Lindsay Kohler Fitzgerald Movie Paper In the short film Affluenza directed by John de Gaaf, the problematic effects overconsumption has on society and the environment are exposed. Within the one-hour documentary, viewers learn how the desire of shopping for goods can have an immense impact on debt at all levels. Consequently, the passion of Americans to consume more than they ought to is having a devastating impact on families, communities, and the world. Through the use of personal stories, commentary, humorous old film clips, and “uncommerical” breaks, the extent and effect of the disease are made apparent. In the past century, shopping malls have become the centers of many communities. Even with more goods being accessible to consumers …show more content…
Corporations being devoted to bringing in consumers no matter the price, the market place has become a hostile environment. With the advertising industry booming with ads now accounting for two-thirds of the space in the paper and 40% of the mail, consumers are constantly fending off the urge to buy. Not to mention between the television ads and gigantic billboards lining the street, producers are filling the minds of many with the notion that their product is what is needed to feel loved and accepted in society. Sadly, this is turning citizens into hungry consumers. The film portrays this process starting as early as childhood! Children have become materialistic, seeking self-esteem in clothes and cars while lacking a sense of true identity. Unfortunately, what the viewer learn is that it has become the norm for people to take for granted what they have, always yearning for more while never giving …show more content…
Likewise, the harm the disease is causing to many societies has become more readily apparent. While the film does generalize the entire American population to be suffering from this serious social disease, the extent of the matter may vary per individual. Thus, the film’s economic message can be argued to have been mildly plagued with the fallacy of composition. While the assertions presented throughout are considered to be widely true for the majority of members in the population, it is wrong to claim that they are true for all. Yet, it is important to recognize that it is not entirely impossible for the disease to spread and affect the few that remain uninfected within the coming
Jean Kilbourne is passionate about an array of topics when it comes to advertising, but her message is clear: we cannot escape advertisements and they are influencing our minds. Socialization and the Power of Advertising illustrates this using children and consumerism. Killing Us Softly 4’s main example is women. Either way, advertisements are negatively impacting us and, as Kilbourne points out, it’s getting worse. Whatever the solution is, we have to put an end to the experience of being immersed in an advertising
In the article, Every Nook and Cranny: The Dangerous Spread of Commercialized Culture by Gary Ruskin and Juliet Schor (Ackley 361). Since the early 90s is when Commercialism has bombarded the society. Ruskin and Schor provide examples why advertising has an effect on people’s health. Marketing related diseases afflicting people in the United States, and especially children, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes and smoking-related illnesses. “Each day, about 2,000 U.S. children begin to smoke, and about one-third of them will die from tobacco-related illnesses” (Ackley 366). Children are inundated with advertising for high calorie junk food and fast food, and, predictably, 15 percent of U.S. children aged 6 to 19 are now overweight (Ackley 366). Commercialism promotes future negative effects and consumers don’t realize it.
Advertisements are one of many things that Americans cannot get away from. Every American sees an average of 3,000 advertisements a day; whether it’s on the television, radio, while surfing the internet, or while driving around town. Advertisements try to get consumers to buy their products by getting their attention. Most advertisements don’t have anything to do with the product itself. Every company has a different way of getting the public’s attention, but every advertisement has the same goal - to sell the product. Every advertisement tries to appeal to the audience by using ethos, pathos, and logos, while also focusing on who their audience is and the purpose of the ad. An example of this is a Charmin commercial where there is a bear who gets excited when he gets to use the toilet paper because it is so soft.
While some commercials may seem like they are trying too hard and essentially forcing consumers to buy their product, most advertisements have the same approach, hegemony. Instead of straight out saying “buy my product or we will hunt you down”, instead, companies will take their audience into consideration and move forward by attracting that specific group. Wall Street, for example, targets undergraduates because they can be easily persuaded and manipulated as most of them are still assimilating into the transition from high school to college; So, everything is new and open to interpretation. By exposing students to the lavishness and extravagance of an investment banker’s lifestyle, investment bankers can hook students and leave them yearning for more, as “they quickly become used to the respect, status, and impressive nods from peers” (Ho 179). Like getting addicted to a drug, these students are dependent on inclusion of investment banking when exposed. Because this is so ubiquitous, it is hard to notice. It is like the breathing, it is only when a person directs their attention to it that they start noticing it. This can be related to hegemony, it plays a role in a person’s daily life, but it is only when something goes wrong that a person will start investigating what went wrong. This is seen in Reading Lolita in Tehran, where Nafisi and a group of her
There are many people who are driven by consumerism, and many people who wish they could get in touch with that type of world. Consumers are often encouraged to advertise more of the products that they are buying to get more people to buy more products. Hari Kunzru, author of “Raj, Bohemian,” creates a narrator who is obsessed with maintaining his individuality and free will in a world that is overcome with consumerism. Believes that the world takes away individuality when consumerism comes into play and how hard it is to maintain their true self. In her LA Times article “Teen Haulers Create a Fashion Force,” Andrea Chang writes about the phenomenon of teenage YouTube users who make videos that publicize their latest shopping binges.
Defined by authors of a book with the same title, Affluenza is "a painful, contagious, socially transmitted condition of overload, debt, anxiety, and waste resulting from the dogged pursuit of more" (de Graaf et al.). In simple terms, affluenza is a disease that many of us suffer because we are too fixated on buying and consuming more and more. Do you think you or others you know might have it? But how would you know if you have it? What are the signs of this disease?
Have you ever seen an advertisement for a product and could immediately relate to the subject or the product in that advertisement? Companies that sell products are always trying to find new and interesting ways to get buyers and get people’s attention. It has become a part of our society today to always have products being shown to them. As claimed in Elizabeth Thoman’s essay Rise of the Image Culture: Re-Imagining the American Dream, “…advertising offered instructions on how to dress, how to behave, how to appear to others in order to gain approval and avoid rejection”. This statement is true because most of the time buyers are persuaded by ads for certain products.
Adults are corrupting children at a young age to believe in materialistic objects instead of priceless items.... ... middle of paper ... ... In Lawrence’s
Consumerism is the idea that influences people to purchase items in great amounts. Consumerism makes trying to live the life of a “perfect American” rather difficult. It interferes with society by replacing the normal necessities for life with the desire for things with not much concern for the true value of the desired object. Children are always easily influenced by what they watch on television. Swimme suggests in his work “How Do Kids Get So Caught Up in Consumerism” that although an advertiser’s objective is to make money, the younger generation is being manipulated when seeing these advertisements. Before getting a good understanding of a religion, a child will have seen and absorbed at least 30,000 advertisements. The amount of time teenagers spend in high school is lesser than the amount of advertisement that they have seen (155). The huge amount of advertisements exposed to the younger generation is becomi...
Goss argues that developers and designers of the built environment, specifically shopping centers and malls, use the power of place and understanding the structural layout of the space to boost consumption of the retail profits. Shopping centers are separated from the downtown area of shopping, either by distance and/or design. These establishments emerge for many to be the new heart and location for public and social life. In his article The "Magic of the Mall": An Analysis of Form, Function, and Meaning in the Contemporary Retail Built Environment, Goss also argues that the regulation of the spaces within the mall creates an atmosphere of "community" rather than one that is "public". This article’s main argument is that developers manufacture an illusion of doing more than just shopping when designing malls and shopping centers.
"There's No Place like the Mall: U.S. Shoppers Unplug." Newswire. Nielsen, 23 May 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2014.
“The average family is bombarded with 1,100 advertisements per day … people only remembered three or four of them”. Fiske’s uses an example of kids singing Razzmatazz a jingle for brand of tights at a woman in a mini skirt. This displayed to the reader that people are not mindless consumers; they modify the commodity for their use. He rejects that the audiences are helpless subjects of unconscious consumerism. In contrast to McDonald’s, Fiske’s quoted “they were using the ads for their own cheeky resistive subculture” he added. He believed that instead of being submissive they twisted the ad into their own take on popular culture (Fiske, 1989, p. 31)
Across America in homes, schools, and businesses, sits advertisers' mass marketing tool, the television, usurping freedoms from children and their parents and changing American culture. Virtually an entire nation has surrendered itself wholesale to a medium for selling. Advertisers, within the constraints of the law, use their thirty-second commercials to target America's youth to be the decision-makers, convincing their parents to buy the advertised toys, foods, drinks, clothes, and other products. Inherent in this targeting, especially of the very young, are the advertisers; fostering the youth's loyalty to brands, creating among the children a loss of individuality and self-sufficiency, denying them the ability to explore and create but instead often encouraging poor health habits. The children demanding advertiser's products are influencing economic hardships in many families today. These children, targeted by advertisers, are so vulnerable to trickery, are so mentally and emotionally unable to understand reality because they lack the cognitive reasoning skills needed to be skeptical of advertisements. Children spend thousands of hours captivated by various advertising tactics and do not understand their subtleties.
In the business market, the main and principal key to get profit is by the active consume of a product in the marketplace. Nevertheless, firms have taken advantage of that and have created false needs to consumers. According to Leiss, “The only true need, it would appear, are for nourishment, clothing, and housing.” In other words, he states that people can live without television, internet, IPod, and so forth. But the impact of commercials have made people feel the necessity of something else than food and shelter.
Places such as coffee shops and lounges have been included in the structures of these malls to give consumers a more comfortable feeling of relaxation. Instead of shopping and leaving people are more enticed to sit back and relax. Enjoying a meal and a cup of coffee while shopping has become a time consuming yet enjoyable process for most shoppers. It's suggested that the longer a person stays the more money they are bound to spend. Mall managers and scientist are not attempting to manipulate the consumer but more so enhance their shopping experience. There's also a sense of creativity and connectivity found in calming environments such as coffee shops that establishments like shopping malls are trying to bring to the shopping