Advertising… conducts a subtle game of instrumentalizing unhappiness and dissatisfaction with capitalism as a motivation for consumption. This was witnessed as early as the 1920s, when American marketers targeted a growing collective sense of ennui and alienation from urban-capitalist existence, a feeling that more innocent, dependable relations were being lost. The images used to sell products during the 1920s and 30s were specifically drawn from a social ideal of traditional family and community life that industrial capitalism appeared to be destroying. By the 1960s, advertising was tapping into frustrations with bourgeois and bureaucratic routines, speaking to the counter-culture even as it was first emerging. Advertising, like management theory, is fuelled by a critique of the dominant normative-economic regime within which it sits, facilitating safe acts of micro-rebellion against the macro-social order. It acts as capital’s own trusted moral and artistic critic in order to inspire additional psychological engagement on the part of ordinary worker-consumers. Dissatisfaction is reduced to a psychological tendency to be fed back into processes of production and consumption.
“
| — | William Davies, “The Political Economy of Unhappiness” (via quotemarx) |
-
botanically96 liked this
-
affordable06 liked this
-
community788 liked this
-
hermannview reblogged this from glynnthomas and added:
I think this quote makes you think about the whole idea of advertising. I had a teacher in driving school that said that...
-
agri-om reblogged this from lifting-of-the-veil
-
elige liked this
-
parkstepp reblogged this from lifting-of-the-veil
-
willardistall liked this
-
lionnesss liked this
-
lifting-of-the-veil reblogged this from glynnthomas
-
wellmankil liked this
-
thomas47bra liked this
-
stephanie620 liked this
-
iguez08cvv liked this
-
alone-in-silence reblogged this from lukexvx
-
lukexvx reblogged this from violentopinions
-
reasonedoverreaction reblogged this from ghost-of-algren
-
ghost-of-algren reblogged this from violentopinions
-
5x11 reblogged this from eckleburgs-eyes
-
literaryplatypus reblogged this from violentopinions
-
coffeeandexperiments reblogged this from richiewashere
-
richiewashere reblogged this from guerrillanetwork
-
moonpiesandthunderthighs reblogged this from fifteenminuteslater
-
aveavelucifer reblogged this from eckleburgs-eyes
-
skyghe reblogged this from appropriate-disorder
-
quotemarx posted this