to sell there cars. They used images that targeted at men, as these were the people buying the cars, and the stated that with this car they would have real power over women in a sense, and in the same way if they drove this car they would have power of the car itself and the people you drive; making the appeal for male dominance all the more present.
Chanel No5
In the same way Chanel the Fragrance house did this in the same kind of way. With the car you get a sense of people saying that society is based on desire 'I want a car because I want to be sexually appealing'. In the same way fragrances have used this to there advantage, 'I want a perfume, not because I smell bad, but because I want to be like the movie star on the poster', and then again be sexually appealing. It's all about advertising a false desire and companies are experts at it.
Marketing Hidden Needs
For companies now it is all about the hidden message that they send to people in there advertising and they used these methods:
- Selling emotional security
- Selling ego-gratification
- Selling creative outlets
- Selling love objects
- Selling a sense of power
- Selling a sense of roots
- Selling immortality
People are only giving the illusion that they are happy. If we think about the need for sex, or killing a loved one for there money for just one second we are able to be happy and docile in that one moment of thought, but they realise that we live in this world were it is not acceptable to do such things as we have laws and government in place.
1929 Stock Market
After 1929 the American stock market crashed and new laws and rules had to be again put into place to fulfill those desires. Roosevelt and the 'New Deal' arrived between 1933-36 and promised better lives, jobs and retirement but was underlying about wealth control. It argued that you need to be brought into line and not just do whatever you want and Bernays comity at the The World's Fair, 1940, was a prime example to this as they showed how great the future of America can be with these rules in place and is ultimately a depiction of what the world could be like with 'Democracy'.
'You can only be free if people start buying again and it can only be ours if you follow a certain policy'
Conclusion - You are not what you own
'You're sexual desires are not base on what you own, you're desires are only created by what you can afford.'
- Consumerism is an ideological problem
- We believe that though consumption, our desires can be met
- The legacy of Bernays/PR can be felt in all aspects of C21st society
- The conflicts between alternative models of social organisation continue to this day
- To what extent our are lives free?
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