You Are What You Own: The American Advertising Industry

“Why do I get the feeling that society is trying to make us discontented with everything we do and insecure about who we are?” asks a character in Bill Watterson’s comic strip, Calvin and Hobbes, as he flips through advertisement after advertisement in his daily mail. His wife gives a tongue-in-cheek answer: “I suppose if people thought about real issues and needs instead of manufactured desires, the economy would collapse and we’d have total anarchy. It’s our patriotic duty to buy distractions from a simple life.” Enter Calvin, the poster-child of his generation: “Hey Mom, I saw a bunch of products on TV that I didn’t know existed, but I desperately need!”

Watterson is very clever at poking fun at modern cultural values--while we appreciate an exchange like the above for its entertainment value, it also reveals something about our society and what we value. We instinctively recognize ourselves in Calvin, which gives the comic strip its appeal as well as (more importantly) its relevance to our world. Just as the media convinces Calvin that he desperately needs what they are advertising, so we too are influenced by advertiser’s claims that we need what they are selling in order to maintain a popular image.

The degree to which advertising has saturated our culture is evidence of the continuing effect of the civilizing process in our world, as it sends the message that consumers must pursue the bigger, the better and the newer products in order to compete effectively in our image-sensitive culture.

Unable to perceive ourselves objectively, we can only view ourselves “second-hand”, as it were, through the value-judgements of our culture, which tell us that we are the sum of what we wear, what we look like, and what we can afford to buy. Whether a pop diva like Britney Spears or the neighbor next door sets the standard, everybody else can either expect to fall in line or fall by the wayside.

The importance of image in our culture can be seen in the fact that advertising has become a multi-billion-dollar concern. Our interest in image encourages our consumerism, as we believe our culture’s lemma that everything that matters can be bought. Our resulting product-driven society is fertile ground for the advertising industry, which has been able to persuade consumers to depend fully on its mandates. Consumers rely on advertisers to help them stay abreast of the current trends in clothing, technology and even mundane products like cereal and shaving cream. Nothing is sacred where advertisers are concerned—they have a finger in every pie.

The pervasiveness of advertising in our daily lives says something about our culture—that part of our identity is wrapped up in what we own, and it is this fact that allows the advertising industry to manipulate our emotions and our credit cards. Just as earlier cultures used physical prowess or intellectual abilities as ways to gain the acceptance and respect of peers, so our culture uses material possessions to compete socially.

...to be continued...

Note of explanation: I'm lazy, folks, if you hadn't figured it out already--this was my final paper for English Lit to 1700 last semester! It should provide a couple posts, at least! *grin*