In class sessions number seven and eight five readings were analyzed.

After analysis it
became apparent that the readings all had one thing in common, being their objection to what
consumerism has done to our culture. Heath and Potter state, it is not just that corporations are
exploiting our desires to be cool by selling us cool products; it is that they are actually creating
the desire for those products. We are being systematically duped, manipulated, programmed into
the consumerist cool mindset, tricked into buying products we otherwise would not really want.
This quote sums up best the opinion that the readings from the last two classes (minus
Delectable Materialism) have on consumerism. Put simply, as a culture we have been tricked
into determining how good our life is based on our consumption of goods. Now this gets
interesting when you look at the different approaches these readings take to stop our culture from
being tricked, duped, manipulated, and programmed by advertising. The first approach which is
covered by Culture Jamming and The Steal focuses on culture jamming as a way to counter
advertising. The second approach which is covered by From Status-Seeking To Coolhunting and
The Rebel Sell focuses on taking a more practical way to counter advertising, such as with tax
deductibles. The third and last approach, which is covered by Delectable Materialism, focuses
on the point that advertising may not have caused this consumerism problem in the first place.
With that said, in the following paragraphs the three approaches will be analyzed and a
conclusion to which is most realistic will be made.
In Culture Jamming and The Steal our culture can be seen as a spectacle of modern life.
Lasn states, Everything human beings once experienced directly had been turned into a
representation, a show put on by someone else. Real living had been replaced by pre-packaged
experiences and media-created events. Immediacy was gone. What this quote is saying is that
advertising and the media have turned our lives into something fake or something that has

already happened. We no longer experience things for ourselves. In a way we have already seen
or heard about the things that we will experience in the future. Now in order to combat this the
readings suggest culture jamming. A great example of this can be seen in the movie fight club
when all the members are sent on missions to disrupt society. In the movie and in the readings
we see that this can be done in many ways such as stealing, changing advertisements, and even
by simply destroying things. Now the real question is, can culture jamming effectively break the
mold? Can it change a culture of consumerism? This answer is most likely a no considering the
idea of emulators. Emulators are people who buy products to make them feel like someone else
and it is arguable that most of the people in our culture have fallen victim to this. It would seem
unrealistic to assume small acts like culture jamming could have a big enough effect on
consumerism and advertising to change anything, especially considering how deeply rooted the
idea of emulation is in the people of our society.
Heath and Potter state, books like No Logo, magazines like Adbusters, and movies like
American Beauty do not undermine consumerism; they reinforce it. In the readings, The Rebel
Sell and From Status-Seeking To Coolhunting, it would seem that culture jamming it definitely
not the correct approach to take when trying to counter our consumerist culture. Like in the
above quote they even go as far as to say that culture jamming reinforces consumerism because
people have failed to understand the true nature of society. People who support anticonsumerism are still at their cores consumerists and at some level do take part in unnecessary
consumption. The question that is then proposed is if anti-consumerists/culture jammers are
even at fault of unnecessary consumption who can counter the culture? Must it be people
themselves that jam the culture or can it be the government? The answers to these questions is
simple according to the two articles. We attack the corporations themselves with legislative

action. In specific, we attack the corporations bottom lines by making advertising expenditures
not one hundred percent business expense tax deductibles. This would seem to be a practical
way of countering consumer culture because we all know that in our world cash is king. If you
take away money from corporations due to advertising there will be with no doubt less
advertising from them.
In the third approach of combating consumerism the reading Delectable Materialism,
unlike the other readings, does not see advertising and consumption as the key problems.
Schudson states, we should recognize that there is dignity and rationality in peoples desire for
material goods. We should then seek to reconstruct an understanding of the moral and political
value of consumption that we and others can decently live with. Therefore, this reading comes
to the conclusion that it is a good and rational thing to consume for the most part because it has
been embedded in our culture since the beginning. However, what we must do is find a value of
consumption that the people can agree upon.
Throughout the paper we looked at three different approaches to our societys
consumerism problem. In general, the three approaches solved the problem by culture jamming,
tax deductibles, and simply reconstructing our values. Now the question once again is which is
the most realistic? Schudson offers a reconstruction of values with no real suggestions. It would
seem changing the values of a whole society is something that is extremely unrealistic. The idea
of culture jamming also seems unnecessary due to the little impact it can have on a whole
society. Therefore, it is apparent that the most realistic approach is tax deductibles because it
attacks the most important thing to corporations, businesses, and people: money.