Melissa loves to shop. She lives for it. She enjoys nothing more then immersing herself in the world of fashion. Each month her coffee table overflows with fashion magazines. She occasionally wanders through the Coronado Mall, the variety of it all awing her. Eyes flashing, she holds a new blouse before her as she stands in a three-way mirror, imagining herself wearing it, as a new person, another personality. She hits every store in the mall in this fashion, drunk with possibilities. More often then not, she leaves with a new outfit or two and some makeup. You see, Melissa is a young American. She's a natural born consumer.
She is not alone. Modern American society is founded on consumerism, dominated by the dollar, and addicted to a cycle of earning and spending. These dark truths inspire many cultural criticisms, but most, like Melissa, seem to thrive in our 24-hour drive-thru quik-stop culture. How did Melissa and others like her come about? When did America become so addicted to shopping?
The modern consumer culture most likely began at the end of World War I. The industrial age was maturing. Large manufacturers and corporations, fresh off of a wartime economic boom, were producing unprecidented amounts of product. However, customers, their purchases motivated by need, were not buying enough. Desiring market predictability, industry decided that they would create a reliable customer base. Stewart Ewen, in Captains of Consciousness, quotes Edward Filene, a Boston merchant often called the mouthpiece of Industrial America, arguing that The time has come when [industry] must concentrate on the great social task of teaching the masses not what to think but how to think, and thus to find out how to behave like human beings in the machine age. The theory progressed that once the American people learned how to be good consumers, they would buy products, thus fueling the American economy and producing more money to spend on more product. A perfect circle. All would profit.
This education was made possible because many corporations had an indirect control over the news media. By 1930, the media in 80 percent of the cities in America were controlled by a monopoly. This meant that whoever owned or controlled the media could screen its news and ads and only present content that met their world view. Louis N. Hammerling personified this method of business. According to Mr. Ewen, Mr. Hammerling was the president of the American Association of Foreign Language Newspapers, an organization funded by Standard Oil, Consolidated Gas, the American Tobacco Company, and other large companies. Its estimated that by 1919, five percent (or roughly $145 million dollars) of the United States advertising business flowed through the AAFLN, economically influencing over 700 newspapers throughout the country. Senate hearings show that Frank Zotti, the editor of Nardodni List, wrote that because of the considerable money behind the AAFLN, Mr. Hammerlings goal was to subdue or at least control these small newspapers that were barely making an existence; and eventually to put Mr. Hammerling in the position of dictator to the foreign language press. These Senate investigations discovered that Hammerling would demand that advertisements, editorials, and even news items sympathetic to the AAFLN be published in these small newspapers without charge. He was forced to resign from his position in 1919, but the path had been set and, not wanting to argue with success, the AAFLN continued these practices for many years to come.
So industry, through its control of the media, began to create propeganda designed to indoctrinate customers into buying a particular brand of product. They called this propeganda advertising.
Several important notions were utilized to manipulate people into buying products that they didnt necessarily need. Using fear - that most basic and, not coincidentally, the most irrational of emotions - was most successful. Ewen quotes a copy writer of the time, George B. Hotchkiss: No one buys anything from fear, but through the instinct of self-preservation or some other reaction that is inseparable from fear. Thus, the advertisements of the modern age portrayed a world where individuals were in constant fear of judgment by others. A good example of this are the hygiene ads demonstrating the damaging effects of such ailments as underarm odor, dandruff flakes, and dry skin on peoples lives. This trend continues into the present day; take, for example, the Right Guard deodorant ads which trumpet their product as being capable of preventing body odor while remaining free of offensive flaky white stuff. Advertisements of this type taught customers that he couldnt trust his own body, and that certain products were necessary to prevent social embarrassment and humiliation. the most successful fear-based ads played off the mistrust of others. Peter Lewis in his book The Fifties draws attention to a typical advertisement of the mid-1900s, and ad in which the Yale lock company pictured a young woman lying peacefully in bed with an ominous shadow of a man on the wall behind her; the copy reading: Night loneliness... the sound of stealthy tampering at the door... a moment of helpless terror... Yale Banishes Fear! from your home. Ads of this sort not only sold an enormous amount of locks, but heightened a fear of burglars that was above and beyond the actual risk of theft. One sees these types of advertisements everywhere today, including the proliferation of informercials for The Club and various home security systems.
The desire for escape from everyday life also became fodder for the ad industry. The 20th century, with its bewildering array of complicated technologies, increasingly impersonalized workplaces, and the social upheavals of Communism, Socialism, and Feminism was confusing to many Americans. Advertisements presented consumption as a welcome rest from these social entrapments. Shopping became a diversion from the real world; products a reward for surviving a long day at work. The increasing popularity of cinema fueled this escape fantasy; now, one could literally close the doors on the outside world for hours at a time and live the fantasy life of movie stars. People began to link certain products with rewards, feeding consumerism as the world changed with unprecedented rapidity.
This effort to capitalize on peoples emotions took its toll on our national character. People became fragmented from one another behind barriers of a who has/who has not mentality. Advertisements, and the products they praised, began to inform people not only what to buy, but eventually, what to dream.
This did not occur overnight. It wasnt until the 1920s that the ad industry fully developed enough skilled copy writers and image makers who knew how to successfully manipulate people. Plus, the market crash of 1929 put a damper on industrys plans; without money, nobody was buying anything. In fact, during the Depression, industrys plan for a consumer society looked like it would never come to pass. But things began to turn around with FDRs New Deal which turned the government into a major employer and put money back into peoples pockets. Then, beginning with World War II and continuing into the Cold War, a permanent industrial market - the defense industry - was born. War, the stockpiling of weapons, and the constant state of vigilance of the armed forces gave industry permanent productivity, independent of marketplace whims. The steady source of income enabled companies to lower prices on their other products. This allowed many Americans to buy products they before had only dreamed of possessing.
According to Lewis, by 1960, 87% of households had refrigerators and 75% had washing machines. Fifty million people fled overcrowded cities in favor of the well-organized and clean suburbs. The middle c lass exploded as more and more people acquired houses, cars, and televisions. A mass culture had begun.
With the mass culture came mass conformity. The fear that advertisements utilized created paranoia. To look, think, or, most importantly, act differently became pariah. Many people who dared to be different or just didnt want to participate in this new culture were labeled communist. The McCarthy hearings and the Rosenberg trial demonstrated how damaging this label was, so people took refuge in similarity. Television sitcoms and game shows became the norm to which most people tried to live up. In order to achieve conformity, it became necessary to buy; to keep up with the Joneses. So people kept consuming, and this drove the American economy forward with unprecidented passion. However, one of the ongoing problems with this system was the line it drew between the people who could and the people who could not buy new products. The beatniks of the fifties, the ongoing black and feminist rights movements, the counterculture of the sixties, and even Generation X all in their own ways rejected this relentless consumerism. But none were able to completely reject it; to most Americans, the comfort they enjoyed at home meant that capitalism worked. Success came to be defined as the ability to buy whatever one wishes.
Which brings us back to Melissa. A product of modern American society, she has been taught what she wants and works hard to acheive it. But what exactly does she want? She wants to be beautiful. She wants to have a TV, a computer, and a stereo. In short, she desires comfort. This desire is, for the most part, never satisfied, as it is created and fed by a constant media barrage. The media feeds our desire. It tells us that a TV isnt enough; direct satellite TV with 600 channels and 24-hour movies would be much better. It tells us that our clothes (and even cars!) are status symbols and personality statements that need to be constantly updated lest we appear lame and out of touch. It inspires dissatisfaction with the recent Internet explosion and demands quicker, cheaper access with a clearer picture and better sound. All this will come, as long as the cycle of production and consumption keeps rolling on. As long as people keep desiring, and, by now inexorably intertwined, buying.
As for Melissa, well, shell keep on dreaming. Dreaming and buying; for her, the two actions are the same. Shell be perfectly happy as long as the money doesnt run out. As long as the pulse of America keeps beating.
This article originally appeared in Chile Verde, a nonprofit newspaper based in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
© Todd Meigs
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