Jean-Eric PELET - Consumer Studies - 24.05.99
Critically discuss the thesis that advertising and consumer culture are responsible for the creation of false needs.
It is commonly asserted that consumer culture in general and advertising specifically involve, at least to some degree, lies and propaganda. Certainly it can be argued that ads influence audiences, for of course if this was not the case the ad industry would not be viable. Nevertheless, to reduce ads to brainwashing and propaganda then one question must be asked: does advertising manipulate or influence? Advertising can be taken as a manipulator: people feel brainwashed and act as if they were forced. They have no reason and behave in a certain way, like obliged people. In order to consider the wider issues of manipulating the mass population, one can refer to religious aspects. In fact, the consuming subject who reflects on him/herself, is open to influence anybody, as far as the potential target is reachable. Back in the past, Catholicism has suggested that in order to receive the salvation and entry to the heaven, the sinner must do deeds and work for the church. The freedom is not therefore, present anymore in this case whereas, according to Luther (1483-1546), the fundamental ideas given for this religion are wrong: the Catholicism is running away. People can not always give money to the church, if they do not think that it is efficient or of any interest for them. To a certain extent, advertising influences but it also gives the choice to the consumer whether or not he/she is doing well, by purchasing the product. At this point, Campbell is helpful to differentiate needs and desires. Whereas the needs can be satisfied, as long as the consumer carries the money, the desires, defined as source of possible pleasure, can not be satisfied. Thus, Campbell argues that advertising increases our desires but does not influence our needs. It makes the audience aware of the availability of the product. These desires relate not to what the object is but to what it can be taken to be. Campbell concludes by saying that it is the feeling, the inner symbol of the need, that is important. An important issue in Protestantism is choice. The believer is put in a position in which he/she is able to choose whether or not he/she wants to pay the church, work, or prove to the church of deeds in order enter heaven. Thus, I behave like any individualist, knowing anyway, that even with my entire freedom, I have needs and desires. I can obviously reflect, reject and keep them, if these choices are open to me.
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Having looked at the influence of the religious developments, I am now going to consider the impact of court culture on the consumer culture. The consumer culture makes reference to Western Europe where the product exists but where you need status and money to get it. As an example, in the UK, the 'Renaissance' period (mid 16th century) made people more aware of the rhetoric of power: The great city of London was seen as the centre of fashion where most looks and mannerisms (both male and female) stemmed from the court. From the way to behave elegantly to the way of wearing clothes, people were shown what the upper class wanted to show. In a sense, consumer culture reflected here the feeling that belonging to the upper class group definitely meant wearing silk or more generally, having luxurious desires. A transition from being of Nobel birth (16th century) to become a Nobel self (appearance) then exists, demonstrated here by the middle class whose aim is at ascending and become central to the culture. This change, from court being to social being shows in a way how much individuals were refining themselves, during the 17th 18th century. The Dandy class is the best representation of this shift. Like Beau Brummel, famous for having been a master at holding a glove during the Regency period (end of the 18th century), the mass population considered that the simple fact of knowing dandies guaranteed them to be socially acceptable.
Stemming from the idea that status was very important during this period, one must also note that this is only true when one analyses the historical context. For example, status is different between the Elizabethan Court, the Hindu Castes and the China Court. And without status, one can not understand consumer culture. Thus, another way of understanding consumer culture is to focus on its environment. It is commonly argued that consumer culture has been centralised onto the objectification, which means that in society, culture externalises itself by the embodiment of ideas. The building of cathedrals, confirms that the place (the cathedral), embodies the idea (Catholicism). Thereby, rather than saying "I am going to the cathedral", it is also possible to say "I am going to the house of God".
Considering the assertion that consumer culture is to a certain extent based on the embodiment of ideas, it may also be argued that the consumer culture, by giving II
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meanings to the objects, is attributed to material culture. A material culture is a culture where objectification takes place. As long as people are producing things (cathedrals). The cultural culture gives meanings to the objects.
If this is the case that the culture gives meanings to objects, is it fair to ask ourselves: "are the fashions and ideas really me?" This question that a huge part of the young Western Europe population asked to itself is raised further. Finally, one could also say that advertising and consumer culture neither manipulate (or brainwash) nor influence audiences. The reason for this argumentation is that in a sense, choice is given and consequently one considers that only the vulnerable are at risk.
Advertising and consumer culture may not involve, at least to some degree, lies and propaganda all the time. Indeed, consumer culture, which relates to material culture, can effectively take a physical aspect. Thereby, as an example of this objectification, it may be relevant to refer to what happened during the 70's, when punks wondered if the fashions and ideas coming from the "re-made culture" post 60's were really them. Their tough reaction (destruction without any purpose), their rebellion and anarchist claims were related to the urban problems of modernity, where the punk population did not want to fit in. Miller considers that consumer culture was identified with an exploitative, alienating, modern, capitalist culture, and regarded as embodying selfish, dehumanising and materialist values1. He adds that these groups of rebels were 'a consumerist critique' in which work on the 'popular' dealt with consumerism as a form of resistance against a traditional, elitist culture and the society which is represented2. It has now been asserted that advertising and consumer culture were, at least during the 70's, responsible for the creation of gaps between each layer of the society, especially concerning the youth class.
1
MILLER D., Acknowledging Consumption a review of new studies, Routledge, London and NewYork, 1995, p98 2 Ibid.
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This consideration that advertising and consumer culture are, somehow responsible for bringing negative behaviours into the population can also be seen in considering the impact of advertising in TV breaks. Indeed, this example tends to prove that the aim of this advertising does not only lie about the sale of products but about the consumer culture as well, by showing that you need a status to get things. Thus, a misunderstanding of what the screen says can easily lead to a behaviour of rejection. "If I need money to obtain nice things that do not even exist in my country", I am living in a culture where I have no place: this is maybe why I act aggressively." Thomas Carlyle, writing in the 1840's, asserted that advertisers, with their premises of easy solutions to every problem, were symptomatic of a nation in crisis3. According to him, the development of market research mechanisms was central to an increasing emphasis in business practice on manipulating desire as against satisfying already existing needs. In individual firms this led to clashes between the older generation and the new about the place and scope of advertising. This can explain the troubles encountered by the youth class during the 70's.
Thereby, it is possible to shift from this assumption, and say, by considering Ewen and Ewen's point of view, that the image, the commercial, reaches out to sell more than a service or product; it sells a way of understanding the world 4. He considers that consumption is our way of life. For many people, abroad and even in rural America, the proliferation of mass images provided an introduction to a new way of life promised by industrial America.
Linked into this issue is the further question of 'internationalisation'. The fear, in the exDirector General of the BBC, Alisdair Milne's deathless phrase, is that deregulation (of broadcasting) will lead to an endless supply of 'wall-to-wall Dallas', which will undermine our national culture and identity5.
3
BEETHAM, M, Advancing into commodity culture from a magazine of her own? Domesticity and desire in the woman's magazine 1800-1914, Routledge, London and New-York 4 EWEN S. & EWEN E., Channels of desire, Mass images and the shaping of American Consciousness, University of Minnesota Press - Minneapolis - London 5
MORLEY D., Dept of Media and communication studies, Goldsmith's College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, talking in: MILLER D., Acknowledging Consumption a review of new studies, Routledge, London and New-York, 1995, p318
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It has frequently been argued that this deregulation of broadcasting, and its increased reliance on advertising revenue, would force the medium down-market, and lead not only to a reduction in the opportunity for genuine viewer choice but also to the end of 'quality television' as we know it, and if such a TV exist […] In another context, one could also argue that many of the more progressive developments in a whole range of public/welfare institutions over the last few years have been the direct result of their beginning to take on board elementary considerations of marketing, premised on the need to serve their differentiated client bases, in something other than the traditional forms of 'universal prevision'.
Taking into consideration this relationship between marketing and media leads to the question: what do advertisers have to answer to, when they pretend that the use of TV is a response to the culture? It is commonly argued that contemporary culture signifies media culture. In such a culture, meaning can no longer be understood in terms of a relationship between audiovisual signs and the real world (sounds and images) although the emergence of TV said it brought the real world, the interaction that existed between advertising (therefore money) and audience (as large as possible), had the effect of creating a profound change in the audio-visual landscape. By showing programs to people with disposable incomes in commercial breaks in between, one can easily ask the question: is TV still bringing the real world to viewers? Is the life of Dallas, a program engineered to reach the widest range of TV viewers to generalise at maximum, a good representation of what common people use to experience in their life? Obviously, no. This hyperreal6 idea of an everyday life, coming from the United States gives a very close idea of what a myth is. Meanings are therefore easily ascribed from the TV screen. In addition, knowing that one hour of TV gives more images than someone living prior to 1800 would see in their entire life, one can conclude that most meanings come from the media, especially from the TV. However, even if it is commonly asserted that TV is responsible for bringing commercials which aim to entice the consumer culture to spend more and always more, other media must be taken into consideration. Thus, despite the explosion of poster and billboard advertising, especially in the 1890's, the periodical remained the crucial site on 6
For Baudrillard, the shift from the real to the hyperreal occurs when representation gives way to simulation.
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which advertising developed its new discourse. That discourse was inevitably concerned with commodities not simply as made objects but as objects with "value". This value was not intrinsically related to the function of the product but was a measure of its cultural and symbolic worth; hence, advertising not only represented but produced the value of the commodity7. And it was through advertising that this eroticism of the commodity was displayed. By the mid-1880's, the discourse of visibility and desire dominated representations of the commodity on posters, billboards and the advertising pages of the women's magazines for example as asserted by Beetham8.
Having said that advertising brought values such as the value of the commodity to the consumer culture, one can now ask the question where does this need for commodity comes from? Campbell sees the consumption like a social event and not like an economical process. Thus, stemming from this assumption, it is possible to suggest that advertising and consumer culture are the result of social events rather than economical objectives. These thoughts permit us to answer the below question by saying that consumer culture's needs for commodity come from society itself, and its progression, rather than from projects issued from economists brains… In other words, why not say that the consumer culture is making itself by copying and reproducing what already exists somewhere else? Nowadays, people place emphasis on what is new whereas in the past, old things were the most important. Campbell rejects the idea that media and advertising inject us ideas of "consumption", etc. According to him, advertising does not manipulate meanings, consumer culture does. Therefore, an appropriate place for my example is a department store. With a similar interior to that of a palace of consumption, department stores accelerated demand and mass consumption, due to exhibitions, displays and 'special weeks' that took place here.
7
BEETHAM, M, Advancing into commodity culture from a magazine of her own? Domesticity and desire in the woman's magazine 1800-1914, Routledge, London and New-York 8 Ibid.
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Another aspect relevant to the understanding of these needs for commodity could be formulated as follows: how are these needs for commodity spread over consumer culture?
Having agreed the assumption that these needs neither came from an economical prospective, nor from the media and advertising, it seems fair to try to answer the above question. Wedgewood, during the 18th century and more precisely in 1775, could be described as a pioneer in the mass production process. By understanding the process by which consumers used to buy his pots (or vases), Wedgewood was, according to Campbell, "king of the marketing-mix", and, if not, at least a great precursor. An explanation of his thoughts seems necessary for the understanding of Wedgewood's concept: Acquiring the product was one thing: the act of purchasing existed already a long time ago. But his clever idea was that the purchase of any of his pots, made people think that they should acquire a new one. This purchase led to an anticipatory pleasure which, once repeated and told to somebody else, resulted in Wedgewood's success. And in this particular case, this has nothing to do with mass communication or the mass media. The word by mouth was probably the key issue to what we now know…
But this was the past, and it is nowadays obvious that the mass media and advertising especially, play another role additional to what they were playing during Wedgewood's glory! Since the 70's, the media have driven their law across the world to influence consumer culture. Thereby, as Ewen and Ewen wrote in Channels of Desire, "Americanisation" was a process through which all Americans had to pass, whether they were greenhorns from the old country or rural "hicks" from the new; it was a metaphor for the transition from the age-old logic of agriculture and handicraft to the logic of consumption9. This way of influencing people to be like this and to behave like that, leads us straight on to a graver topic, or at least a topic which talks on its own, knowing the Western Europe's feelings towards the "pure" Eskimo population: 9
EWEN S. & EWEN E., Channels of desire, Mass images and the shaping of American Consciousness, University of Minnesota Press - Minneapolis - London, p30
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Since the late 70's, the Inuits (Eskimos) from the Northwest Canada, have been forced into permanent settlements with the trappings of modern life: "medical care, schools, telecommunications and a range of Government services." All of these, argued an article in the New-York Times, were designed to give them a decent living and the ability to cope in a modern waste economy10. For the people, however, the results have been disastrous. John Amagoalik, an Inuit rights leader, reports that he has seen his father transformed from "a proud and independent hunter, the master of his own destiny" into a man ravaged by alcoholism. "Proud people" have been reduced to "beggars outside a bar." […] While the severity of this instance is extreme, the cultural crisis of these Eskimo people throws light on the experience of Americanisation among immigrants at the turn of the century.
We are effectively now talking about a cultural crisis, coming from the settlements issued from a way of life that did not fit into another one.
To conclude, Ewen and Ewen said that consumption is a social relationship, the dominant relationship in our society - one that makes it harder and harder to create community. At a time when for many of us the meaningful change seems to elude our grasp, the question of consumption has immense social and political implications. To establish popular initiative, consumerism must be transcended - a difficult but central task facing all people who still seek a better way of life. Thus, answering the question yes/no, advertising and consumer culture are responsible for the creation of false needs is the same as answering the question yes/no, to whether the consumption is viewed as being necessary or not. According to Jean Baudrillard11, consumption is not a material practice nor is it a phenomenology12 of 'affluence', but is defined by the organisation of different things (nourishment clothes, car, oral and virtual totality of all objects and messages ready constituted as a more or less coherent discourse. If it has any meanings at all, consumption means an activity consisting of the systematic manipulation of signs 13. 10
Ibid. BAUDRILLARD J., The system of objects, Verso, London, 1996, p200 12 The phenomenology is the branch of philosophy that concentrates on what is perceived by the senses in contrast to what is independently real or true about the world 13 Op.cit 11
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Thus, if such is the definition of the consumption, according to the assumption made earlier, one can ask ourselves if the act of consumption, which seems necessary in our nowadays Western Europe's way-of-life, is not an act of manipulation, either signs or anything else. If the answer is yes, with regards to Baudrillard's thoughts, then, by consuming, we do manipulate; this could be said in other words, as influencing or even, creating false needs… Consequently, the consumer culture,- within which all of us take part -, as well as the advertising industry, directly linked to the mass-media industry, is in a sense, responsible for the creation of false needs. - 3130 words -
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Bibliography
BAUDRILLARD J., The system of objects, Verso, London, 1996 BAUDRILLARD J., The Consumer Society, Myths and Structures, Sage Publications, London, 1998 BEETHAM, M, Advancing into commodity culture from a magazine of her own? Domesticity and desire in the woman's magazine 1800-1914, Routledge, London and New-York EWEN S. & EWEN E., Channels of desire, Mass images and the shaping of American Consciousness, University of Minnesota Press - Minneapolis - London MILLER D., Acknowledging Consumption a review of new studies, Routledge, London and New-York, 1995 MORLEY D., Dept of Media and communication studies, Goldsmith's College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW, talking in: MILLER D., Acknowledging Consumption a review of new studies, Routledge, London and New-York, 1995
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