AMERICA GRATIFICATION SLAVERY 1

Running head: AMERICA GRATIFICATION SLAVERY

America: Self Gratification or Slavery?

David “Toby” Meyers

University of Phoenix

December 20, 2009

 AMERICA GRATIFICATION SLAVERY 2
Is America a land of Self Gratification or Slavery?

American Popular Culture has become more self-involved due to electronic media

advertising, because of the trend toward generating more self gratification examples in

advertising. This paper is about three different categories of advertising, or rather the promotion

of self gratification in order to promote spending behavior in consumers, is because of the

reinforcement of the enticement of leisure and control, reinforcement of societal class

stereotypes and the myth of the perfect life.

Enticement of Leisure and Control.

The abundant reinforcement of the enticement of leisure and control in advertisement and

entertainment itself is necessary for consumerism. This is because most people work for their

living and leisure is an expensive commodity. Commercials often show scenes like the patio

chair on a private beach in the Corona commercial on television. They are to provoke one to

assume that buying a bottle of Corona is equivalent to a trip to Playa Del Carmen, (five to six

hundred dollars round trip) and renting a beachside villa, (four thousand dollars a week,) (Roo,

2006; RealTravel, Inc., 2008). Grupo Modelo owns the Corona label and its shares are mostly

owned by Anheuser-Busch. They are paying Mexican bottlers much less than American bottlers

and have fired union workers for asking for pay raises and medical benefits, (priceless!) (Grupo

Modelo S.A.B. de C.V. ©, 2008; Movimiento al Socialismo, 2008). A dollar a piece at the bar, a

cheap lager with a cheap label now provokes thoughts of beachside leisure with servants and

cold beer, because that is what sells, people really want escape from the mundane. The proletariat

must work so that the elite may leisure; when you spend money on their products, which they

then use to pay the lower class to do hard work, so that the elite can leisure. Labor riots at the

bottling company do not sell alcohol. They save money by jailing dissenters, rather than paying

them reasonably for their labor. This is the difference between the truth and the fantasy of

Corona.
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Reinforcement of Class Stereotypes.

The reinforcement of societal class stereotypes, or in other words, poor people are ugly,

stupid and helpless, so that the elite can sell you their trendy designs because they are so chic and

fashionable. Music, radio, television and movies, show homeless and poor people as dirty lay-

abouts that cannot match clothing and reek of something nasty, (Evangelical Lutheran Church in

America, 1990; Fagin, 2005; Quinton, 2007; Media Matters for America, 2008; Meyers, 2007).

When an elite picks out a design for a dress that dress goes hot on the market. Even amateur

designers, whose clothes are no more distributed than a single owner consignment shop, observe

whopping successes when famous people wear their design. Celebrities are not perfect and often

use digital enhancement (Yahoo Search, 2008). This false perception creates a lie that we all

live… the lie that there are perfect people and that we must purchase those products to be

considered perfect or even accepted by the social group.

Myth of the White Picket Fence.

The myth of the perfect life continues to choke the possibility of cultural growth. The

myth of the white picket fence is the myth of the perfect life. Constantly being bombarded with

images and messages of the perfect neighborhood, the perfect wife, the two point five children,

the nice car and the perfect job, the working class is driven to make this lifestyle for themselves

or endure social discrimination. Neighborhood groups and corporate real estate companies work

hard to promote this image of ‘urban bliss’ to sell cheap new housing materials for high profit

and status. Selling cheap, prepackaged housing in often unstable environments, (like being prone

to mudslides here in California,) for outrageous profit by selling the image of status connected

with it, is choking out stronger more original, culture based housing construction and a diversity

of stronger and better building materials.

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Conclusion:

Are We Really Free?

These types of self gratification are self-destructive. We buy their products and the elite

leisure, pressuring us to strive toward an example that we cannot reach. No wonder debt is at an

all time high. (Thomson Reuters, 2008) “The Center for American Progress reports household

debt has risen to 129-percent of disposable income.” (Montez, 2008) How do people pay for the

perfect lifestyle when they get paid meagerly? They charge it, they credit it and they build up

debt. That debt is a corporate commodity, which is customarily sold by lending institutions as

soon as they get them. This causes the devaluation of money itself by trading off unpayable debt

and long term loans to another company, (companies consider owed debt to increase in value

during a sale, even when the majority of owed debt packages fail,) who then collects this owed

debt over a period of time, releasing a majority of the debts for either foreclosure or default. (In

Example: If you have been keeping up with the mortgage crisis you would understand this

happened with Sallie Mae, Fannie Mae and other companies, which were formed by the

government to give relief to credit institutions, by buying those long term loans. Inflation is the

devaluation of the dollar. The devaluation of the dollar, I contend, is by people paying more for

cheaper products.) The act of living outside your means as a way to express yourself as ‘keeping

up with the Jones’ and living the perfect lifestyle created by the media. I ask is this to benefit

society by helping people, or like my ancestors who gave over to indentured servitude because

they could not pay for passage to the new world. Are we slaves to our debt or are we really

increasing our worth by paying over time? Are we now worth more than if we had bought it with

cash?
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Your author is Homeless and living on the Streets of San Francisco, California, in Golden Gate

Park at the time that this essay is written. While going to School with an A average, the city and

county of San Francisco refuses to allow access to shelter for those going to college or working

full time. This is because of the Enforcement of Societal Stereotypes, with San Francisco

Politicians, Citizens and Media have convinced each other that Homeless People are nothing but

Criminals, Junkies, Thieves and Health Hazards.

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“This is the time. This is the place. So we look for the future. But there’s not much love to go

around. Tell me why, this is a land of confusion,” (Genesis, 1986).

“Today's the Macy's Day Parade. The night of the living dead is on its way, with a credit report

for duty call. It's a lifetime guarantee, stuffed in a coffin 10% more free, with a Red light

special at the mausoleum,” (Green Day, 2000).

“You load sixteen tons, what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt! Saint Peter don't

you call me 'cause I can't go. I owe my soul to the company store,” (Travis, 1946).
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