Aims:
- Analyse the rise of US consumerism
- Discuss links between consumerism and our unconscious desires
- Sigmund Freud
- Edmund Bernays
- Consumerism as social control
Freud:
- Father of psychoanalysis - theories were considered radical and shocking in their time
- New theory on human nature - argued that people repress sexual and violent desires
- There is a fundamental tension between civilisation and the individual
- People are dangerous by nature
- Natural instincts of humans are incompatible with the well being of the community
- The Pleasure Principle - people are happy after gaining some sort of pleasure (consumerism, sex, violence)
- By repressing humans instincts, we will always be unsatisfied/unhappy
- Argued that WW1 should be expected as violence is in the nature of human beings
Edward Bernays 1891-1995:
- Nephew of Sigmund Freud
- Worked for the propaganda office of the US government during the War
- Birth of PR (Public Relations)
- Employed his uncle's theories to marketing of big businesses
- Claimed that any business that relates to the ungratified instincts can be successful as they can make people want to purchase their products
- Was previously thought that women should not smoke, which halved smoking companies market
- Bernays paid beautiful debutants to walk in the New York Easter Day Parade 1929, where they all lit a cigarette
- The women were all suffragettes and were 'lighting the torches of freedom' - sign of status, freedom, independence, sex appeal
- Start of American mass production with product placement, use of pseudoscientific reports and celebrity endorsements (was associated with the status and glamour of a celebrity)
Fordism:
- US began to invest more in batteries, technology etc.
- Items bought solely to satisfy a desire to own them and appear a certain way
- Lead to industrial advances
- Productivity increased so profit increased so wages increased and people had more money to spend
- Businesses felt that they needed to do something different for people to buy their products
- Aunt Jemima's Pancake Flour didn't initially sell as women said they didn't want to use it as it would seem like they were 'cheating' (unconscious desire to provide/be a good housewife)
- Product was changed so that you had to crack an egg into it to make it - satisfied desire
Oldsmobile:
- Selling a lifestyle - you are in control of destination, destiny, women etc.
- Implies that you can go where you want to go - fits with peoples desire to be successful
- Humans want a car that is powerful
Chanel:
- Women want a perfume that is going to make them like a movie star (fit a sexually alluring fantasy)
- Belief that fashion reaffirms an illusion women want to adhere to
There is an idea that happiness is the satisfaction of our desires - businesses use this and people are then sold the idea that their product will satisfy this.
- 'A new elite is needed to manage the bewildered herd'
- 'Manufacturing consent' argued that people cannot manage society and that big businesses t=should be employed by the government
Great Depression 1929:
- Roosevelt introduces the 'New Deal', bringing in welfare, benefits, pension funds and consequently mass job creation
- The World's Fair New York 1940
- Big Show of american culture and a huge advertising opportunity for big businesses
- Showing what the world could be like
- Society is based on the illusion of freedom and consumerism is an idealogical project
- We believe that our desires can be met through consumption
- Legacy of Bernays and PR can be felt in all aspects of 21st Century Society
- Conflicts between alternative models of social organisation continue to this day
- To What extent are our lives free?
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