I agree with Edmundson to some degree. Yes, consumer culture definitely affects the way most of us see ourselves and want to be seen by others. After all, “Enthusiasm…quickly looks absurd. The form of character that’s most appealing on TV is calmly self-interested though never greedy, attuned to the conventions, and ironic.” This definitely resembles the character that I personally find desirable, and I imagine many other people feel the same way. But I believe there is a point when people stop trying to conform to an image because it is too much work, but Edmundson concludes that people are constantly . I am noticing this more now that I am in college. In high school it seemed like more people were stuck between being “cool” and being unique, not sure themselves which they wanted to be. Now it seems those who are “unique” by nature stop trying to be like the normal and show their true colors. I imagine this is true in the class room as well. Though some people may not talk a lot in the classroom, I believe that the professor need only to read their papers and get the same insights and comments on society and life in general as they would if they openly and eagerly expressed their thoughts out loud. The one thing this does not help with is class discussion. I think that in college, students do much of their discussion on their own time, or when working with other students on assignments. Edmundson might benefit from recognizing that he is not the only source of education, or the only one who can instruct his students. I have found that classroom discussions are a great enhancement to what the instructor alone can provide.
Much of our education is not generated in the classroom. I would say that my education was primarily provided by my parents, even more so than school, or popular culture. We also learn from our own experiences as well as the documented experiences of others around the world. The mass media plays a vital role in delivering to us these events from around the globe, which we would have no idea about if we didn’t see them on television or hear them on our radios. In this way the media definitely helps our education, though it can twist things out of proportion as well. For example, as Sharon Mazzarella feels, the media can take somewhat significant events and portray them as vitally important to all of us. Kurt Cobain’s death was a classic example of this. “Immediately after the body was found, MTV allotted countless hours of coverage to news of the suicide, Cobain, and Nirvana; eerily reminiscent of television coverage of the Kennedy assassination some 30 years earlier.” The fact that a musician killing himself was presented to our society in the same manner as a president’s assassination is surprising. If the media- supposedly a tool of our education, is so set on educating us about events like this. It makes me wonder what truly important things I am not hearing about. The media has the ability to shape the opinions of society, and sometimes it seems like it is teaching us in an unproductive way. It has the ability to be a great tool, but we must force ourselves to learn the important things and disregard all the sensationalism and hype that go along with them.
Consumer culture teaches us what we should and should not value. This is not necessarily a good thing. In “Shopping For Pleasure,” John Fiske makes parallels between a cathedral and a shopping mall, which turn out to be surprisingly similar. The two are based on icons of worship and rituals. The icons of worship in the mall are simply the commodities that we buy, and the very important ritual is the exchanging of goods for money. We have learned from experience that we must buy the entire product when we shop for it and that we have no ability to negotiate the prices of these products. More importantly, we have learned that those without money are just shit out of luck. If someone cannot afford commodities in our society, they cannot afford that which we value. Without the ability to share the values with those of us who can afford them, the poor are isolated and not given a legitimate chance to move up in society. Because we have learned this throughout our lives, even if we do not realize we are learning it, our society has been shaped in such a way that changing it will be difficult. After all People have a natural instinct to serve their own desires before others.
Another thing we have learned through consumer culture is how to identify ourselves with a particular group or subculture of society. Some people need this to find meaning in their lives. I cannot think of anyone I know, in fact, who has not at one point in their life joined a selective group of one kind or another. However, almost every subculture requires each member to own a certain product or products- things that are only attainable through spending money. Schouten and McAlexander use the example of the HDSC, in which people must own 15-20,000 dollar motorcycles in order to be members. Other subcultures include book clubs, in which people must buy the books they read, or sports teams, where people can only play if they have bought the right kind of clothes or uniform.
Within our education as a society, our values are at stake. We are taught by consumer culture what should be important to us and what we should not care about. Unfortunately, those things that we are led to believe are important are almost always among the basic roots of consumer culture itself. Much is generated from the media, a highly valued medium in society, because it can teach us how to act, how to think, and what we should buy. As in the case of Kurt Cobain, we see that a man who makes a form of commodified culture is regarded as highly in some ways as the President of the United States. This may not be the most important thing for us to value, but it is definitely better than valuing nothing. Because we are taught to value certain things, we learn to care about these things for our own reasons. As we grow up, different commodities have different effects on us, some being important to our careers, family life, or simply our personal needs. Some of these contain monetary value, some do not. Those that do are important because it allows us to have products we need. Those that are not bought and sold may be more important on a personal level because they are what we choose to have, not what we must have in order to survive.
Consumer culture has taught us that our lives depend almost entirely on money. If we accept this fact, those without money are basically screwed. It is very hard to gain enough respect from the world that will allow you to make money if you started at the bottom. For that reason, people who have done this and succeeded are true success stories. When taking education as a commodity itself, like college or high school, we pay to be taught what else in our life we should value; attitudes, opinions, and knowledge. We learn these things from a variety of sources, but popular culture plays a role in each of them. Whether it be a selective group, a television set, or a professor, consumer culture is at the root of the messages being passed on to us as an audience.
