This link has been bookmarked by 28 people . It was first bookmarked on 27 Dec 2006, by Socratoad anuran.
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12 Jan 10
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This sort of “anti-advertising” was enormously successful in the 1960s, transforming the VW bug from a Nazi car into the symbol of the hippie counterculture and making the Volvo the car of choice for an entire generation of leftist academics. Similar advertising strategies are just as successful today, and are used to sell everything from breakfast cereal to clothing. Thus the kind of ad parodies that we find in Adbusters, far from being subversive, are indistinguishable from many genuine ad campaigns. Flipping through the magazine, one cannot avoid thinking back to Frank’s observation that “business is amassing great sums by charging admission to the ritual simulation of its own lynching.”
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01 Dec 09
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09 Nov 07
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26 Sep 07
Adam J.What we see in films like American Beauty and Fight Club is not actually a critique of consumerism, but a restatement of the “critique of mass society,” which itself has fueled consumerism since the 1950s
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02 Jul 07
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25 Apr 07
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27 Nov 06
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he answer is simple. What we see in films like American Beauty and Fight Club is not actually a critique of consumerism; it’s merely a restatement of the “critique of mass society” that has been around since the 1950s. The two are not the same. In fact, the critique of mass society has been one of the most powerful forces driving consumerism for more than 40 years.
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14 Nov 06
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28 Aug 06
Nathan ReinJoseph Heath and Andrew Potter, authors of Nation of Rebels, on "why the culture can't be jammed." If you're upset about consumerism, they say, organize, get active, and seek legislative changes. Don't adopt a countercultural pose. This article has the most trenchant rebuttal of Naomi Klein's No Logo that I've seen.
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Consider Naomi Klein. She starts out No Logo by decrying the recent conversion of factory buildings in her Toronto neighbourhood into “loft living” condominiums. She makes it absolutely clear to the reader that her place is the real deal, a genuine factory loft, steeped in working-class authenticity, yet throbbing with urban street culture and a “rock-video aesthetic.”
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Klein suggests that she may be forced to move out of her loft when the landlord decides to convert the building to condominiums. But wait a minute. If that happens, why doesn’t she just buy her loft? The problem, of course, is that a loft-living condominium doesn’t have quite the cachet of a “genuine” loft. It becomes, as Klein puts it, merely an apartment with “exceptionally high ceilings.” It is not her landlord, but her fear of losing social status that threatens to drive Klein from her neighbourhood.
Here we can see the forces driving competitive consumption in their purest and most unadulterated form.
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04 Feb 06
Joshua Arestyare anti-consumerism and consumerism more or less identical?
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08 Jan 05
Fnord FnordsonAnti-consumerism is often really a critique of mass scoiety, which drives consumerism.
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15 Dec 04
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13 Dec 04
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12 Dec 04
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17 Nov 04
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