Consumerism: Persuasion, Society, Brand and Culture

The lecture highlights some points from Century of Self by Adam Curtis and No Logo - Brands Globalisation Resistance) by Naomi Klein. It gives a cynical outlook that the future is bleak so long as consumerism persists.

Sigmund Freud

• Freud is the father of psychoanalysis. He theorises that humans are not driven by rational mind, but by primal sexual urges that desire to live up to out instincts to satiate social needs.
• Therefore creating the idea of tension between civilisation and innate human desire. For instance, the establisment of rules in the civilised world represses our natural urges hence giving rise to the incompatibility. 
• Freud strongly evidenced this argument to the World War 1 where the friction between natural urges and civilisation causes social eruption and human destruction.

 

Edward Bernays

 

•  Founder of PR (Public Relation). PR is derived from his interest in propaganda and his job in the press agency.
• PR is based on the idea of human desire as articulated by Freud.
• PR's virtue seems utilitarian in the sense that it satiates the public desire however there are hidden agenda behind it in most cases; If the desire has been met, human instincts can be manipulated.

• Bernays is also well-known for the mind behind the political protest 'Torches of Freedom' (1929 Easter Parade) where female celebrities dressed to impersonate suffragettes, then lighting up cigarettes and smoking it in the public. This protest is to validate that female is allowed to smoke too, breaking the patriachal boundary using society's role models to stimulate female's desire to smoke. Following the protest, Bernays concludes that desire can make people do things against their best interest. 

• He introduces celebrity endorsement during Coolidge presidential campaign which links glamour of the celebrity to the campaign. Therefore, transposes human desire to the commodity promoted.

 

 

Fordism (based on Ford's mass manufacturing of cars)

 

• Large scale of production line leads to the exponentially increasing production rate.
• Encourages consumerism in the United States mainly due to the increasing productivity which increases the profits, and increasing the wages which results on the increase in disposable income therefore allowing people to go beyond fulfilling their needs. This results on the pervailing desire to consume until now.
• Consumerism creates the problem of the crisis of overproduction. This redundancy precipitate individual brand and the idea that people are driven by social pressure to consume a specific brand, also known as following the trend.
• Trend drives the emphasis of consumption to gradually becomes more to the virtue of the product. A strategy to 'meet the desire of human' by associating societal hierarchy with the consumption of certain brands.
• As a result, the need culture becomes the desire culture.

Walter Lippmann 

• 'Manufacturing consent' - A new elite is needed to manage the bewildered herd.
•  Lippman is a PR consultant which can be considered as 'superelites'. The lecturer mentioned that Lippman is one of the people who surpassed the intelligence of politicians in terms of solving political problems. Therefore, he is hired by politicians to maintain their political influence through proposing political strategy and political campaign. 

However, the dawn of the superelites happens on the Great Depression. The market becomes saturated and crashed, and there are no market left to take control. The capitalist's reckless way of controlling people leads to social bankruptcy. 

World's Fair - a propaganda by capitalists

• Franklin D. Roosevelt increased taxes to drive people away from destitute but comes at the cost of capitalism. This situation causes discontent among those who own big businesses, which leads to the capitalist to make political statements on who should take charge of the society.
• Celebrating the utopian vision of the capitalist, this event if entirely funded by big businesses in their attempt to market the idea of the American future dominated by business and that business are meeting the needs of people in the future.

Conclusion

• Consumerism is an ideological project. It is designed to perpetuate certain way of thinking that we consume to assert individuality.
• We believe that through consumption our desires can be met.
• The legacy of Bernay's PR can be felt in all aspects of modern society.
• The conflict between alternative models of social organisation still persists.
• To what extent are our lives 'free' under the Western Consumerism System?