CS251 Chapter Notes - Chapter 8: Window Shopper, Shopping, Conspicuous Consumption
Document Summary
Ads = life as it should be . Great social and physical distances between the manufacture of goods and their purchase. Consumerism tied to the increased mobility of people in their daily lives. Rise of online commerce reconfigured the relationship of consumerism to space. Rise of consumerism took place within a context of shifting values. Integral to modernity: consumer products will off self-fulfillment = crucial to marketing and consumption, products = solutions. Billboards = see on the go: aesthetics of speed, quick impression, visually arresting image. Car = symbol of individualism, freedom and conspicuous consumption. Individual consumerism = means to achieve the promise of social change and prosperity: more social inequality, less voter participation, and more social/political segmentation. Idea that commodities fulfil emotional needs: paradox that those needs will never truly be fulfilled as the forces of the market lure us into wanting different and more commodities newest, latest, and the best. Ads = language of transformation and change.
