Consumer Culture

1) What is meant by consumer society and how is it related to the rise of medernity?
Cunsumer societies emerged in the context of modernity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the rise of mass production in the wake of the industiral revolutiion and with the consolidation of populations in major urban centers that took place in the 18th and 19th centuries throughout much of the industrial world. In a consumer society, the individual is confronted with and surrounded by a vast assortment of goods. The characteristics of these goods change constantly. In a consumer society there are great social and physical distances between manufacture of goods and their purchase and use. In a consumer society, there is a constant demand for new products. old products are sold with a new look, added features, a new design, or simply new slogans and ad campaigns. In a consumer society a large segmant of the population must be able to afford goods that are not absolutelt necessary to daily life but that they may want for an array of reasons, such as style or status. Consumer societies are integral to modernity. The mass production of marketing goods depended until the late 20th century on large sectors of the population living in concentrated areas, such as the distribution, purchase, and advertising of goods had an available audience. Yet it has also emerged simultaneously with the expansion of global chain stores, such as the Gap, Victorias Secret, Barnes and Nobles, and many others, as well as the success of big-box retailers and massive discount stores such as Costco and Wal-Mart. This means that we find many of the same stores in central shopping districts of cities around the world. It has been argued that in consumer societies people derive their sense of their place in the world and thei self-image at least in part through their purchase and use of commodities, which seem to give meaning to their lives in the absense of the meaning derived from the clse knit community.
2) How is capitalism related to commodity culture?
Commodities fit the bill as things to aid in self improvement and promising self-fulfillment. as the theraputic ethos that undergirds consumerism emerged in particular ways in North America and in parts of Europe in the late 19th century and early 20th century as those societies embraced industrial capitalism and consumerism, it would also emerge in the context of other societies that did not have the same tradition of Protestantism. For instance, the emergence of consumerism in post war Japan was driven by the country's painful emergence from the devastation of WWII and the loss of its imperial monarchy. In China, consumerism, and along with it credit cards, emerged in the late 20th century hand in hand with a socialist system that maintains values of communal good not unlike those of Protestant affirmations of community. Many aspects of Chinese society embrace values of self-improvement and self-fulfillment through consumerism, even though those values of communism that ave structured Chinese society since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Consumerism has taken hold quite differently in different societies precisely because of the social values and economic and political systems under which they operate. Cultrual critic Walter Benjamin set out to describe the gilltering seductions of commodity capiltalism, he concentrated on one city, Paris, and its arcades.
3) How is visual pleasure related to the concept of the flaneur, how has mobility (associated with modernity) affected this concept?
Visual pleasure was an enormous part of the arcades attraction, it was a place to look at the spectacle of glass and metal structures, the packaging of goods, and fellow strollers, In the late 19th century, this kind of visual pleasure in the experience of shopping as entertainment was manifested in the rise of the department store. These enormous "palaces" to consumerism were built in major cities as destinations for citizen-consumers, from residents of the sity to vistitors from the countryside. The department store announced itself as a site of both commerce and leisure and was constructed in order to display the largest possible number of goods to a consumer, who was imagined as strolling through its isles. With enormous staircases, luxurious goods on sumptuous display, and elaborate decor, the department store intended to be awe inspiring. With the emergence of a consumer culture in the 19th century that depended on visual codes for pleasure, philospohers and writes described the figure of the flaneur, a man who strolls the streets of cities such as Paris, observing the urban landscape in a detached way while moving through it. The flaneur is a figure who moves through the city in an anonymous fashion and whose primary activity is looking. This visual culture of flanerie and window shopping in the 19th and early 20th centuries was related to the more mobile vision of modernity. In the 19th century flaneurs were men because respectable women were not allowed to stroll alone in the modern streets. As window shopping became an important activity, in particualr the rise of the department store, it allowed what Friedberg calls the flaneuse, a female window shopper, to emerge in more contemporary contexts. There are many kinds of gazes at play in the visual culture of modernity, from the cinematic predecessors such as the panorama to the cinematic gaze to the gazes at work in the urban environment of pedestrians, commerce, and mall display. Thus the new ways of looking in modern society were not limited to shopping but extended into all areas of urban life. These cultures of visuality and mobility continued to change throughout the 20th century. With the increased distances traveled by people in automobiles in the city and countryside in the early to mid 20th century, billboards becamse a central venue for advertising. Although advertising had been painted in large scale on city buildings for decades and billboards were a part of the urban landscape, the development of the automobile in the 1910's changed not only the landscape of communites and idustires but also the experience of consumerism. Billboards were designed to be seen on the go, and the automobile was increasingly seen as a consumer product connoting freedom and consumer mobility.
4) What is presumption of relevance?
In advertising the manner of speaking that makes the presumption that the issues presented are of utmost importance. in the abstract world of advertisements, for instance, the statment that having sjiny hair is the most important aspect of one's life does not register with viewers as absurd because of the presumption of this as relevant within the ad's message.
5) " Advertising asks us not to consume products but to consume signs in the sematic meaning of the term?" Explain.
Advertising sometimes sells belonging to a family, community, generation, nation, or specific group or class of people, attatching concepts of the nation, community, and democracy to products. Hence the ideological function of many advertisements takes the form of speaking a language of patriotism and nationalism in order to equate the act or purchasing a product with the practises of citizenship. in other words, ads that use an image of America or Britain or toehr nations to market products are selling the concept that in order to be a good citizen and to properly participate in the nation, one must be an active consumer. Many advertisements depict the family as a site of harmony, warmth, and security, an idealized unit with no problems that cannot be solved by commodities. Indeed, commodities are often presented as the means by which the family is held together, affirmed, and strengthened. Advertisements affirm this meaning that people relate to each other on the most intimate levels through consumerism, depicting commodities as facilitating familial emotion and communication (such as the giving of jewelry or flowers and other commodities to signal affection and value.).