A pop-science, impressionistic examination of the American lust for
all things material. Twitchell (Adcult USA: The Triumph of
Advertising in American Culture, 1996, etc.), like Marshall McLuhan
and Camille Paglia, has made a career of spinning commonplaces into
avant-garde theses, fortified by a battery of examples taken from
popular culture. His critique of the frenzy of modern American
materialism opens inauspiciously with an offhand analysis of Carl
Reiner's 1979 comedy The Jerk, in which Steve Martin plays an idiot
savant who bumbles his way into a considerable fortune - and a
massive collection of things. Reiner's film affords Twitchell a
starting point: "No other culture," he intones, "spends so much
time declaring things don't matter while saying, 'just charge it.'
"He goes on to pillory a succession of easy targets, such as the
self-help movement, the yuppie shame-fueled Voluntary Simplicity
movement, the contemporary penchant for wearing clothing with the
labels sewn on outside, the academic trend called cultural studies,
and the idiotic fare that passes for television entertainment.
Below Twitchell's superficial readings of these phenomena, however,
lie some interesting observations. "We live," Twitchell writes, "in
a culture in which almost everyone can have almost everything" -
and a time in which the real prices for most consumer goods, from
carrots to airplane tickets to personal computers, have fallen to
record low levels. With so much stuff to consume so cheaply, he
reasons, it's no wonder that we surround ourselves with gewgaws,
gadgets, and throwaway goods. "The great vice of Americans is not
materialism but a lack of respect for matter," wrote W.H. Auden
half a century ago. Twitchell rejoins, "What sets American culture
of the late twentieth century apart is not avarice, but a surfeit
of machine-made things." That surfeit is everywhere, and, Twitchell
writes, the rest of the world wants to share it. Racing from one
datum to the next, Twitchell concludes that we get the material
culture we deserve - in our case, a culture of abundant junk.
(Kirkus Reviews)
"Coke adds life. Just do it. Yo quiero Taco Bell." We live in a
commercial age, awash in a sea of brand names, logos, and
advertising jingles -- not to mention commodities themselves. Are
shoppers merely the unwitting stooges of the greedy producers who
will stop at nothing to sell their wares? Are the producers' powers
of persuasion so great that resistance is futile?
James Twitchell counters this assumption of the used and abused
consumer with a witty and unflinching look at commercial culture,
starting from the simple observation that "we are powerfully
attracted to the world of goods (after all, we don't call them
'bads')." He contends that far from being forced upon us against
our better judgment, "consumerism is our better judgment." Why?
Because increasingly, store-bought objects are what hold us
together as a society, doing the work of "birth, patina, pews,
coats of arms, house, and social rank" -- previously done by
religion and bloodline. We immediately understand the connotations
of status and identity exemplified by the Nike swoosh, the Polo
pony, the Guess? label, the DKNY logo. The commodity alone is not
what we are after; rather, we actively and creatively want that
logo and its signification -- the social identity it bestows upon
us. As Twitchell summarizes, "Tell me what you buy, and I will tell
what you are and who you want to be."
Using elements as disparate as the film "The Jerk, " French
theorists, popular bumper stickers, and "Money" magazine to explore
the nature and importance of advertising lingo, packaging, fashion,
and "The Meaning of Self," Twitchell overturns one stodgy social
myth after another. In the process he reveals the purchase and
possession of things to be the self-identifying acts of modern
life. Not only does the car you drive tell others who you are, it
lets you know as well. The consumption of goods, according to
Twitchell, provides us with tangible everyday comforts and with
crucial inner security in a seemingly faithless age. That we may
find our sense of self through buying material objects is among the
chief indictments of contemporary culture. Twitchell, however, sees
the significance of shopping. "There are no false needs." We buy
more than objects, we buy meaning. For many of us, especially in
our youth, Things R Us.
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