Alienation

We talked in class about alienation and I was a little confused about its meaning. It seemed to me that the examples that were brought almost sounded like examples of escapism, when people try to get away from reality using different kinds of methods. I guess the kind of alienation that is relevant to our course topic is the one that is imposed on people or in other words when whatever is the reason for alienation is not the creation of the affected individual. But at the same time I keep thinking about video games for example. Being products of the consumer culture they help people get away from the real world and into an imaginary one with different rule, problems and concerns. Wouldn’t this be called alienation too? If yes then this means that consumerism does not really cause much extra alienation, it just provides means to do it. We could argue that the need for alienation is created in consumer culture but then we find ourselves in a dead end because what seems to be Marx’s point is that alienation is caused by capitalism against the will of the effected people.

I might be pushing the meaning of alienation into something more general here but when I think about it it seems to be a very important part of human life. I would even say that the ways in which people alienate themselves from things creates their individuality. In this way alienation is not causing much trouble and probably should not be regarded as one of the main problems of capitalism. My main point for proving this idea is part of the definition for alienation. The way I see alienation happen is when someone gets moved from something that is real to something that is not at all or less real. The biggest example would be alienation from the self. I can not imagine how one can get alienated from the self when the concept of the self is so unreal, unstable, unexplainable and immeasurable in itself. This means that in order to put value judgments on alienation one has to some sort of standards differentiating reality and non-reality, which I think is hard if not impossible.

Another idea I thought we touched in class was alienation making people do a certain thing and depriving them from the possibility of doing something else. I think this is funny because of the simple constrains humans have in terms of just how many things they can do in life. Otherwise it would mean that people would have to converge on a small range of conventional, most worthwhile things to spend their lives on which would make the world awfully boring.

I remembered Freud’s idea that individuals in civilization complain about the problems they have created from living in a civilized world but at the same time in order to get over their concern and negative mood use the very products created by the civilization. I see the attitude towards alienation the same way: people complain about being alienated from the reality by the increasingly consumerist culture not thinking about the actual role of alienation and need for it that gets satisfied at the same time.

Also just to comment on people getting tattoos of brands they like: I think it is very much an opposite of alienation but if someone managed to prove it the other way then I would say that it is the kind of alienation that best illustrates the use of it to build a human identity and individuality.

Consumer Labor

This post is more of a follow up on my previous post, but since it focuses on a different subject I decided to give it a separate space.

Here I want to focus on the labor consumers do. It is probably clear that people usually do the labor even without thinking about it. If I grew up in a particular society with its specific consumer patterns then I am most probably familiar with the environment without having to do any research or some actual work. TV, advertising, interactions with other people and so on put the information about the whats and hows of the particular consumer culture into my head. This information helps me with surviving and finding my place in the society and also helps me interact with other members of it.

I am an international student and I had trouble with interacting with my American classmates here from the very start. This might mostly be because of my antisocial nature but what I used to tell for example my parents as an explanation of this was not knowing what the American students talk about. I did not and still don’t understand the references towards many different cultural particularities. I think now I can safely call most of the particularities consumerism products. What I observed was some other international students having little problem with adjusting to the situation and the main thing they had to change was start talking the same way as the American students. Or in other words get to know what was in fashion, get to know the names of places, people, TV shows, brands, slang and so on and later use the information as a bridge to connect and make more friends. And somehow reading about the consumer labor was like a revelation. It turns out that those who are outsiders and thus do not have their portion of labor done, in order to become normal members of the society have to almost necessarily consciously work for getting that labor done.

The interesting thing here is in something elsethough. I used to think that if I wanted to be able to interact with the American students as they do among themselves I would have to assimilate or become American. I thought of this process as getting to know the culture. Now it turns out that a big part of this learning of particularly American culture includes the learning about different consumer products, their use and exchange values and more importantly their sign value. The main question or concern that I have here is whether one can learn about the sign value of various products and don’t actually start believing it’s true. I personally think it is not possible, which is probably why I thought about the necessity of assimilation. But if it is actually not possible to be immune to sign value while studying it then I would say that the problem of drawing a line between the needs and luxuries is its result. 

Gender Roles

I would like to talk about the gender roles on the background of consumerism. 

In the reading about the early department stores it was mentioned how shopping became a predominantly female activity, in this way dividing and stiffening gender roles even further. I have a feeling that consumer culture was influences by gender roles rather than vice versa. The difference in gender roles always existed so it seems more likely that consumerism was the one joining in and internalizing the existing social event. 

What I want to focus on is the personal experience I had back home in Georgia. I used to spend my summers in the countryside with my cousins. There are two of them, both boys around my age. We got and get along really well and sometimes we had informal discussions about things. And several times the discussion was about what kind of labor a male consumer should do. Of course this was not the phrasing at the time. Everything started with one of our super old Soviet bikes breaking down. After gathering all the parts someone had to do the repairing. My cousins were quite good at it and that’s where the argument started. The idea was that since I could not repair bikes by myself I was lacking something from being able to be called a “boy”. Later the conversation moved to cars, cell phones and soccer and not knowing much about these either I was further pressed with the idea of not having the required knowledge and understanding of certain things that was supposed to make me more masculine. I did not and still do not understand what was the logic behind this required knowledge. My answer was usually a question why, to which my cousins did not have a satisfying reply; the answer I got was: “You should know about cars and cell phones because that’s what boys like” or simply almost outraged comments on my dislike for soccer, later followed by invitations to play the game to make me like it – “You’ll get embarrassed in the future if you don’t start liking it.” 

Another short episode I remember is from high school. Two of my classmates, a boy and a girl were having a conversation about the differences in the likes of genders. The boy was trying to act girly and mimic the girls’ excitement with nice or fashionable clothes while the girl said: “At least it’s better than uselessly knowing every screw and bolt of a car!” 

Since I am not from US myself I do not know if people from our class will find this episode familiar or not. For some reason I would expect a somewhat different situation here. One thing that should be pointed out is that in Georgia the gender roles are stricter, which would actually be a sort of evidence for the idea of gender roles influencing consumerism. This would mean that consumerism is flexible and is able to internalize the preexisting cultural particularities. Or to say it better consumerism adjusts itself to the culture it enters and depending on the culture creates a different set of problems and influences. 

Undercover Advertising

I would like to comment on the issue of undercover advertising we covered in class. I have to say that I find it pretty good. I might be mistaken but I had a feeling that most of the students did not like the idea of undercover advertising so I will briefly try to explain my point.

I made several interesting observations while watching the movie in class. I got really excited about that glove thing for playing computer games. I would be very happy to be the “victim” of the undercover advertising for that product. This is simply because I am interested in computer games a lot. The movie showed only the people who got interested in the glove while passing by. I am almost sure that most people would not get interested, would not stop to comment on the product and would not get into the trap. This is simply because not everybody is interested in computer games. But for the people who are it is a wonderful opportunity to experience a new cool product first hand.

The episode about the lady trying to advertise the cigarettes is a very similar situation. I do not smoke so if it was me she asked for a light I would just say I don’t have it and the conversation would most probably be over there. Even if the lady continued advertising the cigarette to me it would not make me start smoking and I would take it from her as a way of trying to get a conversation going. 

The example about the new, cool photo camera is very interesting because if the camera is actually good and the victim decides to go check it out further and maybe buy it he or she would actually benefit from this. There is nothing wrong with buying photo cameras and if one has the need and money then why not buy a good one. The advertising actually helps consumers get or increase the information they need to have in order to make a good purchase.

The episode I liked most probably was the boy advertising a popular Anime Cowboy Bebop. I know this anime and I think it is great. I do not have a problem with somebody advertising it because I know that it is good. The guarantee the boy would not lie is the fact that he is a fan. Fans exaggerate the qualities of whatever they are fans of anyway, this is just giving them the opportunity or the stimulus to get the word out to more people about something they think is great. Again the idea of only already interested people getting affected also works here. Being an anime fan I would be glad to get more information about some other cool anime series that exist out there. 

Another important point here is the place the advertising takes place at. In the case of the small boy above the advertising mostly took place on the internet, chats and forums. Not everybody writes on forums and certainly not on all kinds of forums. This filters out people and leaves those who have the highest potential interest in, in this case anime. There was also an episode about the bar or some kind of party serving only one kind of Vodka. To use the personal example again I do not drink so I would probably never find myself in a place where alcohol is the main attribute. But also If a person gets pleasure from drinking with other people then participating in this event, even without realizing the true situation will eventually benefit the person by being able to personally try out the vodka and decide on whether it is good or not. So next time that person has a party he or she might choose to buy this vodka to serve something he thinks is good to his guests. 

My final comment on the movie is about the reaction of one of the people after finding out that they were victims of undercover advertising. The man said that the experience reassured him about the friendliness of the fellow New Yorkers and he was disappointed because he turned out to be wrong. I found this very funny because what the comment essentially means is that people in New York are not friendly and the man in the movie got unintentionally swindled about the opposite because of his personal illusions.  

The general question or the problem here is why people get a negative feeling about this new way of advertising. The answer is probably simply the fact that it is unethical; unethical in two most apparent ways. One, people can no longer trust each other, about which I would have to say that the whole idea of capitalism already excludes trust and replaces it with the vocational obligations and responsibilities. Two, undercover advertising is unethical in the sense of not saying and hiding the truth - light version of lying. When the potential consumer does not know that he or she is being advertised to it seems that this consumer is deprived of the ability to assess the product with clear, unbiased mind. My main argument against this is that the undercover advertising is not that much different from the already established ways of advertising. Having a huge mechanism of advertising already established that is constantly lying about the qualities or not mentioning the flaws of the products as well as trying to catch consumers or “make” them buy one thing or another already sounds unethical to me. For some reason people do not have a problem with this and the established ways of advertising are taken for granted. So if we follow this line of thought then undercover advertising might soon become just another common way of advertising. 

If we think about US, for me the consumer culture is a big and most probably inseparable part of American culture. So it is not at all surprising that new methods of making the system faster, more productive or efficient are developed over time. And just like the whole consumerism is based on unethical actions from the part of producers/ advertisers the unethicalness of the undercover advertising is just following the same line. It is the price the society pays for further developing the system it lives in.  

My cousin Goga

I remembered a very curious experience that I had this summer. My aunt had a birthday so I visited my uncle’s house for an evening. It was just me and my mom, who asked me to come because she did not want to go alone. As expected the birthday party was full of adult female friends of my aunt, neither of whom I knew. They also did not take much interest in anything other than gossiping so I had to spend most of my time babysitting my cousins. One of the cousins called Goga is 6 years old and the subject of my story. 
It happened that my aunt’s friends also brought their children with them whom my cousin was friends with. The children having the company of each other did not need much supervision so instead I decided to watch what they do. Now, my cousin’s family is considered to be wealthy enough to afford many things outside human basic needs, meaning that my small friend got almost anything he decided to have. As a result his room was full of luxury equipment he almost never used properly: a huge plasma TV, a new PC, a laptop and a cell phone are just a few that come to mind. Considering all kinds of toys scattered all across the room I assumed that was what the children would play with but something unexpected happened. All of a sudden all three of them pulled out cell phones and started arguing about which one was the latest model. I was stunned at first and later almost embarrassed about how much more the 6 year-olds knew about the phone models than I did. “Well, ok” I thought “It is already not that surprising to see small children having cell phones mostly because of the games that come with them”. But what happened later made me understand the phenomenon a little deeper. After settling down on which cell phone model was the newest the discussion diverted to the size of the memory cards the phones had. I also witnessed some acts of bargaining two small sized memory cards for one big one just for the sake of having a memory card with the largest memory capacity. I make the last point because I know those memory cards were and would most probably stay empty! Moreover the fashion in which the trade was done made me feel like this was a previously unsettled act of trade that could have a chance to be settled at this point. Little later a similar thing happened with the new PC sitting proudly on the desk. Goga was very curious to ask me about the memory capacity of my computer. I answered that it was 250GB and as a return I got a smile and statement with a big smile “mine’s better”. I got interested and found out that Goga had hardly any files other then the windows system ones installed on his 350GB computer. He actually did not get the point when I was trying to explain what the memory space was used for, or what the numbers 350GB meant. The funny thing was that Goga is not too good at counting yet, he can compare numbers in terms of which is more than what but just listening to him trying to articulate the words for 350 was hilarious.

Now that I am taking the course and get to think about consumerism more seriously I ask myself a question: what was that? We said that consumerism is a way of buying your status in the society. Some of the authors that we read spent a good amount of words trying to explain this phenomenon but what my example illustrates is how simple the idea in reality is. It is so simple that even children can keep up and make it the main system of their interrelationship. The only thing they need to have is the simple sense of comparison of values (in this case numbers). The system can function without its participants understanding the products being used, their true use and potential; we could also say that people generally get affected by the simple and attractive idea of consumerism as a way of getting status in the society on a subconscious level. Maybe this is why consumerism spread, got accepted and deeply internalized so fast and well.  

It is also interesting why the object/s of competition in my example was technology and not for example the toys that were on the floor or the cloths that the children were wearing. It might be the case that the toys were already an object of such discourse at some time in the past but I think if we take into account the age of the children we might conclude that technology seems to give a very easy way of judging the value of its products. This mainly has to do with the fact that industries of technology tend to follow a straight line, not being very willing to change the quality, appearance or complexity of the products substantially or often, but instead progressing gradually with small steps. 

And the last point: children, especially male children always compete over something, which would most probably be the same for the past generations of children but the fact that the main object of the competition, in my example at least is technology, which is a clear representative of the consumerism culture makes me think of the depth of the influence consumerism has today.