The purpose of a writing class is to develop a meaningful thesis, direct or implied, that will generate a compelling essay. Most importantly, a meaningful thesis will have a strong emotional connection between you and the material. In fact, if you don’t have a “fire in your belly” to write the paper, your essay will be nothing more than a limp document, a perfunctory exercise in futility. A successful thesis will also be intellectually challenging and afford a complexity worthy of college-level writing. Thirdly, the successful thesis will be demonstrable, which means it can be supported by examples and illustrations in a recognizable organizational design.
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One. Why is Martin J. Davidson mocked in the New York Times?
Because he is a man of poshlost (banal vulgarity trying to be grandiose), which means he is a person who aggrandizes himself by showing off his Juvenile Man Cave. His attempts at grandiosity, toys that signal he’s a predatory player, are actually expressions of bad taste, narcissism, ignorance, and personal degradation. All of these qualities point to the Russian term poshlost.
Examples of poshlost:
Gold trim on a Lexus
Any gold car
Puka shell necklace
A rich Anglo American who after a tour of Africa returns to the US wearing a dashiki
A diamond-studded doorknob
A dancing bear doing tricks at your birthday party
Two. What are the motives of acquiring possessions?
We look for signs of security, stability, and control.
Here’s an example of control: We outbid someone on eBay and see ourselves in a bidding war for an item that is less about our wanting it and more about “beating our competition” and feeling control over “our opponents.”
We resent communal cars and lawnmowers. “It has to be mine. It just feels funny sharing a car or lawnmower or jacket with a bunch of people.”
If someone smokes or stinks in a car I’m driving, I’m going to feel my personal sense of identity is insulted, violated even.
We buy things to show our dominance over other people or to compete with them. Studies show for example that people like big SUVs and trucks so they can bully smaller cars on the road.
“Potlatch” syndrome: showing signs of conspicuous waste and the burning of money as if to say, “There’s more where that came from!” In other words, show off to gloat in the presence of the human race whom you’ve reduced to “your competition.”
Our consumer demands are driven by two antithetical impulses, the cortex (reason, Prius) and the Inner Reptile (dominance and reproductive success, BMW M5).
We desire high social status and we desire to be spared the humiliation of low social status.
It hurts to see the valet pull up in a bunch of expensive cars, Mercedes, Lexus, BMW, at a restaurant and then everyone sees another valet approach ingloriously in your car, a beat-up Yaris.
I personally feel humiliated when I walk past the first-class airline passengers and make my way to coach. The first-class passengers are gloating at me and I have to resist the urge to say, “What are you looking at?”
We acquire scarcity as a sign of our rarified status.
Beyond status, we cherish possessions that inform others, and ourselves, of our identity (133).
Three. How is home décor a form of “personalization”?
Furniture embodies experience and memories. So do books, not Kindle or eReaders. A watch represents our self-image. Do we go for the “business look” or the “sporty man-who-climbs-and dives-look”?
Things embody the self. They are part of our “identity equipment.”
Apple represents the creative class. PC means you’re a poor farmer.
A Mini Cooper means you’re a hipster.
A Volvo station wagon means you’re a family person who eschews the trappings of bling.
A compost compacter in you’re kitchen means you care about the environment.
Having nothing of leather attire means you love animals. So what you don’t possess also defines you.
Essay Option for First Typed Research Paper
Reading the Signs, page 138
Adopting Kron's essay as a critical framework, analyze the consumption behavior of the two families profiled in John Verdant's "The Ables vs. the Bines" (p. 152).
One. Are we morally compromised when we identify with TV anti-heroes whose lives are defined by violence and crime?
Harold raises the question that in TV land certain shows like “The Sopranos make very bad people seem, well, likeable.”
Philosophers, including Plato, worried that art could manipulate the emotions and even de-stabilize society because our powers of reason would be distorted.
Identifying with criminal heroes corrupts our moral nature, was another claim of Plato.
When we take on the spirit of Tony Soprano, his grief, his joy, his rage, we take on his values and we begin to emulate the anti-hero template.
In a TV show, we see the anti-hero’s tender moments and we focus on the anti-hero’s “virtues” and in the process we become blind to the character’s egregious moral flaws. Some argue that this allows us to compartmentalize our morality.
Tony Soprano murders one of his enemies and those in the TV audience who sympathize with Tony experience satisfaction in Tony’s crime.
Several seasons long with close to 85 episodes, The Sopranos inculcates our identification with the criminal and this has more influence than a single movie.
Tony Soprano and the other criminals in the show are portrayed with deeply detailed psychological complexity, which humanizes them and makes us identify with them. Tony Soprano, James Harold argues, “is a more fully developed character than any other fictional gangster ever created, and we get to know him intimately.”
Another danger in The Sopranos is its verisimilitude, its realism. When gangsters are stylized with irony and cynicism the way they are in a Tarantino movie, they become distant from us in perhaps a healthy way; in contrast, Tony Soprano seems real, so that we identify with him more.
We are left with this moral problem: “There is no doubt that Tony Soprano is evil, vicious, and morally bankrupt. Yet we like him.”
Two. What is the author’s argument?
Is it morally wrong to watch The Sopranos? His answer: “I doubt it.”
For one, a lot of the good characters who have a positive influence on Tony Soprano are NOT criminals, so there is a moral element to the show.
Secondly and most compelling according to James Harold, there is a morality play in the show’s center: the psychiatrist’s office in which Tony Soprano has to deal with the moral consequences of his actions.
Third, Tony’s psychiatrist Jennifer Melfi “continually reminds us as an audience of the dangers of seeing things exclusively from Tony’s point of view, and her character provides an alternative point of view on Tony’s life and actions.” Therefore, the show compels us to explore moral complexity and that’s a good thing, making The Sopranos defensible.
Writing Assignment Option, Reading the Signs, page 304, number 5:
Read or reread Robert B. Ray’s “The Thematic Paradigm” (p. 377), and write an essay in which you argue whether Tony Soprano can be considered a hero. If so, what kind of hero is he? If not, why not?
You can replace Tony Soprano with Dexter Morgan from Dexter if you're more familiar with that show, or consult me for another alternative such as the show Breaking Bad or Weeds.
One. What is the “countercultural idea” in marketing?
That you can brand yourself a rebel and an outsider who dares to break the rules of conformity. You are your own fierce spirit who won’t be tamed by The Man (164). “I drive a Subaru. Therefore, I’m an outdoors person who isn’t bought by corporate America. I’m not some bland suburbanite.”
Two. What is the irony behind the countercultural idea?
We get manipulated into buying and indulging in buying things we don’t need to “prove” our rebel status. Corporate America gets in on the act buy not being “an oppressor but a sponsor of fun, provider of lifestyle arrangements” (166).
“Transgression” and rebellion are now expressed through unbridled hedonism and fulfillment of one’s desires, which translates into spending money on this “rebel lifestyle.”
A middle-aged man buying an Audi coupe or BMW M3 is not purchasing a car; he’s resolving an existential crisis, tying loose ends, an finding vindication for a life spent toiling in the absence of adequate appreciation. “Well look at me in my new car, guys. Now I’m appreciated!”
Three. How have corporate warriors changed?
They still sleigh the dragons of money and commerce, but now they wear a different tribal wardrobe that replaces suits with athletic wear.
Today’s business warriors are more visceral about their war to win markets and they ape the histrionics of athletes and gladiators to get into their hyped-up mindset. Now they’re “risk-takers” and “ass-kickers.”
Chapter 2 Brought to You Buy (171)
One. Why is the office a familiar setting for advertising?
Because of its popular films and TV shows, which give the office setting a positive association. However, the humor is based on a more and more grim environment for people with white-collar jobs. Overworked and underappreciated, these employees live lives of quiet desperation.
A lot of the humor is based on schadenfreude, the pleasure of others’ failure and misery.
Two. Why is laughter at our office despair dangerous?
Because laughter suggests apathy and helplessness in the face of a seemingly insurmountable challenge (173).
Three. Why are advertisements the best way to learn about semiotics?
Because advertisements substitute “signs for things and by reading those signs you can discover the values and desires that advertisers seek to exploit.” Cars for example are not selling transportation but “fantasies of power, prestige, and sexual potency.”
We further read: “By substituting desirable images for concrete needs, modern advertising seeks to transform desire into necessity.” When we analyze the way ads transform desires into necessities, we have the opportunity to hone the craft of semiotic analysis.
Four. When did we transition from a production to consumer economy?
In the 1950s is when marketers used commodification, “associating logically unrelated desire with an actual product.” Advertisers had to come up with constant and new ways to stir discontent in the hearts of shoppers in order to keep them coming back to buy stuff they didn’t need.
Ads change with different eras, which reflect different values. Sixty years ago, ads promised greater domestic tranquility. Today, the emphasis is on celebrity association since Americans believe happiness is “living the life of a celebrity” and enjoying a “Chanel No. 5 Moment.”
In the 90s, irony was introduced into ads to flatter the consumers into believing they were above it all when it came to being manipulated by ads; rather, we were in on the joke.
James B. Twitchell, “What We Are to Advertisers” (182)
One. What happens to our consumer habits as we become older?
We stop clustering in groups or tribes to define our identity and we stop skipping from one cluster group to another as we constantly search for the ideal “lifestyle.” Eventually, we seek meaning upon which time our consumer habits become more fixed.
Two. In advertising, what is the term “positioning” mean?
Change the meaning of a product to fit the target audience.
Three. How do advertisers predict the buying tendencies of their target audience?
They use VALS2+, which refers to Values and Lifestyle System and specifically says that customers are motivated “to acquire products, services, and experiences that provide satisfaction give shape, substance, and character to their identities.”
Here are the various audiences:
Actualizers: These are educated shoppers who don’t need anything. They want independence. They already have the things they need. They are advertisers’’ worst nightmare because they are most resistant to manipulation and mind control.
Fulfilled: These are satisfied customers who support the status quo. They are retired and prefer function to bling.
Believers: They support traditional moral codes and are conservative in their shopping choices.
Achievers: They seek prestige and define themselves by the things they buy. Advertisers love them.
Strivers: They are bitter because they are frustrated achievers. They live beyond their means to show everyone, and themselves, that they are really achievers.
Experiencers: They see spending their income on products and services as ways to fulfill their lives so they are willing to spend a lot of their disposable income on these “experiential consumer goods.” Advertisers love them. Between ages 18-24, 61% of Americans are Experiencers.
Makers: They are like the experiencers but they are self-reliant and do things themselves.
Strugglers: For all the work they do, they just can’t make enough money for advertisers to care about them. “They are the invisible millions.”
Between ages 55 to 64, Actualizers, Fulfilled, and Strugglers claim 15% of the population.
Acheivers, Strivers, and Makers fill about 10 percent a piece and remaining 2% are Experiencers.
Writing Assignment Option from Reading the Signs, page 186, Number 4:
Using the VALS2 paradigm, analyze the shopping patterns of the two families described in John Verdant’s “The Ables vs. the Binges” (p. 152). Do the families fit neatly into the paradigm, or does their behavior call for a revision of it? Use your findings as the basis of an essay in which you assess the usefulness of the paradigm.
S. Craig Watkins, “Fast Entertainment and Multitasking in an Always-On World”
One. How is pop culture like “snack culture”?
Because we devour smaller and smaller bites of entertainment and information so that our brains’ attention span gets smaller and smaller and we become in a way dehumanized consumers of superficial junk food tidbits.
Easy consumption turns us into mindless and dehumanized consumers. We’re deluded into thinking our gadgets and technologies, the conduits or windows for these “snacks” are uplifting us and bringing us into a super candy store but in reality we are losing our brains, minds, and souls.
Old media guard sees this addictive behavior and wants to get in on the act so big networks are creating bite-sized media for the new human creature of our Tech Era.
Ted Talks are the “great lectures,” which last 18 minutes.
Twitter has small word allowance.
Jerry Seinfeld’s new website has interviews that last about 20 minutes or so.
YouTube videos that are 2.9 minutes are most popular.
Two. How do we consume more and less at the same time?
Because we consume more videos but they videos are shorter and shorter. We can’t focus on anything too long. We’re restless for more and more irrelevance that feebly “fills us up.”
Three. How has our culture changed in the new Snack Bite Era?
Our homes are now “wire castles,” centered on gratifying our snack bite lusts.
“Candy store” media provides maximum convergence of opportunity to indulge our snack bite taste buds.
Children spend one-fourth of their lives on multiple media (146).
Four. What does multitasking do to us?
In short, it makes us stupid and feeds the false promise of getting more and more done in a shorter period of time (148). We suffer from “dual-task interference.”
The real term for multitasking is “scattered attention,” a dehumanized state (150).
We now suffer from information overload and wisdom deficit (151).
Writing Assignments for First Research Paper so far:
Page 96, Reading the Signs, Number 1
Page 151: Reading the Signs, numbers 3 and 5.
John Verdant, “The Ables vs. the Binges” 152
One. What characteristics define the Ables?
The Ables represent the Conscientious Consumer of Uncompromising Convictions.
They are utilitarian, consuming those things that are useful while eschewing those things that feed vanity and point to social status.
Consumerism is a non-emotional, practical concern and is never driven by “passion for things.”
Consumerism must always be put in the context of waste and recycling.
Research, not commercial hype, is at the center of consumer choice.
Connecting with community, not Internet shopping, should be first priority in making consumer choices.
Being considerate to local merchants by avoiding credit cards and therefore sparing merchants credit card fees is part of the Ables’ Moral Code.
They buy “lifetime products,” which must be maintained and serviced, not replaced if possible.
They keep meticulous records of warranties and receipts in order to spare themselves of being stuck with a defective product.
Consumer choices and boycotts are opportunities to express moral and social convictions.
The Ables are pro-labor and will start protests in large chain stores if the manager won’t let the workers discuss their labor policies with the Ables.
The Ables buy organic food since its expensive price tag is still cheaper than going through the trauma of cancer.
The Ables eschew cosmetic purchases. Beauty is in the soul, not a clown makeup façade.
The Ables choose to work as much as they like in order to minimize their taxes owed to the government.
Because the Ables are not enmeshed in the consumer bingeing cycle, they are more content than their consumer neighbors.
The Ables treat consumer debt like the Mark of the Beast, Satan, and the Devil. “Don’t let that evil creature in our house.”
Two. What Characteristics Define the Binges?
They are gullible consumers who are getting punk-fed by the Man’s Advertising Machine.
They feed their consumer lusts by watching lots of TV.
They rely on consumer debt to indulge their consumer appetites.
They are attracted to poshlost, banal vulgarity posing as grandiosity.
They feed off lowbrow culture or the Ignoramus Consumption Machine: chain restaurants, HomeTown Buffet, NASCAR races, malls, movie theaters, etc.
Insecure in their vanity, they engage in impulse buys of fashion, hoping these sartorial accouterments will make them more popular and loveable.
They are gullible and helpless to alleged department store “sales,” which are in fact marketing manipulations designed to control the spending habits of ignorant people.
Their house is a cluttered, chaotic mess of “old and new crap” that they don’t know what to do with.
After a shopping splurge, their curb on garbage collection day will cluttered with big shopping bags, electronics boxes, Styrofoam inserts, and other wasteful displays, which are inimical to the environment, a fact they are ignorant and apathetic about.
They don’t maintain their own home functions but rather rely on the big chains to service their plumbing, electricity, rain gutters, computer repair, etc. In other words, they are helpless to fend for themselves when it comes to maintaining all the crap they buy.
Their self-image is dependent on what they wear, designer labels, and big-name products. They buy a best-selling book and leave it on their coffee table so everyone can see they have the “hot book” even though no one in the family has read it. They are philistines, ciphers that can only define themselves by the things they buy.
Their friendships suffer because for them consumerism is an ugly form of aggressive competition against “their opponents.”
They buy cars every year or so to “resurrect their self-image” that are marketed with gimmicks. There are always ranked dead last in Consumer Reports because they’re too lazy to do research.
They have no original thoughts or passion about ideas; rather, they parrot what they saw on American Idol or some other fatuous TV show. (Ah, the American Dream!)
Because they need second jobs to pay for all the crap they don’t need, they’re too busy to cook and instead frequent chain restaurants.
Their children no nothing of maturity or values; as a result, the oldest daughter has already been married and divorced twice. Their eldest son is always “changing his look” to alleviate his existential vacuum. The mother “stinks” of heavy sprays, perfumes, and other chemical products that she lavishes on her fat body. She also reeks of cigarettes and is scarred from junk-food-induced acne. Her muscles have atrophied from lack of exercise so she looks like a fat tomato with four toothpicks sticking out of it. She is a failure of a role model to her children. Also it should be pointed out she hasn’t eaten a vegetable in over a decade. Sadly, her daughters also aspire to the More Makeup Is Better philosophy and are trying to conceal their disintegrating souls with monster applications of stinky make-up products.
Which family would you rather be in?
Essay Options for first Research Paper
Reading the Signs, Number 5, page 151
Watkins claims that "we have evolved from a culture of instant gratification to one of constant gratification" (para. 9). Drawing upon Laurence Shames's "The More Factor" (p. 90), write an essay analyzing whether "consuming media on the go" is a twenty-first century extension of "the hunger for more."
Reading the Signs, Numbers 3 and 5, page 158
Using Joan Kron's "The Semiotics of Home Decor" (p. 128) as a critical framework, write an essay in which you analyze the meanings that material goods hold for both the Able and the Binge families.
Drawing on Laurence Shames's "The More Factor" (p. 90), analyze the Binge family's attitudes toward consumption. To what extent could they be said to be suffering from "the hunger for more"?
A dead mall has a high vacancy rate or is in a state of decomposition. There’s a sadness from seeing the “Vatican of happy consumerism” turn into an empty ghost lot.
There is in particular a sadness for the mall’s death since it’s a sign of unbridled greed. This view is embraced by bobos, those people who are half bohemian, half bourgeois. See page 113, paragraph 10.
Two. What is most loathsome about shopping malls?
Perhaps it’s that “we don’t need most of what they sell” (115). They embody superfluous identity and as such are worthless, even destructive. They turn us into mall zombies, creatures of “mindless consumption.”
Thomas Hine, “What’s in a Package” (118)
One. How does the world change when you walk behind a shopping cart?
You process a cacophony of intense visual cues, which cause your brain to move at a higher speed.
You conflate your food choices with your self-appraisal as a failed or successful human being.
You’re measuring the quality of your identity based on the items that reinforce or violate the identity you wish to create.
You’re often so overwhelmed by the visual cues, that the items often become a blur and you have to assert extra effort to focus selectively on what you deem are the important items. This process proves fatiguing.
Two. What differentiates a supermarket from a traditional market?
A supermarket has no images of death like a traditional market: butcher scraps of flesh and blood, hanging carcasses.
Death is hidden by being processed and packaged into happy consumer food items.
The supermarket has little or no human connection. You are submerged into a world of packaging and the information of that packaging. (Is Trader Joe’s an exception? It seems the employees there are encouraged, required even, to establish a convivial banter with the customers.)
Packages are the key sign and source of information, not people.
Three. How are packages a looking glass into our changing tastes and aspired identities?
“How do you handle a hungry man?” With Man-Handler Chunky Soup, of course. This soup confirms your manliness.
Anything “Lite” tells you and the world you’re serious about dieting.
“Not Animal Tested” tells the world you love animals.
“Biodegradable” announces that you care about the planet.
Altoids are made to look like the curios and mementos you’d fine in an antique dresser from the Imperial Palace.
Grey Poupon mustard comes in a distinctly French jar, which suggest high class, as compared to the squeeze-bottle low-class American mustard.
A lot of sugary high-fructose corn syrup drinks are marketed with beautiful Edenic landscapes on the label with rich foliage and mangoes, pineapples, apples, and other fruits even those these drinks have no fruit in them. But clearly these labels announce you’re identity with good health even though the sugar content is as high as soda.
Scott Jaschik, “A Stand Against Wikipedia”
One. What is Wikipedia’s credibility problem?
The problem with Wikipedia is that it is protean, changing shape, evolving. All this change is based in part by random people who contribute information that may or may not be accurate.
Further, experts in the field do not esteem the information.
Two. What is Wikipedia’s second problem?
It encourages laziness, as it becomes the one-stop place for all a student’s research.
Patti S. Caravello, “Judging Quality on the Web” (69)
We read that a reliable, useful website does the following:
One. Cleary states the author and/or organization.
Two. Clearly states the date of the material.
Three. Provides accurate data that has been tested by the person’s peers.
Six. Provides links to high quality scholarly sites.
Seven. Keeps advertising separate from content.
Eight. Is clearly organized and easy to use.
Trip Gabriel, “For Students in Internet Age, No Shame in Copy and Paste (71)
One. Plagiarism includes Wikipedia and unauthored sites and anything that the writer may attribute to “common knowledge” when in fact the writing was taken from a source.
Two. Students are not grasping the idea of plagiarism. Nor are they understanding the moral violation and possible punishments rendered by plagiarism. It seems so “free and easy” to take writing from the Internet and has been going on for so long that a lot of students are numbed to the idea of plagiarism.
Three. The information is “hanging out there like low hanging fruit, easy pickings.”
Four. A lot of undergraduates don’t care about the connection between their own writing and their personal identity. They just to pass the “damn class” with some “good writing,” even if it’s not theirs.
Be a Critical Reader, Critical Thinker, and Critical Writer
Strong writing is the result of “knowing what you’re talking about.” This means you have a clear understanding of your reading material. How do you increase your understanding?
You need to learn the tools of critical reading.
One. Always re-read.
Two. Embrace the 5 Ws: who, what, where, when, why and how (elaborate below)
Three. Write annotations or notes in the margins of what you’re reading. Studies show that your memory of what you read increases exponentially when you write notes in the margins, which is superior to highlighting. Highlighting is worthless compared to writing margin notes. For example, if you disagree with an author’s point, put the word “disagree” or “?” in the margin. I often write, “really?” If I agree, I write, “yes.” If I’m stunned by a painful truth, I’ll write, “disgusting!”
Active Reading Questions
One. What is the author’s primary argument? Can you identify a thesis statement, or is the thesis implied?
Two. What words or key terms are fundamental to that argument? If you are not familiar with the fundamental vocabulary of the selection, be sure to check a dictionary for the word’s meaning.
Three. What evidences does the author provide to support the argument?
Four. What underlying assumptions shape the author’s position? Does the author consider alternative points of view, providing counterarguments and rebuttals to those counterarguments?
Five. What style and tone does the author adopt? Is the author earnest, angry, satirical, ironic, spare, multisyllabic, assured, supercilious, self-regarding (what an important, talented writer I am!), unctuous, sanctimonious, verbose, bloviating, witty, no-nonsense, moralistic, etc.?
Six. What kind of expository mode or modes are being used? Is the mode descriptive, cause and effect, argumentative, informative, process analysis (how-to), narrative, contrast-comparison? The book calls these approaches genres.
Seven. Who is the intended readership of this selection and does the author’s intended audience affect the author’s tone and information?
Lexicon for Writing a Semiotic Analysis (30)
You should familiarize yourself with the semiotic language to strengthen your analysis of popular culture.
One. Denotation: What is the factual definition of your subject? The HBO series True Blood is factually about the persecution of vampires. It’s not a horror TV series about scary vampires hurting people; it’s the other way around.
Two. Connotative Meanings: What is your subject in its system of signs? By signs we mean symbols and sometimes allegories, which show the factual subject on a symbolic level.
For example, the HBO series True Blood is ostensibly and factually about vampires living among humans; but there are signs that the vampires represent, not monster, but gays and hipster counterculture that is in direct clash with mainstream, conservative society.
Three. Differences within the System: There is a dividing line between the series, a sort of before and after. Vampires in True Blood, for example, change from uncompromising haters of humans as mainstream society to vulnerable “people” who need humans, however flawed real people are.
In other words, the signs and symbols in a popular culture TV series can evolve.
Four. Abductive Explanations: We use our interpretative skills to analyze the causes in a shift or evolution that causes “differences within the system.”
As the vampires evolve from misanthropic snobs to vulnerable beings craving the frailties of human life, they themselves become more human and reachable.
Examples of A-Grade Essays on pages 37-64
Malcolm Gladwell, “The Science of Shopping” (97)
One. What physical characteristics of people determine the type of environments business want to create to maximize consumer activity?
People walk like they drive cars.
People need visible cues to slow them down, a process that takes up to fifteen paces, the “downshift factor,” a necessary condition for a shopper to peruse the items in a store.
Never sell your premium items in the Decompression Zone, the front of the store where people are still disoriented.
Depth-Buying Ratio: The deeper in a store a customer wanders, the more likely she will buy something.
Two. Should we be fearful of shopping scientists like Paco Underhill?
We are spied on and analyzed to create an environment that will manipulate us in order to maximize our probability of buying something. However, Gladwell asserts that the typical shopper is too headstrong to be manipulated. Therefore, Underhill is creating an environment that satisfies fickle shoppers. Gladwell adds that Underhill’s clients, so eager to please the consumer, are acting in a state of humility (103).
“The Signs of Shopping” by Anne Norton 104-110
One. How does the shopping mall address decentralization?
We are a scattered society. Many of us live outside of urban centers and are sprawled out in suburban communities where we’re out of touch with one another.
However, there is a consumer oasis, the shopping mall, which glues us together with its hodgepodge of consumer enticements.
Its intent is “to restore lost unity of city life to the suburbs.”
Two. What is “commodity fetishism”?
The word fetish pertains to an unnatural, twisted obsession in which we give magical, even religious powers to an object.
The mall is a temple and it is serving commodity products that will “elevate our existence” and make us “transcendent beings.”
Three. What is the “pervasive private authority” that defines the “seemingly public place” of the mall?
While diverse people gather in what appears to be a public space, the mall, a very private place with a very private authority, exercises a code:
There can be nothing of controversy.
There must be no substantive ideas, only pabulum for the mind.
There is no freedom of speech or assembly. In other words, no one can gather with political intent.
The authority must be discreet through the use of “visible, inaudible, public discourse.”
This discourse must come from the commodities, which proclaim our identity, wellbeing, meaning, purpose, opinions, desires, and happiness. Nothing can exist outside commodities because at the shopping mall commodities are God. They are your God and you’re going to pay, go in debt, and slobber and weep over your religious experience, which can only come from commodities.
To reiterate the above, in the world of the mall the only meaning that exists comes from commodities.
The mall loves all people, but it especially loves female adolescents who spend more time at the mall than any other demographic. They also spend the most money. If the mall is the Holy Temple, adolescent females are its High Priestesses.
Four. What is the mall’s ultimate purpose regarding female adolescent shoppers?
More than wanting young girls to spend money, the mall wants to indoctrinate teen girls with a “well-developed sense of the significance of those commodities. In prowling the mall they embed themselves in a lexicon of American culture.” We can infer from these remarks that the mall is interested in implanting the girls’ long-term spending habits so that they are hooked to the mall and the consumer lifestyle it represents until those girls go to their graves.
Five. How the dependent-on-her-husband female shopper both conventional and subversive?
She buys things to define herself and her family on one hand, but on the other she exercises authority over property by being the “informed consumer,” a role her husband is okay with since he’s too lazy to take on this function.
Six. What is “imperial nostalgia” in relation to mail order catalogs like Banana Republic and J. Peterman?
These catalogs give men the fantasy of being imperialists, colonialists, conquerors, and men on safari. A lot of the imagery is racist as it recalls the days of plantations.
Seven. What is the message of the Home Shopping Network?
That your incontinent spending is somehow equal to engaging in the noble enterprise of pursuing liberty and freedom, which are proof of your authentic American status.
Cultural juggernaut: critical mass takes over such as vampires, as romantic figures, not monsters, becoming a ubiquitous (everywhere) part of culture.
Being a critical thinker is asking the question: Why is this romantic notion of a vampire so popular with youth culture? What appetites are being stirred?
High culture: art for the privileged and educated: ballet, classical music, and literature. Ruminating over the nuances of philosophy is another form of high culture. There tends to be a vain, self-congratulation in these indulgences, but not always.
Low culture: Troglodyte, mindless entertainments such as gladiator fights from the days of the Roman Empire to today’s versions such as the hit Jack-ass. Dining, too, has low culture with the “all you can eat buffet” in which “filling the tank,” not real eating, is the focus.
Folk culture refers to the art of the people, ballads that champion the interests of the common people, those who struggle under the “Man’s thumb.”
Commercialized culture: usurping or co-opting authentic artistic creation and commercializing it under the guise of folk art. This commercialized culture is most commonly referred to as pop or popular culture and it is the focus of this book.
Mass culture: the movement of people from agricultural fragments into mass concentrated urban centers.
Passive consumerism: taking in what corporate culture sells us without questioning its authenticity and quality and thereby keeping “the whole consumer-capitalist system going” (5).
Lords of Cool: They (corporate creations) tell us what to buy and what to visit: gadgets, cars, computers, music, clothes, social media sites, etc.
Familiarity Factor: This book focuses on popular culture because in part the students are familiar with it.
Sign: anything that carries a meaning. A vampire is a sign of a misfit, an outsider who understands the alienated teenage girl and therefore represents the teenage girl’s hunger for being understood and identifying with the misfit.
The world of signs is the text. Our textbook is the “window to the text.”
The Semiotic Method: decoding signs like the vampire pop culture phenomenon described above. The semiotic method is based on the fact that decoding a sign can be differentiated from any other sign within the system or code. In decoding, we consider the political dimensions.
To denote is to directly show and thus create an explicit sign. HomeTown Buffet is explicitly about large portions, “all you can eat.”
To connote is to indirectly show and thus create an implicit sign. HomeTown Buffet is implicitly about a unique way of American eating, which isn’t really eating at all but an attempt to “fill the gas tank” and perhaps degrade oneself into a mindless feeding frenzy. In the Shake ‘N Bake commercial a housewife is depressed until she pleases her husband, and his boss, by serving a new dish that wins her boss a promotion. The implicit message is that business is a man’s game while cooking and pleasing men is a woman’s game.
Oppositional reading challenges the face value “preferred reading” of something that people assume is benign such as a Shake ‘N Bake commercial. In other words, we conduct an oppositional reading to find the insane and grotesque in what society assumes is normal and “okay.”
Abduction: the process of arriving at an interpretation by seeking the most plausible explanation for something. Some people are obsessed with arming themselves with guns, for example. They fear the invasion of The Other; thus their fear speaks to their unconscious tribalism and prejudice against “strangers.”
Using vampires as an example of semiotic analysis: Why was there a shift from vampire the monster in 1900 to vampire the sympathetic hero today? The vampire story has merged with common young adult narratives of being validated, finding belonging, and being a special standout (popular). Vampires are also ageless so they appeal to a culture that worships youth and disdains old age. Add to the fact that vampires are cool, glamorous and sexy and now you no longer have a vampire per se but a rock star “bad boy.” Sullen, misunderstood, craving love, and handsome as hell, he is the ultimate romantic symbol. The vampire has many interpretations today, which is to say it is “overdetermined,” capable of decodings.
Cultural mythologies: Semiotics deconstructs the assumed beliefs behind pop culture. These assumptions are called cultural mythologies. Here are two: Men define themselves by their income; women define themselves by the quality of their motherhood. These are called gender myths. Sometimes we conform to these myths unconsciously and reinforce the assumption that their true even if these roles violate our core, authentic self. Advertising feeds on cultural myths like conquering the great frontier and the making of a Jeep with headlights that look like horse eyes. Being a suburban consumer driving to Jeep makes you a “frontiersman.” A lot of mythologies, including racial mythologies, are based on stereotypes of which there are too many to name.
Semiotic Analysis Primer or Template
What colors are used and what do they represent? (see page 35)
Is the image realistic, impressionistic, romantic? Why?
Who is the intended audience?
What emotion does the image convey?
What is the composition and layout?
What is the underlying message or “text”?
What viewer response is desired by the image’s producers?
Chapter 1: Consuming Passions 81-96
One. Why do we choose to buy things that are different from other people’s “wish list”?
We shop for a variety of reasons:
Identity, to express our worldview or aspired economic-social class
Belonging (to join the tribe that has a code of dress and belongings and to create an immaculate, impeccable aesthetic so everyone knows exactly what tribe we’re in such as owning an iMac and a Mini Cooper, which makes people believe we’re members of the cognoscenti)
To gain the esteem and admiration of others
To make a political statement
To feel the false security of surrounding ourselves with things, which makes us feel, falsely, invincible and likable.
To be cool or hip
To be masculine
To conform to the ideal female image
To distinguish ourselves from others and to assert our uniqueness and individuality
To embrace the paradox of being an “anti-consumer” and outlier rebel by being a consumer of “anti-consumer” items like Subaru cars and Patagonia “utilitarian” jackets.
Some of us develop an acute, pathological addiction to consumerism because “buying things” becomes a distraction from our boredom, the “existential vacuum,” and “buying things” helps us stay in a world we feel we can manage when we have larger life problems that render us feeling helpless and hopeless. Can’t find love? Buy a new BMW. Problem solved. You’re not athletic? Buy an expensive skateboard. Problem solved. Not as skinny as you like? Buy jeans three sizes too small and hope you’ll be able to fit in them in the next three months. You’re still fat but those skinny jeans sure look good in your closet. This addiction is called “impoverishment through substitution.”
Related to Number 11, you’re overcome with feelings of relevance; thus, the shopping quest becomes the quest for relevance. Feeling irrelevant is insufferable part of the human condition and we will do anything to feel like “we matter.” For example, “If I buy the new iPad, I’ll be on everybody’s radar screen. People will talk about me on Facebook. I’ll be relevant. Hooray!”
The case of skinny jeans
Jeans in the 1960s became “a uniform of defiance of middle-class proscriptions” and a sign of “solidarity with the working class.”
Over time, however, jeans evolved into part of the fashion mainstream movement, becoming part of the corporation, the Man, the very thing original wearers of jeans despised.
When business takes a grass movement and makes it chic and popular for its own profitable enterprise, we call this process “co-opting.”
Now jeans, baggy or skinny, can be associated with hip-hop, hipster, Beat, New Wave, indie, alternative, skateboarder, etc.
Fads, Zeitgeist, Mass Production, and Mass Consumption
Each era or zeitgeist has its own fad, which becomes consumed and then disposed of. This fad is then replaced by a new fad that ushers in the next zeitgeist.
Modern advertising and mass production go hand in hand. For example, television shows in different eras give us different images of cultural identity, which become consumer opportunities and for some shopping addicts imperatives, meaning they have to acquire the “hot cultural symbol” like puka shell necklaces and angel flight slacks from my middle school years in the 1970s. In the 1980s, the “uniform” in San Francisco was jeans and a black leather jacket.
A lot of sixth graders in 2014 wear “Little House on the Prairie” lace-up boots. They’re popular because of The Hunger Games films.
A lot of young people wear expensive yoga pants (Lululemons) with their outfits.
A lot of young men are wearing pink to show that their masculinity can stand up to this “hot” color.
The Principle of Mass Consumption
There needs to be shifts in consumer consumption. The more shifts the better. This is accomplished when advertisers can convince you that “you are what you buy.”
Advertisers need to create “built-in obsolescence,” the idea that the things you buy will be passé and irrelevant soon after you buy them, so that you’ll have to buy the new cool stuff that will make you, once again, relevant, until of course, your new stuff, too, becomes irrelevant.
Clothes, cars, gadgets, phones, computers, social media sites, pads, jewelry, fashion accessories, furniture, home décor are all subject to built-in obsolescence.
Mass production “creates consumer societies based on the constant production of new products that are intended to be disposed of with the next product year” (86).
Consumption has become the crucial force behind our economy, even more so that production (86). Economist Michael Mandel argues that a consumption economy is not sustainable.
The book argues that consumption is such a dominating force of our existence that it has created a radical transformation in the way we view ourselves.
The Consumer Message: You Are What You Buy
There is a ubiquity of media images and messages that tell us we are what we buy and we absorb this message unconsciously. Many argue we are in some ways helpless to fighting this message.
Everywhere we go, there are “stimulation triggers” to buy stuff. This is even more true in the age of smartphones.
Laurence Shames, “The More Factor” (90)
One. What is the history of American speculation and optimism?
In the first paragraph, Shames writes about the façade of business in our country: We make a business look thriving even when it isn’t. Speculators dumped empty town, got a nose count, and let people go their way.
In an age closer to ours, and one that didn’t exist when Shames wrote his book, we had the Internet Bubble.
Two. What two powers propel the history of American business?
One, of course, is the potential for enormous profit.
Two, is the myth of infinite growth, the idea that America will keep booming, the idea of More, an idea that is difficult to believe in our current age of a shrinking middle-class and the Avaricious One Percent. Or put it this way: There may still be growth for the 1% but not the rest of America.
America was built on the idea of frontier, not just geographically but as a concept. Gadgets and social media sites are a new “frontier” today. The HBO series Deadwood captured the notion of frontier in the 1870s.
America’s open space became a breeding ground for the idea of frontier as ambition.
The American trinity became frontier, opportunity, more (92).
Three. Why is More a Monster that kills morality?
Because we read on page 92, bottom paragraph, that More makes Americans “backward in adopting values, hopes, ambitions that have to do with things other than more.” We also read “the ethic of decency has been upstaged by the ethic of success.” This idea is reinforced when we observe that Christian Protestant America has equated the work ethic with being “godly” and this work ethic is rely just a smokescreen for blind ambition and self-interest, two sins of the Christian faith.
More has become erroneously synonymous with success. We’re so obsessed with More we take short vacations or don’t vacation at all. We’re so obsessed with More we live in a consumer debt society so that in 2014 average credit card debt is over 15K.
Rather than aspire to pay off our debts, Americans are a nation of “restless striving.” We always have to shop to alleviate the anxiety of irrelevance and to participate in the Myth of More. Otherwise, we fear we’ll be left out. We’ll be left behind and we’ll be all alone and no one will love us unless we have Gucci, Apple, and Mercedes.
We are a nation of philistines who only measure success in metrics that can be counted with numbers like the size of a bank account, the acreage of a mansion lot, the number of cars in the driveway and the cost of those cars. “What kind of a job do you have? What is your income? What kind of car do you drive? Where do you live?”
We are not a nation that values intangibles that cannot be measured in numbers like empathy, altruism, artistic creativity, meaning, belonging, community, and literacy, to name several.
My brother lives in Berkeley, which appears in part to pay some credence to the intangibles. It’s a nice place to raise your children.
Four. Can More last forever?
Every bubble must burst. In fact, real wealth in America has been in decline since the late 1970s. Recently, there have been “steady declines for the lower 93%.”
Even though the frontier of unlimited growth died over a hundred years ago, its myth persists today (94, paragraph 25).
More is a form of insanity called concupiscence.
We can define concupiscence as limitless, selfish desires that don't sate our appetites. To the contrary, the process of feeding our concupiscence only serves to make our desires greater than before. The result of concupiscence is insanity. For a recent example, we can look at Tiger Woods who is an example of concupiscence, which is the sum of temptation plus opportunity.
Some of us don't go completely insane in our quest to feed our desires. We mature, grow up, and join the adult world. Part of being an adult is knowing our limits in eating, spending, pleasure-seeking, etc.
In other words, being an adult is about conquering concupiscence.
When we mature and realize we must assert limits on ourselves, we often have an awakening to Existential Ache, the realization of two things:
One, we are not, as we once believed in childhood, the center of the universe.
Two, we come to realize that our desires will ALWAYS outstrip our capacity to satisfy them.
Failure to realize the latter principle of Existential Ache results in concupiscence, the futile struggle to appease our ever-growing appetites.
Concupiscence is stimulated by opportunity and imagination. We have the money to sate our appetites and we imagine the satisfaction of increasing our appetites while finding the necessary resources to satisfy those freshly honed desires.
Example of concupiscence:
A businessman travels frequently to Miami where he frequents a swanky club. The club's outer rim terrace is cluttered with women of the most exquistite beauty and pulchritude. But inside, it is rumored, in the VIP suite, the women are even more beautiful than the one's visible on the outside plaza. So the businessman pays the handsome fee to become a VIP and comforts himself with the thought that he, as an exclusive club member, has access to Miami's most lovely women.
Wrong. Rumors abound that there is an inner chamber, requiring a surreptious descent down a trap door, where the women are even more outrageously beautiful than in the VIP room. Our troubled businessman pays the bouncer $500 and is escorted through the trapdoor where, once again, he is comforted with the belief that he has access to Miami's most beautiful women.
Wrong. Rumors abound about another trapdoor leading to a chamber of even more rarified beauties and another and another until the businessman collapses with the despair that Miami's most beautiful women will elude him forever. He shrinks with anguish, forgoes all interests and passions, and spends the rest of his life languishing in self-pity.
This is the story of concupiscence.
And it is the story of Jeff Henderson before he "falls" in prison where his opportunities to fuel his concupiscence have all but ended.
One. Concupiscence and Its Causes
1. Concupiscence is the search for happiness based on gratifying pleasure and ego without a moral compass. The result is moral dissolution, a fancy term for the loss of morality and sanity. Tennessee Williams became famous after writing the play A Streetcar Named Desire and lived in a fancy hotel where he had room service and escorts visit him every day. One evening he poured gravy over his banana split and realized he had become insane. He left the hotel, went to Mexico and resumed with his writing career.
2. Concupiscence is the pursuit of happiness without a moral compass; in other words, you have no vision of anything beyond gratifying your base appetites and therefore have a misguided definition of happiness.
3. When you have no vision beyond your base appetites, you are what we call “Bread and Circus,” which means all you desire is food and entertainment.
4. Concupiscence compels you to feed your irrational appetites, which wage war against your powers of reason. For example, one of my students knows a guy who lives in expensive Brentwood and drives a BMW but he has to eat his sister’s government cheese and other handouts because he has no money for food. That’s not a reasonable situation.
5. Concupiscence grows inside us when we have role models without a moral compass.
6. Concupiscence grows inside us from the anger that is born from having a sense of deprivation: “I’m gonna get mine.”
7. The writer Jonathan Franzen gives concupiscence another name, Ache: Being overwhelmed by desires that always outrun our capacity to fulfill them.
8. Another cause behind concupiscence is vanity, also called the libido ostentandi: The need to show off. A rich woman in Argentina, a landlady, wears a body length mink coat at an outdoor bazaar where the temperature is 105 degrees. She wants everyone to know she is of a higher stature. She passes out and dies of heat stroke.
Another example: A student wrote an essay about his friend who, buying a BMW 5 series, had to work 2 jobs and drop out of El Camino College. The misguided young man’s didn’t know how depressed he was when he realized all his friends, the people who would be impressed with his BMW, could not see it since they were attending college. One day this BMW owner made a special trip to the college and yelled to his buddies to come look at his car but they had to go to his class and my student’s final vision of his friend was screaming from his BMW on the Crenshaw parking lot for someone to check out his car. No one cared.
9. As I said before, concupiscence is the result of temptation plus opportunity.
Two. Concupiscence and Its Effects: Moral Dissolution
1. If concupiscence goes its full course, we arrive at a condition of moral dissolution like Tennessee Williams mentioned above. Here’s another example: A man cheats on his girlfriend or wife once and feels the searing pain from his conscience. He cheats on her 1,000 times and feels nothing because his conscience has decomposed into what we call moral dissolution. In other words, he’s lost his soul.
2. Another word for moral dissolution is debauchery, which means the moral pillars that hold up your morality have fallen and your morality has fallen with them.
3. Ennui; you’ve filled your senses with so much pleasure that you can no longer feel anything. You have become incurably numb to life and now must suffer the desperation of needing to feel anything, no matter what the cost. This process is also called the “hedonic treadmill” in which you constantly have to spike the pleasure quotient before you adapt to the pleasure, become numb to it and have to spike the pleasure again. This cycle goes on and on with you always losing.
4. Nihilism; the death of meaning. There is no right or wrong. Life has no meaning. The world is merely a playground for your desires. The world is a giant margarita glass and you suck on the straw, slurp every last drop and then die. Hedonism always ends in nihilism.
Essay Option for Second Typed Essay
Reading the Signs (96): 1, 3, 5
One. Connecting the Texts: Shames asserts that Americans have been influenced by the frontier belief “that America would keep on booming” (para. 8). Do you feel that this belief continues to be influential into the twenty-first entury? Write an essay arguing for your position. To develop your ideas, consult John Verdant’s “The Ables vs. the Binges” (152) and Barbara Ehrenreich’s “Bright-Sided” (532).