The Advertising Culture Is Having a Devastating
By: Artur • Research Paper • 1,886 Words • January 18, 2010 • 1,282 Views
Join now to read essay The Advertising Culture Is Having a Devastating
The advertising culture is having a devastating
effect on our agendas of
becoming the media's ideal of perfection, and behind all of this self-sacrifice the
media and corporations are the ones succeeding, not us. In Culture Jam, by Kale
Lasn, the founder of Adbusters magazine, he attempts to show the reader what our
mass media has been doing subliminally.
When the average American thinks of consumerism, we believe it is the promotion
of the consumer's interests. What Lasn believes is that we're being told what our
interests are and to buy into those false interests. We've become disconnected with
ourselves and our own interests to fit those that our corporations have designed for
us. He uses an example of taking your family to the forest for some alone time to
brave the elements and come closer as a family, but after only a few short hours
becoming so bored that you begin self-destructing due to lack of technology. Our
children have become so reliant on consumerism that they can't possibly enjoy any
of the senses you have to use in your most primitive
state. After only a short while,
they show signs of grief and withdrawl. He writes that we should prioritize the earth
as number one, and get back to the basics of feeling that the earth is one with us. If
we have this way of thinking, we won't look at helping the environment
as something
self-serving, but more like helping out a part of our family. As humans, we've learned
that buying creates happiness, or so we believe. Most of the time, we're living in a
world we've created for ourselves through the consumer process. The environment
is
what we have purchased; there are no trees or fresh ponds. We become
compulsive shoppers when we're bored with our lives, and we look for outside
factors to fill those gaps.
As a country, we have the most diagnosed mental ailments in the
world, even though we're the richest also. This is due to Americans being able to.
We can validate our pains, discomforts, and social anxieties through means of
doctor's notes. Why we're feeling this way is due to an "unknown" cause draining us
of our happiness, and Lasn feels that plentitude is our problem. We have the ability
to purchase whatever our hearts desire, therefore there is no satisfaction in earning
these rewards in life. We don't have any driven motivations other than monetary,
and it's making Americans as a whole, feel meaningless and dull without
recognizing it. The media industry thrives on this problem, and leans towards
emotionally satisfying us (which we allow with little-to-no defiance) through false
feelings of joy, sadness, happiness, anger, discomfort, and intimacy. We watch
television and relate to the characters, but don't honestly have the true-life
experience to back this feeling of relativeness. The media fills us up with these
emotions, and we have no where to release them, creating a feeling of despair after
the 30-minute show is over. Also, our