Brainwashing Consumers & Children: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Culture

Every Nook and Cranny The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Culture
by Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor

The rise of commercialism is an artifact of the growth of corporate power.

It began as part of a political and ideological response by corporations to wage pressures, rising social expenditures, and the successes of the environmental and consumer movements in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Corporations fostered the anti-tax movement and support for corporate welfare, which helped create funding crises in state and local governments and schools, and made them more willing to carry commercial advertising.

They promoted "free market" ideology, privatization and consumerism, while denigrating the public sphere. In the late 1970s, Mobil Oil began its decades-long advertising on the New York Times op-ed page, one example of a larger corporate effort to reverse a precipitous decline in public approval of corporations. They also became adept at manipulating the campaign finance system, and weaknesses in the federal bribery statute, to procure influence in governments at all levels.

Perhaps most importantly, the commercialization of government and culture and the growing importance of material acquisition and consumer lifestyles was hastened by the co-optation of potentially countervailing institutions, such as churches (papal visits have been sponsored by Pepsi, Federal Express and Mercedes-Benz), governments, schools, universities and nongovernmental organizations.

While advertising has long been an element in the circus of U.S. life, not until recently has it been recognized as having political or social merit. For nearly two centuries, advertising (lawyers call it commercial speech) was not protected by the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1942 that states could regulate commercial speech at will. But in 1976, the Court granted constitutional protection to commercial speech. Corporations have used this new right of speech to proliferate advertising into nearly every nook and cranny of life.

Continued ...

http://www.organicconsumers.org/school/commercialism32805.cfm

Another good source of info on this is "Century of the Self".

It's a 4 part documentary on advertising / propaganda over the last 100 years. Google it, the vidoes are online.\

"A comfortable, smooth, reasonable, democratic unfreedom prevails in advanced industrial civilization, a token of technical progress."

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/marcuse/works/one-dimensional-man/index.htm

Number 5!

part of our social studies curriculum. We studied the different appeals commercials make (celebrity endorsements, persuasion, comparison, appeal to emotion, etc.) and made our own commercials. I see now how terribly important that was an I'm sorry it's not a requirement.

This was in grades 3-6, at two different districts in two different towns.

As I watch my nieces and nephews grow up in the suburbs, I see how their whole world is permeated with commercial culture. The only stores they go to are chains. The only restaurants they know are chains. The only movies they know are current blockbusters aimed at teens.

Yes, we had chain stores and chain restaurants and blockbuster movies when I was growing up, but we still had some contact with our ethnic heritage, with traditional culture, and with the idea that it was good to know things.

One nephew wants to be an accountant. He is currently looking at colleges, and he rejected one that has a highly regarded business program because it required too many liberal arts courses.

Not knowing things is excusable. Not WANTING to know things is just sad.

(Please don't laugh, as epiphanies often go, this one was blindingly obvious to all but me.)

All this "stuff" doesn't make us happy, it's clear. On the contrary, it seems like the fear of losing this grotesque excess works like a straightjacket--keeping us working and consuming. It's time for us to shed the fear of losing this meaningless "stuff" and start living our lives the way we want to--no more 2 earners at 70 hours a week so we can afford daycare AND a new SUV. Fuck daycare. Fuck the new SUV. When rich people make their money the first thing they do is arrange more time with their families. That's the biggest luxury in the world, and one that most of us can afford, if we shift our priorities just a little bit...

Thanks for the thread, Echo In Light.

General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you realize that in addition to fluoridating water, why, there are studies underway to fluoridate salt, flour, fruit juices, soup, sugar, milk... ice cream. Ice cream, Mandrake, children's ice cream.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Good Lord, Jack.

General Jack D. Ripper: You know when fluoridation first began?

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: I... no, no. I don't, Jack.

General Jack D. Ripper: Nineteen hundred and forty-six. Nineteen forty-six, Mandrake. How does that coincide with your post-war Commie conspiracy, huh? It's incredibly obvious, isn't it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual. Certainly without any choice. That's the way your hard-core Commie works.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen, tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first... become... well, develop this theory?

General Jack D. Ripper: Well, I, uh... I... I... first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.

General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue... a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I... I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm.

General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh... women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh... I do not avoid women, Mandrake.

Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No.

General Jack D. Ripper: But I... I do deny them my essence.

Sorry to be obtuse, Echo In Light:

My point: The sick, greedhead warmonger class has sexualized children to make money.

:puke:

Advertising to toddlers and children has been legal ever since Reagan's FCC deregulation.

waaaaaaay back when tv started up.. Ads were all over the place for toys & cereals..

Moms & kids were easy targets because they were there most of the day, and TV was a "hit" with harried housewives, eager for an "assist" with child care:evilgrin:

and Moms always took those kids to the store with her..

I recently saw a chilling documentary called "Consuming Kids". Children are increasingly being marketed to in ever more insidious ways.

You can watch parts of it here.
http://uncensored.co.nz/2010/04/26/consuming-kids-the-commercialization-of-childhood/

There's a segment where a child psychologist, a woman who applies her skills to corporation's marketing depts, is interviewed and openly explains how much effort/money goes into Big Biz mind-fucking children. Evil bastards...

It's extremely creepy!
I've only seen the first half of The Corporation, so far.

dancing & singing.

I know that "ratings" are a viable way to set up ad rates for tv shows, but must everything on those shows BE a contest?

We (as a society) have somehow accepted the idea that in order to feel like a "winner" there must be a very visible LOSER, and we must taunt and talk about that loser :(

... overall corporate culture

Goes deeply into all of this as well

TV is a distorted mirror which now calls itself "reality."

That we are a stupid consumer culture is nothing new -- in the USA, the Monkees (fake band) outsold the Beatles. Each week of the Monkees would introduce a record which would go to number 1 that week in sales.

Americans buy on price -- not on value, probably because price is stone simple and value takes some thought. The GOP basically sells to this by saying "we cost less" (eg. "we will, allegedly, lower your taxes").

In general, people need to stop treating TV as the scoreboard. Of course it is all lies -- the real score is what you live with eery day: a shrinking quality of life, rising debt and general decay of culture.

... the public mind accordingly

I haven't watched that filth, but I can tell that it's disgusting pornography marketed to children.

I have the vapors.